HD full, where to look

Let'sgoflying!

Let'sgoflying!

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Feb 23, 2005
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Dave Taylor
I have one computer that has a full HD, wondering how to decide which things need to go.
Need help identifying what is what.
A defrag revealed the problem.
Looking at c: drive, its not apparent what is taking all the space.
ie if I can detmn its movies or pics or audiobooks, etc maybe I can debulk there....but I'm not sure how to tell what is taking up all the room
Tks.
 
Have you emptied your Recycle Bin recently?
 
And adding a second hard drive (I assume we're not talking laptop here) is easy. Bingo, another terabyte of space. :D
 
yes just emptied Recycle bin, it was full - checking results
adding another HD....can you do so with a laptop? I mean, add one to the existing HD IBMthinkpad
Trying to avoid the whole reinstall thingy
 
Here are the results. I am more baffled than ever.
The HD is 90gb but the use does not add up to near that.
AND Im not sure what to cut to get some space back
Yeah I could remove my backup off that puter but that's <1/10th of the HD.
We are wondering about her kindlebooks, but I actually don't see them.
 

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Let'sgoflying! said:
yes just emptied Recycle bin, it was full - checking results
adding another HD....can you do so with a laptop? I mean, add one to the existing HD IBMthinkpad
Trying to avoid the whole reinstall thingy
Click to expand...

Depends on which one you have. I know on my Lenovo Think Pad I can simply install a second hard drive.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Here are the results. I am more baffled than ever.
The HD is 90gb but the use does not add up to near that.
AND Im not sure what to cut to get some space back
Yeah I could remove my backup off that puter but that's <1/10th of the HD.
We are wondering about her kindlebooks, but I actually don't see them.
Click to expand...

Hiya Dave,

The trick with WinDirStat is to expand the tree and see what's going on in there.

You've got a huge Documents and Settings folder.

Documents and Settings will have things such as your Desktop, My Documents, and possibly things you've downloaded. I use outlook, and my Email is stored in there. See if a folder name rings a bell, and if it is something you can safely remove.

40GB is a ton of stuff. I assume there are videos or large images floating around in there.

If you keep all of your Emails, you might be able to compact the email store.

Poke around, see what you don't need. :D
 
Thanks,
hey I am looking at just upgrading the HD. Is this do-able? (Pete, shutup, I won't break it) ;)
I see half tB HDs and a CMS transfer kit...
It claims to load the entire HD onto the new one, including OS, programs, files. Then you just pop the new one in and carry on.
Think this would work?
 
Try CCleaner to free up some space as a stopgap.

And yes, you can upgrade the hard drive on a laptop. You may not, however, be able to add a second drive. Not many laptops support two drives.

To upgrade, you simply buy a new, larger drive of the correct interface type (PATA or SATA) and clone the existing drive to the new one. This can be a little cumbersome on a laptop because you have to have an external adapter for the new drive, but it's still pretty easy.

Get a decent drive. A 5400 rpm drive will boost performance some compared to a 4200 rpm, but at the expense of battery life. A drive with 8 MB or 16 MB of cache memory will perform better than one with 2 MB or 4 MB, but at the expense of dollars. Brand-wise, I like Seagate, Samsung, and Western Digital, in that order. Others, I'm sure, will have their own opinions: Mine are based solely on my own experience.

There are several programs that you can use to clone a drive, but the only one I know of that will work under Windows is Casper. Most of the others have to be booted from a CD. This is no big deal on a desktop, but on a laptop you have to hope that the program recognizes the USB drive.

Or if none of this makes sense to you, just bring the laptop to a reputable local shop, and they can clone the drive for you.

-Rich
 
Just an FYI: Laptop hard drives are different than Desktop hard drives! Make sure you get the right one. A laptop hard drive is usually referred to as a 2.5" drive, whereas a desktop drive is a larger 3.5".

Check out newegg.com for some pretty solid deals on the hard drives, as well as some sort of external enclosure for the drive.
 
RJM62 said:
Try CCleaner to free up some space as a stopgap.

And yes, you can upgrade the hard drive on a laptop. You may not, however, be able to add a second drive. Not many laptops support two drives.

To upgrade, you simply buy a new, larger drive of the correct interface type (PATA or SATA) and clone the existing drive to the new one. This can be a little cumbersome on a laptop because you have to have an external adapter for the new drive, but it's still pretty easy.

Get a decent drive. A 5400 rpm drive will boost performance some compared to a 4200 rpm, but at the expense of battery life. A drive with 8 MB or 16 MB of cache memory will perform better than one with 2 MB or 4 MB, but at the expense of dollars. Brand-wise, I like Seagate, Samsung, and Western Digital, in that order. Others, I'm sure, will have their own opinions: Mine are based solely on my own experience.

There are several programs that you can use to clone a drive, but the only one I know of that will work under Windows is Casper. Most of the others have to be booted from a CD. This is no big deal on a desktop, but on a laptop you have to hope that the program recognizes the USB drive.

Or if none of this makes sense to you, just bring the laptop to a reputable local shop, and they can clone the drive for you.

-Rich
Click to expand...


Keane said:
Just an FYI: Laptop hard drives are different than Desktop hard drives! Make sure you get the right one. A laptop hard drive is usually referred to as a 2.5" drive, whereas a desktop drive is a larger 3.5".

Check out newegg.com for some pretty solid deals on the hard drives, as well as some sort of external enclosure for the drive.
Click to expand...


Both of the above are great ideas. Ccleaner to free up some space/clean up your registry, and Newegg for cheap quality hardware.
 
Another option, if you like, is to offload big files that you don't use often to an external drive. Two caveats apply, however:

Firstly, you should still clone the internal drive, in my opinion. Hard drives do fail, and hard drives that have been working harder tend to fail sooner. Buying an external drive and cloning it periodically makes recovery a snap if your system drive fails: You just swap the clone into the machine. (Casper has pulled my buttocks out of the fire on quite a few occasions.)

The more often you clone, the less you'll lose in terms of email, applications, settings, and so forth, which is one of the reasons I like Casper. Once the initial clone is made, refreshing it takes only a few minutes and doesn't require booting into a CD (it works from within Windows using the VCSS). That means that users are more likely to do it often. It also can be set up as a scheduled task or saved saved to the desktop as a one-click shortcut.

Secondly, if you choose external storage, be aware that external drives also fail. If you're going to use an external drive without additional backup, I suggest using two drives in a RAIDed enclosure using RAID 1 (mirroring). Quality, name-brand RAIDed enclosures (without the drives) can be had for around a hundred bucks with USB, Firewire, or eSata interfaces if you shop around. Network (NAS) versions are more costly, but act as mini-servers and allow access to the data from multiple computers.

However, there are events that can cause both drives in a RAID array to bite the dust simultaneously, such as a bad controller card or a serious power event. There are also the possibilities of malware infecting both drives simultaneously, of the drive being stolen or vandalized, or of it being destroyed in a fire, flood, etc. That's why I recommend to my clients that they also use online backup from a company like Mozy, FilesAnywhere, Box.net, or Carbonite.

I'm kind of a nut when it comes to backup, I admit...

-Rich
 
has there ever been a reported instance of an online backup service provider losing data to theft? (yet)
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
has there ever been a reported instance of an online backup service provider losing data to theft? (yet)
Click to expand...
My main problem with an online service is that it seems much more likely that they'll run out of money and go TU before my hard drive will!

Though the privacy/data theft issue is a close second!
 
Follow up report:
I bought a 500gB HD and a CMS transfer kit.
The tk was a flimsy but adequate case with two wires (power and transfer cable) that go into the computer. I inserted the new HD onto the tk board (it slides in) and slipped it all into the case, screwed it closed. Inserted the software CD into the computer and followed the prompts. It commanded attachment of the new HD tk to the computer. Soon it was transferring the entire contents of the laptop HD onto the new HD. Left it going all night although it did not take that long, I'm sure.
Shut down computer, unplugged, removed battery grounded hands to case, snapped old HD out, installed new HD. Put old HD into the case to be used as a backup external HD. Booted computer and prayed. It started right up and everything was just like before. The darned thing made a complete mirror of the old HD and it actually worked! (I had asked about doing this a couple of years ago and the answer was not possible.)
The only glitch which is not attributable to the tk was that Itunes is not thrilled and says we only have 2 transfers left of the purchased music.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
The only glitch which is not attributable to the tk was that Itunes is not thrilled and says we only have 2 transfers left of the purchased music.
Click to expand...
Dave,

This may be related to how iTunes manages rights. I know in the Mac world, you can have songs authorized on up to 5 computers. If I move a hard drive from one Mac to another, it knows I'm on a different machine by the built-in serial number all Macs have.

I think you may have triggered this by updating to the new drive. You might want to try putting the old drive back in and seeing if iTunes reports a different number. If so, you should be able to "Deauthorize" the machine with the original HD, then put the new HD back in, and then "Authorize" the "new" computer configuration, which will require you to enter your iTunes ID & password. That should save you one permission.

See this Apple KB note

Make sure you deauthorize your computer before you upgrade your RAM, hard disk or other system components, or reinstall Windows. If you do not deauthorize your computer before you upgrade these components, one computer may use multiple authorizations.
Click to expand...
 
Hi Dave.

I lost track of this thread, and just saw your post with the screenshot from windirstatinfo.

Are you sure you have a 90GB HDD ? If you do have a 90GB HDD, I bet you have a ~30GB partition of that physical drive setup as the "D: Drive". This is often done to split the operating system from the data storage. But, it appears that your Windows operating system is loaded on the C Drive (in the C:\WINDOWS directory).

If you go to 'Start->My Computer'. What does it show for your installed drives and their size ?





Let'sgoflying! said:
Here are the results. I am more baffled than ever.
The HD is 90gb but the use does not add up to near that.
AND Im not sure what to cut to get some space back
Yeah I could remove my backup off that puter but that's <1/10th of the HD.
We are wondering about her kindlebooks, but I actually don't see them.
Click to expand...
 

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Let'sgoflying! said:
Follow up report:
I bought a 500gB HD and a CMS transfer kit.
The tk was a flimsy but adequate case with two wires (power and transfer cable) that go into the computer. I inserted the new HD onto the tk board (it slides in) and slipped it all into the case, screwed it closed. Inserted the software CD into the computer and followed the prompts. It commanded attachment of the new HD tk to the computer. Soon it was transferring the entire contents of the laptop HD onto the new HD. Left it going all night although it did not take that long, I'm sure.
Shut down computer, unplugged, removed battery grounded hands to case, snapped old HD out, installed new HD. Put old HD into the case to be used as a backup external HD. Booted computer and prayed. It started right up and everything was just like before. The darned thing made a complete mirror of the old HD and it actually worked! (I had asked about doing this a couple of years ago and the answer was not possible.)
The only glitch which is not attributable to the tk was that Itunes is not thrilled and says we only have 2 transfers left of the purchased music.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I did that a couple of times on client computers before I knew how iTunes handled the issue of authorized computers. I don't use iTunes and didn't think a hard drive upgrade would botch the authorization, but it can and usually does. I should have mentioned that. Sorry.

The easiest fix is to put the old HD back in and deauthorize the computer. Another way is to call iTunes support and explain the situation, and depending on who answers, they may deauthorize the previous computer configuration for you.

-Rich
 
a quick googling shows the max hd available to be 80gb.
(t or f?)

If so, not sure this is a reasonable purchase.

PS what limits a computer's hd capacity?
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
a quick googling shows the max hd available to be 80gb.
(t or f?)

If so, not sure this is a reasonable purchase.

PS what limits a computer's hd capacity?
Click to expand...

Available for what? PATA drives at least up to 500 GB, and SATA drives of twice that capacity, are routinely in stock at MicroCenter.

As for limiting factors, this is a pretty comprehensive explanation.

-Rich
 
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