Disk Space

melimel

I have an Acer Aspire 7520 which is a pretty basic laptop but I'm a fairly basic user... I have started to get regular messages telling me I am low on disk space but short of buying a new laptop what are my best options? I like to store music and photos as well as a few kids games.
I wondered if it would be as simple as buying an external harddrive and transferring stuff or is there some kit I can buy to increase space? If so what would be my best options.
Happy to supply further info as long as not too technical!!
Thanks a lot

JasX

Some initial options:

1-Buy a USB hard drive and dump it on that
2-Buy a bigger internal 2.5" laptop hard drive and put it inside your laptop (will replace your existing drive, everything will need to be reinstalled including windows -likely to be fiddly)
3-Buy some form of network attached storage and store everythign on a drive that sits on your wireless network somewhere (a little fiddly to setup and more expensive (+£60ish over hard drive cost) but will then allow you to access your stuff from any PC/other device (eg a media streaming box) on your wireless network.

JJ_Egan

Also check that the space is being used by files that you actually want to keep.

jje

Bambi234

there are several things that you can do to try and increase space and all apart from the last one will not cost you anything. (mind you you do not say which operating system you are running)

1. Make sure that you have totally emptied your recycle bin.
2. Delete all apart from the most recent restore point.
3. in the start menu of your operating system there is something called disk cleanup. Use that.
4. Go to the Control Panel and then remove programs icon and as it says remove any programs that you do not use (you would be surprised how many people have programs on their system that they haven't used for ages)
5. If after doing all of this you could go to Amazon Hard Drive Its a good drive that I use daily

DatabaseError

download ccleaner and run it. clearing out all the junk might make a significant impact

KxMx

Use the disk defragmenter too. And if you have BBC i Player, do a file and folder search for bbc, as the i player tends to store all deleted programs in the repository. You can delete any old programs from here withough risk. Clicking on the image file in each folder is the best way of showing what it is.

Go to start, settings, control panel, add remove programs to see if there is anything you can delete. And do go through your music and pictures and dump any you don't want.

closed

use the d: drive?

right click on all your drives, to see how much space is available, then use windirstat to find out where it's gone.

if data is important, transfer to external usb isn't wise, but copying is

defrag doesn't clear up space.

spud17

closed wrote: »

use the d: drive?

I'd go with the above, many (all?) the Acers I've come across seem to have an empty drive, but it's never explained how to use it.

buglawton

A great way to analyse your wasted space - assuming you already ran ccleaner - is http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/

melimel

Bambi234 wrote: »

there are several things that you can do to try and increase space and all apart from the last one will not cost you anything. (mind you you do not say which operating system you are running)

1. Make sure that you have totally emptied your recycle bin.
2. Delete all apart from the most recent restore point.
3. in the start menu of your operating system there is something called disk cleanup. Use that.
4. Go to the Control Panel and then remove programs icon and as it says remove any programs that you do not use (you would be surprised how many people have programs on their system that they haven't used for ages)
5. If after doing all of this you could go to Amazon Hard Drive Its a good drive that I use daily

Hi Sorry I've not been around to respond to all these suggestions. Operating system is windows vista.

1 - Done it
2 - Done it
3 - Regularly use cleanup as space so low I'm advised to - that's how I became aware of space issue
4 - Went through all programes - the ones left are the ones I haven't installed and not sure of how important they are

5 Might give this a go!!!

Thanks again

melimel

closed wrote: »

use the d: drive?

right click on all your drives, to see how much space is available, then use windirstat to find out where it's gone.

if data is important, transfer to external usb isn't wise, but copying is

defrag doesn't clear up space.

Ha!!!
I have 426MB space on the c drive which even I know is practically nothing.
The d drive is entirely empty. Can I use it? If so how?
Slightly unrelated - when I want to watch you tube clips or listen to music on spotify the clip or song usually stops part way through. Is this anything to do with the space or just the basic laptop?
Thanks