Laptop help please....

clayton16749

I don't know a great deal about technology, but my laptop appears to be malfunctioning.


It's getting on a bit now, around 5 years old.


When I open the 'computer' tab which displays disc drives, other devices and hard drive it appears there are two separate hard drives. One has around 300 gb, much of which is free space.


The other which seems to be the main/default drive that the computer saves everything onto, has 60 gb, which after 5 years of saving photos, documents etc on is getting full.


I've been trying to move files from the full-ish drive to the one we haven't used and I've been doing this occasionally for the past few months.


However, for the last couple of days the free space on the default hard drive just seems to be going down after general web browsing.


I moved a large 6 gb file from the default drive the other day and it had 6.43 gb free. Since then the laptop has only been used lightly and suddenly the free space is down to 2gb!!


How can this be happening and how do I stop it?


Thanks.

bsod

install ccleaner to fully delete deleted files, temporary files and web history, then check how much space system restore is using (for windows 7 see the slider under create restore point, highlight c:, configure)

What are you doing about backups?

In future, if you save all your data to the 300GB partition rather than c;, then backup both partitions and any system recovery partitions to a usb drive, use ccleaner to maintain some free space on c:, keep an eye on how much space system restore is using (you can set a limit), and it should last another 5 years easily - if it ever starts to feel old and tired, backup, then re-install windows to the c: drive.

clayton16749

bsod wrote: »

install ccleaner to fully delete deleted files, temporary files and web history, then check how much space system restore is using (for windows 7 see the slider under create restore point, highlight c:, configure)

What are you doing about backups?

In future, if you save all your data to the 300GB partition rather than c;, then backup both partitions and any system recovery partitions to a usb drive, use ccleaner to maintain some free space on c:, keep an eye on how much space system restore is using (you can set a limit), and it should last another 5 years easily - if it ever starts to feel old and tired, backup, then re-install windows to the c: drive.

Thanks for that really useful advice, I've been on holiday so only just been able to do this. I backed all my files up on an external drive, then used ccleaner - it's freed up loads of space on the laptop - job done!

bsod

It's not clear what you did, if you've actually moved data to an external drive, and it's no no longer on the internal drive, (as many people do), that's no use as a backup, and the windows installation isn't backed up either.

grumpycrab

clayton16749 wrote: »

appears there are two separate hard drives.

Or perhaps 2 separate "logical" drives on one physical disk, in which case...merge them to create one big drive.

To check this, Start and type diskmgmt.msc (in the search box) and run the program. In the lower half of the window that comes up it will tell you how many physical disks your have (and how each has been "carved up"). Tell us what you find.

Fightsback

Alternatively you can move your personal folders to the D drive this way:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-move-windows-7-personal-folders-my-documents-another-drive.htm

clayton16749

Bsod - yes, I've backed up to an external hard drive and all of the files remaining on the laptop have been transferred to the d drive. I then ran ccleaner and it's freed the c drive up to about 12gb of remaining free space (out of 60gb). Not sure what's taking up the 48 gb but I no longer have the issue of the memory constantly decreasing during normal use of the laptop.

bsod

Wording still not clear, if the answer to my question was yes, it isn't a backup, but nevermind. Explorer and many utilities can be used to find out what's using what, windows shouldn't take up much more than 20gb.