freeing up space on drive?

Factory settings (I assume you have a recover disc set somewhere to be asking the question) will restore the machine to the state it came from the factory...
 
Uninstall any programs that you no longer use. Then download ccleaner, run it and you'll be surprised how much space it can free up.

Also, have a look at your recycle bin. I'm always amazed at the amount of people who have a problem with their pc, but when I have a look, it's lack of drive space on their system hard drive, caused by them deleting files but never actually emptying their recycle bin. (Btw, ccleaner will empty the recycle bin, as part of it's clean up process).
 
Ccleaner really is a great little program.
 
Chances are it's not the programs that are using up all your disk space (unless you really do have loads) but all the junk that builds up over time. That said if you're like me you'll have software on there that you never use and could easily do without.
 
Steep said:
Chances are it's not the programs that are using up all your disk space (unless you really do have loads) but all the junk that builds up over time. That said if you're like me you'll have software on there that you never use and could easily do without.
Click to expand...
yes i think its just junk...but dont really fancy formatting the drive, and losing all my programs...mark
 
id download a program called spacemounger to see where you space is being used. there shouldnt be that much "junk" (read: temp files, temp internet files etc) clogging up your system unless a program isnt clearing them down after use properly.
 
Something else you may not have thought about is simply installing a bigger hard disk. They are very cheap nowadays. You have several options....
1. Clone your existing drive onto a USB disk or if you can get another disk in your machine just clone it to that with ghost or acorns or any of the other programs.
Remove the old disk and then boot into the new one which will have more space in it. You can then expand the current partitions using a number of tools of the built in ones if you have win7

2. Backup your drive using any number of tools, then recover onto a newer big one and again expand the partitions

3. Use windirstat which is free, or get a trial version of treesizepro to see which folders are using all your space. Then deal with these as required

4. Compress folders ( last resort) as this will make them smaller but will take more CPU when using files etc as the CPU has to uncompressed them

Feel free to Im me and I can get a session to your pc and give you some help
 
If you're on a Mac download something called Monolingual. It removes all the language files from programs that you'll never want or need. I think when I first ran it it cleared out something like 12GB. I'm sure there's a windows equivalent available too!
 
neil_g said:
id download a program called spacemounger to see where you space is being used. there shouldnt be that much "junk" (read: temp files, temp internet files etc) clogging up your system unless a program isnt clearing them down after use properly.
Click to expand...
mmm, not sure with where its all gone either, showing 38GB left from 287GB
with no photos? I've compressed the drive & also run Ccleaner...mark
 
mark richards said:
mmm, not sure with where its all gone either, showing 38GB left from 287GB
with no photos? I've compressed the drive & also run Ccleaner...mark
Click to expand...

a 320gb drive really is very small these days.

Are you working on a desktop or a laptop?

Please run spacemounger and see where your gigabytes are being used. You'll probably find 20gb of temporary files somewhere, and all those programs add up. "factory settings" won't help you in any way
 
If it's windows 7 & running stable then delete the system restore points, should give you a nice boost :)
 
A fantastic app is WinDirStat. It gives a graphical representation of all the used space and allows you easily to drill down and look for problem folders and files.

I ran this and found that 200GB+ was still allocated to System Restore even though it was turned off ! And this was on a non OS disk...
 
What's wrong with

cd /cygdrive/c; du -s * ?

to find out what's taking the disk space ;) :D
 
Spacemounger is horrible! Old underdeveloped and under featured. Terrible interface too
Much better option is tree size pro or windirstat. Tree size is the best but after the initial trial period you are supposed to pay for it.
 
objohn said:
Spacemounger is horrible! Old underdeveloped and under featured. Terrible interface too
Much better option is tree size pro or windirstat. Tree size is the best but after the initial trial period you are supposed to pay for it.
Click to expand...

it serves a purpose.. all i care about is seeing what is using the largest block of data the quickets.
 
True it does serve a purpose I suppose, but I prefer to be served by a beautiful model rather than attilla the Hun if the food is the same!
 
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