how do i free up my disc space?

blaque*angel · 6 October 2009 at 7:17PM

my laptop is saying low disc space.

(do i just delete unwanted items?)

kind regards

-TangleFoot- · 6 October 2009 at 7:25PM

What operating system do you have?

blaque*angel · 6 October 2009 at 8:18PM

windows vista

macman · 6 October 2009 at 8:54PM

Delete all unwanted data and programs, run disk clean up and defrag (though Vista should be doing the latter automatically). Then check how much free space you have. How big is your hard drive? You need approx 15% free space for it to run properly. If the above doesn't give you that much space then you need to move off data (especially pictures and videos), either back up to DVD, or buy an external USB hard drive and move data onto that.

Mike_J · 6 October 2009 at 9:41PM

If you want to keep photos on your hard drive try to resize them. I download a piece of software and resized by pictures taken on a 12Mp camera down to 1000 x 700 ish and this freed up 3Gb of space. Obviously depends on how many piccies you have

davester · 6 October 2009 at 9:49PM

How big is your Hard drive in total? Are you dumping everything on the C drive and have nothing on another partition. Might be you need to do some house keeping, delete some files or backup, move Music and photos to a separate partition (if you have one).

GunJack · 6 October 2009 at 10:49PM

Vista is an absolute s0d for this....I bet you'll find many GB of space taken up with old restore points, shadow copies,etc...

How to get rid:-

1. Go to Computer, right-click on your HDD and select Properties. Note how much free/used space it has.

2. Select Disk Cleanup, let it calculate (may take a good few minutes), then select the More Options tab (still on the Disk Cleanup window) and click to clean up old restore points/backup copies/shadow copies). THIS WILL PROBABLY TAKE A GOOD WHILE, ESPECIALLY IF YOU'VE NEVER DONE IT BEFORE, so be patient.

3. Confirm you want to delete all these files, and click OK to clean up.

Note how much free/used you have now

You should find that this operation has removed LOTS of GB of old crappy files, and should then give you a bit more leeway when you start going through your pics, music and other files.

For reference, on my Vista lappy, I only use it for web and limited Office functions (use the desktop for everything else, inc. e-mail). I clean out as per the above twice a week maybe.... and even on such limited use, I usually clear 3-5 GB each time. Vista creates way too many restore points and backup images etc., and they just clog up your HDD

Good Luck and let us see the before and after figures

Annabelle09 · 7 October 2009 at 8:13PM

blaque*angel wrote: »

windows vista

how you divided your disk space?

vernall · 7 October 2009 at 9:39PM

GunJack wrote: »

Vista is an absolute s0d for this....I bet you'll find many GB of space taken up with old restore points, shadow copies,etc...

How to get rid:-

1. Go to Computer, right-click on your HDD and select Properties. Note how much free/used space it has.

2. Select Disk Cleanup, let it calculate (may take a good few minutes), then select the More Options tab (still on the Disk Cleanup window) and click to clean up old restore points/backup copies/shadow copies). THIS WILL PROBABLY TAKE A GOOD WHILE, ESPECIALLY IF YOU'VE NEVER DONE IT BEFORE, so be patient.

3. Confirm you want to delete all these files, and click OK to clean up.

Note how much free/used you have now

You should find that this operation has removed LOTS of GB of old crappy files, and should then give you a bit more leeway when you start going through your pics, music and other files.

For reference, on my Vista lappy, I only use it for web and limited Office functions (use the desktop for everything else, inc. e-mail). I clean out as per the above twice a week maybe.... and even on such limited use, I usually clear 3-5 GB each time. Vista creates way too many restore points and backup images etc., and they just clog up your HDD

Good Luck and let us see the before and after figures

just tried the clean up old restore points as i have NEVER done this,it gave me back over 12GB of memory...WOW

ih8stress · 8 October 2009 at 1:16AM

GunJack wrote: »

Vista is an absolute s0d for this....I bet you'll find many GB of space taken up with old restore points, shadow copies,etc...

How to get rid:-

1. Go to Computer, right-click on your HDD and select Properties. Note how much free/used space it has.

2. Select Disk Cleanup, let it calculate (may take a good few minutes), then select the More Options tab (still on the Disk Cleanup window) and click to clean up old restore points/backup copies/shadow copies). THIS WILL PROBABLY TAKE A GOOD WHILE, ESPECIALLY IF YOU'VE NEVER DONE IT BEFORE, so be patient.

3. Confirm you want to delete all these files, and click OK to clean up.

Note how much free/used you have now

You should find that this operation has removed LOTS of GB of old crappy files, and should then give you a bit more leeway when you start going through your pics, music and other files.

For reference, on my Vista lappy, I only use it for web and limited Office functions (use the desktop for everything else, inc. e-mail). I clean out as per the above twice a week maybe.... and even on such limited use, I usually clear 3-5 GB each time. Vista creates way too many restore points and backup images etc., and they just clog up your HDD

Good Luck and let us see the before and after figures

I think I need to do this as well. Just want to check first:

Do I click on the C Drive: Local Disk,
D Drive: Recovery
or both?

Also, if I click to clean up old restore points/backup copies/shadow copies, does this get rid of the LAST restore point, as I think I've read on here somewhere you need to keep that one?

Thanks.

ih8stress · 8 October 2009 at 12:05PM

bumping, please

how do i free up my disc space?

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