Question: Clogged hard drive. Help!!!!

[Foxfyre]

For what he's doing he could get new computer, monitor, mouse and keyboard for under $400 or a fairly good computer with good graphics for the same price if he doesn't need a new monitor, keyboard or mouse.

Yes. Even my new HP pavilion notebook with 17" screen and all the bells and whistles was less than $500 on sale.

BTW, tell him sorry about the long hours of removing temp files. I could have sworn that would have fixed it.
That just gave me a thought, does he do back ups every once in a while? If so have him check where the back up destination folder is going. If he's backing up his computer onto the C: drive that would explain it, essentially replicating his C: drive over and over on the same drive.

I have thought about that too, but have no clue how to determine if that is the case.

 

[Synthaholic]

Cloud storage.

What is that. I am about as techie as a tree stump, so keep it simple please.

Pay no attention to the other posts in this thread and just listen to me:

Download and install CCleaner (rated 'Spectacular'). Analyze/Run the cleaner. If you don't want it to delete your stored passwords and sessions, uncheck those two for your particular browser.

Go to the registry section. Analyze, then delete the bad entries it finds. Backup the current registry, as it offers to do in a popup, when you click 'Fix'.

Download and install Advanced System Care (rated 'Spectacular'). Run it's various tools to get your system running at peak.


Download and install WinDirStat (rated 'Spectacular'). This will be the best help in determining what is taking up so much space. After running it, it will produce a clickable graphic like this, which visually shows you all of your files, and their size:

Clicking any box will show you what that file is, in the directory above. The bigger the box, the larger the file. In this example, that orange file is huge. This will also help you find out that, for example, the game you have installed, or the home architect program you have installed, is taking up 20 Gigs, etc. It helps you make an informed decision as to whether you want to keep that on your computer, or remove it.

Good luck!

 

[Synthaholic]

The data intensive files are his pictures, along with all not currently being used saved documents, etc, you need to copy them to another media be it a back up hard drive, CD/DVD, thumb drive or online storage (the cloud).
How old is the computer? Does it have USB ports? How many and are they being used?

For your solution I'd recommend a back up external hard drive, as long as you have a USB port to connect it to. That way you can move all his files off the primary and free up tons of space. He can even set it up so that of his documents, picts, etc are saved to that drive.

You can get a 500 GB Seagate hard drive on amazon for about $70 shipped or a 1 TB drive (double the storage capacity) for around $100 shipped though I doubt you need anything that big.

The cheap way to go is get a 32 GB thumb drive (AKA flash drive) for around $25 and just copy all his docs to that. The drawback is if you run out of space on the thumb drive ya have to buy another one, then another, etc, plus they're small so they're easily misplaced. Labeling what's on them is also a bitch because of they're size, (think micro etching).

We have all our files backed up on an external hard drive, but when we aren't savvy enough to know which folders are systems folders the computer can't do without and which can be safely moved, it is a risky thing for us to take any off his computer. (Currently his documents files including photos are taking up less than 2 gigs of space. I need to know what is taking up the other 78 gigs.)

I still don't know how any windows os would require 70+ gb worth of system files...

It wouldn't be system files, it would be installed programs. A program like a greeting card maker will install gigs and gigs worth of sample artwork for you to choose when making your designs.

Those type of programs are very storage-intensive.

 

[Ringel05]

Cloud storage.

What is that. I am about as techie as a tree stump, so keep it simple please.

Pay no attention to the other posts in this thread and just listen to me:

Download and install CCleaner (rated 'Spectacular'). Analyze/Run the cleaner. If you don't want it to delete your stored passwords and sessions, uncheck those two for your particular browser.

Go to the registry section. Analyze, then delete the bad entries it finds. Backup the current registry, as it offers to do in a popup, when you click 'Fix'.

Download and install Advanced System Care (rated 'Spectacular'). Run it's various tools to get your system running at peak.


Download and install WinDirStat (rated 'Spectacular'). This will be the best help in determining what is taking up so much space. After running it, it will produce a clickable graphic like this, which visually shows you all of your files, and their size:

Clicking any box will show you what that file is, in the directory above. The bigger the box, the larger the file. In this example, that orange file is huge. This will also help you find out that, for example, the game you have installed, or the home architect program you have installed, is taking up 20 Gigs, etc. It helps you make an informed decision as to whether you want to keep that on your computer, or remove it.

Good luck!

Download and install........ on a full hard drive..........

 

[Trajan]

Okay, Hombre's computer is an older computer that we had built. He only uses it for web surfing, e-mail, playing internet games, Face Book, managing his duties as chair of his HS reunin committee, and geneology.

It has an 80 gig harddrive which is small this day and age but should be plenty large for what he does with the computer.

As of this morning the harddrive was full--79+ gigs.

His my documents folder is at 9 gigs due to all the photos he has in it.

The Windows folder is at 55+ gigs which seems really high.

What do I do?

Western Digital My Passport 500 GB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - WDBKXH5000ABK-NESN (Black)
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Passport-Portable-Drive/dp/B006Y5UV4U/ref=sr_1_sc_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1339717245&sr=1-3-spell&keywords=solid+sate+external+hardrives]Amazon.com: Western Digital My Passport 500 GB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - WDBKXH5000ABK-NESN (Black): Electronics[/ame]


uber simple, just plug it in, and go. all you will ever ever need. I have 2 250 GB ext HD's, one for work one for personal stuff, you can run games from it too etc etc etc ....

 

[Synthaholic]

What is that. I am about as techie as a tree stump, so keep it simple please.

Pay no attention to the other posts in this thread and just listen to me:

Download and install CCleaner (rated 'Spectacular'). Analyze/Run the cleaner. If you don't want it to delete your stored passwords and sessions, uncheck those two for your particular browser.

Go to the registry section. Analyze, then delete the bad entries it finds. Backup the current registry, as it offers to do in a popup, when you click 'Fix'.

Download and install Advanced System Care (rated 'Spectacular'). Run it's various tools to get your system running at peak.


Download and install WinDirStat (rated 'Spectacular'). This will be the best help in determining what is taking up so much space. After running it, it will produce a clickable graphic like this, which visually shows you all of your files, and their size:

Clicking any box will show you what that file is, in the directory above. The bigger the box, the larger the file. In this example, that orange file is huge. This will also help you find out that, for example, the game you have installed, or the home architect program you have installed, is taking up 20 Gigs, etc. It helps you make an informed decision as to whether you want to keep that on your computer, or remove it.

Good luck!

Download and install........ on a full hard drive..........

You can always make a little room by burning a DVD.

 

[Foxfyre]

Right. He has no room to download much of anything. I have already checked the size of every file and folder in Windows and none are taking up as much as a gig, yet all together I suppose they could add up to the 55 gigs there. But he doesn't have any more games or programs installed on his computer than I do, yet my Windows is only using 17 gigs of space. So I'm thinking the problem is in there.

Is it safe to delete the KB files? There are a gazillion of those from all the updates.

 

[Ringel05]

Pay no attention to the other posts in this thread and just listen to me:

Download and install CCleaner (rated 'Spectacular'). Analyze/Run the cleaner. If you don't want it to delete your stored passwords and sessions, uncheck those two for your particular browser.

Go to the registry section. Analyze, then delete the bad entries it finds. Backup the current registry, as it offers to do in a popup, when you click 'Fix'.

Download and install Advanced System Care (rated 'Spectacular'). Run it's various tools to get your system running at peak.


Download and install WinDirStat (rated 'Spectacular'). This will be the best help in determining what is taking up so much space. After running it, it will produce a clickable graphic like this, which visually shows you all of your files, and their size:

Clicking any box will show you what that file is, in the directory above. The bigger the box, the larger the file. In this example, that orange file is huge. This will also help you find out that, for example, the game you have installed, or the home architect program you have installed, is taking up 20 Gigs, etc. It helps you make an informed decision as to whether you want to keep that on your computer, or remove it.

Good luck!

Download and install........ on a full hard drive..........

You can always make a little room by burning a DVD.

Apparently ya haven't read through the thread, it's not clearing up enough space, there's another problem at play here.

 

[Foxfyre]

Okay, Hombre's computer is an older computer that we had built. He only uses it for web surfing, e-mail, playing internet games, Face Book, managing his duties as chair of his HS reunin committee, and geneology.

It has an 80 gig harddrive which is small this day and age but should be plenty large for what he does with the computer.

As of this morning the harddrive was full--79+ gigs.

His my documents folder is at 9 gigs due to all the photos he has in it.

The Windows folder is at 55+ gigs which seems really high.

What do I do?

Western Digital My Passport 500 GB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - WDBKXH5000ABK-NESN (Black)
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Passport-Portable-Drive/dp/B006Y5UV4U/ref=sr_1_sc_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1339717245&sr=1-3-spell&keywords=solid+sate+external+hardrives]Amazon.com: Western Digital My Passport 500 GB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - WDBKXH5000ABK-NESN (Black): Electronics[/ame]


uber simple, just plug it in, and go. all you will ever ever need. I have 2 250 GB ext HD's, one for work one for personal stuff, you can run games from it too etc etc etc ....

Have thought about that but I think he would be frustrated switching between the drives. Thisi is not a technie guy.

 

[Ringel05]

Right. He has no room to download much of anything. I have already checked the size of every file and folder in Windows and none are taking up as much as a gig, yet all together I suppose they could add up to the 55 gigs there. But he doesn't have any more games or programs installed on his computer than I do, yet my Windows is only using 17 gigs of space. So I'm thinking the problem is in there.

Is it safe to delete the KB files? There are a gazillion of those from all the updates.

How to Delete KB Files From a Hard Drive | eHow.com

 

[Trajan]

Okay, Hombre's computer is an older computer that we had built. He only uses it for web surfing, e-mail, playing internet games, Face Book, managing his duties as chair of his HS reunin committee, and geneology.

It has an 80 gig harddrive which is small this day and age but should be plenty large for what he does with the computer.

As of this morning the harddrive was full--79+ gigs.

His my documents folder is at 9 gigs due to all the photos he has in it.

The Windows folder is at 55+ gigs which seems really high.

What do I do?

Western Digital My Passport 500 GB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - WDBKXH5000ABK-NESN (Black)
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Passport-Portable-Drive/dp/B006Y5UV4U/ref=sr_1_sc_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1339717245&sr=1-3-spell&keywords=solid+sate+external+hardrives]Amazon.com: Western Digital My Passport 500 GB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - WDBKXH5000ABK-NESN (Black): Electronics[/ame]


uber simple, just plug it in, and go. all you will ever ever need. I have 2 250 GB ext HD's, one for work one for personal stuff, you can run games from it too etc etc etc ....

Have thought about that but I think he would be frustrated switching between the drives. Thisi is not a technie guy.

its select, drag and drop hon. select start, select explore and away you go.

 

[Foxfyre]

Western Digital My Passport 500 GB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - WDBKXH5000ABK-NESN (Black)
Amazon.com: Western Digital My Passport 500 GB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive - WDBKXH5000ABK-NESN (Black): Electronics


uber simple, just plug it in, and go. all you will ever ever need. I have 2 250 GB ext HD's, one for work one for personal stuff, you can run games from it too etc etc etc ....

Have thought about that but I think he would be frustrated switching between the drives. Thisi is not a technie guy.

its select, drag and drop hon. select start, select explore and away you go.

I know that. You know that. I have stuff stored on an external drive that I go get from time to time so for me its no big deal. You have to understand how difficult (and scary)something like that is for him though.

 

[Trajan]

Have thought about that but I think he would be frustrated switching between the drives. Thisi is not a technie guy.

its select, drag and drop hon. select start, select explore and away you go.

I know that. You know that. I have stuff stored on an external drive that I go get from time to time so for me its no big deal. You have to understand how difficult (and scary)something like that is for him though.

I hear you, I would suggest some gentle tutorials

 

[Ringel05]

Yes. Even my new HP pavilion notebook with 17" screen and all the bells and whistles was less than $500 on sale.

BTW, tell him sorry about the long hours of removing temp files. I could have sworn that would have fixed it.
That just gave me a thought, does he do back ups every once in a while? If so have him check where the back up destination folder is going. If he's backing up his computer onto the C: drive that would explain it, essentially replicating his C: drive over and over on the same drive.

I have thought about that too, but have no clue how to determine if that is the case.

Open the backup utility and it should tell you what the default destination drive is. If the destination starts with a C: then that's the problem, if it starts with a D: (or any other drive that's not C then we'll have to look elsewhere.

 

[PeteEU]

How To Delete Temporary Files in Windows XP

Do this and you delete your temp folder content. I bet that should help.

 

[Ringel05]

How To Delete Temporary Files in Windows XP

Do this and you delete your temp folder content. I bet that should help.

Your a bit late to the game, they tried that yesterday, didn't free up much space. I'm beginning to think he's been putting his backups on the C: drive not the external D: drive. C probably came up as the default and he went with it, I've seen it happen before, almost did it myself the first time I did a backup.

 

[Douger]

We have all our files backed up on an external hard drive, but when we aren't savvy enough to know which folders are systems folders the computer can't do without and which can be safely moved, it is a risky thing for us to take any off his computer. (Currently his documents files including photos are taking up less than 2 gigs of space. I need to know what is taking up the other 78 gigs.)

I still don't know how any windows os would require 70+ gb worth of system files...

It wouldn't be system files, it would be installed programs. A program like a greeting card maker will install gigs and gigs worth of sample artwork for you to choose when making your designs.

Those type of programs are very storage-intensive.

OK. Boot up, go to Add/Remove programs ( or however the idiots at M$refer to them this week) and start removing the unneeded shit.
THEN figure out where the repeat backups are stored.

 

[Douger]

OK. Microshaft uses a .bkf extension for those files.
Go kill some of them. They appear to be dated as in Backup 03-06-09.bkf backed up onzxxzxxx.
Go wipe some out. The earliest, obviously.
Search for files ( whole computer) .bkf
Keep in mind I havent been on Winbloze in years so I don't know what sort of mess they have as a search tool.

 

[Foxfyre]

BTW, tell him sorry about the long hours of removing temp files. I could have sworn that would have fixed it.
That just gave me a thought, does he do back ups every once in a while? If so have him check where the back up destination folder is going. If he's backing up his computer onto the C: drive that would explain it, essentially replicating his C: drive over and over on the same drive.

I have thought about that too, but have no clue how to determine if that is the case.

Open the backup utility and it should tell you what the default destination drive is. If the destination starts with a C: then that's the problem, if it starts with a D: (or any other drive that's not C then we'll have to look elsewhere.

Okay I'm embarrassed to ask, but how do I open up the backup utility? I mean where do I find that?

 

[Synthaholic]

Right. He has no room to download much of anything. I have already checked the size of every file and folder in Windows and none are taking up as much as a gig, yet all together I suppose they could add up to the 55 gigs there. But he doesn't have any more games or programs installed on his computer than I do, yet my Windows is only using 17 gigs of space. So I'm thinking the problem is in there.

Is it safe to delete the KB files? There are a gazillion of those from all the updates.

As I said, you could free up 4 gigs by burning a DVD. That would let you install these programs.

But I think I may have another reason for your huge Windows install: excessive System Restore points.

In your run box (Win + R) type cleanmgr and run it.

Be patient. It may take a bit to delete all your old restore points - each one is very large.