What to do about low disk space

[Ed nelson]

I recently upgraded a Win 98 OS to Win 2000 Pro. The
computer has a 2GB hard drive, but after installing all
software and running updates, now has 270 MB free space.

Can I remove the unistall files found in C:\WINNT? Or
would that have some dire consequences?

Any suggestions would be great.

Thanks,

Ed

 

[Alias]

You probably have oodles of cross links and useless files on your computer
after all the updates. I would do a clean up before anything else.

Alias

You might also want to consider getting a larger hard disk.

 

[Dan Seur]

Ed - as the other posters said, you need a bigger drive.

2GB is much too small for W2k, even if it's a 2GB partition on a huge
drive. You don't really have any other options if you're determined to
use W2k on that machine.

You might acquaint yourself with some 3rd party disk imaging products
(like Ghost) and/or partition management products (like PartitionMagic).
These will help you move the contents of that entire 2GB drive onto a
larger drive with a larger (say, 4-5GB) system partition.

If by any chance the physical hard drive is actually larger than 2GB and
what you meant is that the system partition (usually "C:") is 2GB,
PartitionMagic could do the trick by enlarging that system partition
into currently vacant space on the physical drive. You'd have to shrink
some other partition(s) and move it(them) away from the 2GB partition
first, to make the free space contiguous with the 2GB partition, then
enlarge the 2GB partition into the free space. PM does this sort of
thing very reliably.

Since there's no way to downgrade your installed W2k system back to W98,
your options are really limited; to get back to W98 you'll have to
reinstall it and all the apps.

You can certainly remove any uninstall files. But it is often not a very
wise thing to do.

Running chkdsk is a very good idea. Defragmenting afterwards is also a
good idea. But that 2GB partition still will be a real handicap.

 

[Greg Winslet]

Visually see where all your disk space is going - get the free trial
DiskView.

It is an addin for Windows Explorer that will show you the size of folders,
hidden and system files as color-coded pies and bar charts.

See how it transforms Windows Explorer:
http://www.diskview.com/diskview-components.htm

More info at: http://www.diskview.com

Though 2GB is not a whole lot of space, and it makes sense to upgrade to a
bigger hard disk - the problem of disk usage management is not solved by g a
bigger hard disk alone. You will need a disk usage analysis software if you
deal witha lot of data.

Hope this helps,
Greg

 

[Rob Stow]

Visually see where all your disk space is going - get the free trial
DiskView.

It is an addin for Windows Explorer that will show you the size of folders,
hidden and system files as color-coded pies and bar charts.

See how it transforms Windows Explorer:
http://www.diskview.com/diskview-components.htm

More info at: http://www.diskview.com

Though 2GB is not a whole lot of space, and it makes sense to upgrade to a
bigger hard disk - the problem of disk usage management is not solved by g a
bigger hard disk alone. You will need a disk usage analysis software if you
deal witha lot of data.

And a 2 GB drive has just gotta be *old*. I would want
to replace it just because of that - get a new drive
with at least a three year warranty.

Don't touch drives with shorter warranties - if the manufacturer
doesn't have any faith in their products, there is no reason
you should either.

 

[John John]

You can safely remove SP and patch uninstall folders,
$NtServicePackUninstall$ and folders like $NtUninstallKB820888$ (the KB
numbers vary with the patch numbers). You can also remove the Service
Pack Files and the i386 folder within, but if you add new hardware or
change the configuration of your machine Windows might need files in the
i386 folder, other than that the files are unneeded. Get rid of all
temp and history files as well as unnecessary programs and help files.
As the other posters have suggested you can get a 40 or 80 gig HD for
cheap, it might be worth the expense, 2GB is a small drive for W2K.

John