Free space on hard disks

andygb

I have noticed that the PC is struggling a bit at the moment, and wondered if I should save a lot of my photos/RAW/Tiff files elsewhere on a portable disk/CD's to free up space, then delete from my PC?

The amount of space I have left is:

Drive C - 179GB free out of 455GB

Drive D (factory image?) - .99GB free out of 9GB

I am running Windows 7 with a 2.9Gh processor and 3GB of RAM

Would I be better off doing a defrag or adding more RAM instead?
I also find that running Adobe elements (photoshop) slows things down to a crawl, but that is one of the most essential programmes which I use at the moment.

kwikbreaks

The factory image is only used to restore to factory defaults so you can ignore that.

179GB free on the C drive should be plenty and won't be slowing you down.

Running defrag costs nothing but in my own experience achieves nothing either but there's no harm trying.

If you are running 32bit Windows you are close to maximum ram already. 3GB should be plenty for normal use anyway unless you have something that is memory intensive. Task Manager / Resource Manager should give you an idea of memory use.

Maybe just using CCleaner to get shot of junk files will help - it costs nothing to try it.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

struggling at start up as in slow start up waiting times or ingeneral its gotten slower.


allot of people don't realize that if you have a million and 1 desktop icons, allot of start up programs like avast, adobe, mobo uitlities,wifi utilities bloutooth ultilities, windupdate, NVidia control panel, audio managers, printer utilities, windows has to try and load these form when its started, couple that with trying to render allot of icons and destop, and basic winows start up proceedures it can bog it down.


I use msconfig to prevent most these starting up.

aerostar

andygb wrote: »

wondered if I should save a lot of my photos/RAW/Tiff files elsewhere on a portable disk/CD's to free up space, then delete from my PC?

.

You should have backed up ALL your photographs and docs etc. by now !!! anything mechanical or otherwise will fail at some time, and will always be at the wrong moment ! so you could have lost the lot by now.

If you want to be reasonably fireproof a copy on DVD and external disc would be good insurance, at the moment you have no insurance,

System

Hi

Backup everything important.

I am inclined to set the windows swap file as fixed size.

Also I use some little progs from SYSINTERNALS. pagedfrg.exe regjump.exe and regdevnull.exe.

I defrag, which helps and I do use CCleaner.

I also use the command line and type c:\> del *.tmp /s which cleans out a bit of stuff.

Jivesinger

johndough wrote: »

Also I use some little progs from SYSINTERNALS. pagedfrg.exe regjump.exe and regdevnull.exe.

Pagedefrag is only for Windows XP (and, I guess, Windows Server 2003).

I really wouldn't use it on Windows 7 which the OP has.

andygb

Sorry for not replying earlier.
I am running the 64 bit version of Windows 7, and it is usually only on startup that it is slow.
Over the last few months, quite a few icons have been stored on the desktop (by my OH so she can find them quickly) - about 20 folders. Would I be better off moving them to documents?

davisc02

Try adding more memory, remove unwanted programs from add/remove programs, type msconfig at the "Search Program and files box in the left hand bottom corner and stop applications you don't need starting up....basically follow some of the steps below...BACKUP FIRST!!!!

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/optimize-windows-better-performance#optimize-windows-better-performance=windows-7

Big_Graeme

Click run and type msconfig, click on the start tab and have a look what is running at startup, you'll need your AV running and any driver/apps to control sound or touchpad but all the crap like iTunes and anything Adobe can be disabled right away.

wongataa

kwikbreaks wrote: »

Running defrag costs nothing but in my own experience achieves nothing either but there's no harm trying.

Running a defrag is pointless on Win7 as it does it automatically for you in the background, unless you turn that function off.