Making room on a hard drive?

AshleybAshleyb Registered Users Posts: 24 Big grins
edited October 14, 2010 in Digital Darkroom
I have all of my photos and my documents etc on my external hard drive and somehow my internal hard drive is maxed out on room.

What files can I delete off of my internal hard drive to make room? How do I know whats safe and not safe to remove?

Comments

  • angevin1angevin1 Registered Users Posts: 3,403 Major grins
    edited September 28, 2010
    Ashleyb wrote: »
    I have all of my photos and my documents etc on my external hard drive and somehow my internal hard drive is maxed out on room.

    What files can I delete off of my internal hard drive to make room? How do I know whats safe and not safe to remove?


    If you did not personally put them there yourself, they may well NOT BE safe!

    How big is your internal? Give more info, receive more help~thumb.gif
    tom wise
  • colourboxcolourbox Registered Users Posts: 2,095 Major grins
    edited September 28, 2010
    This is a difficult question without even knowing if you are on a Mac or Windows computer and how big your disk is.

    Hard drives are so large these days, they are usually filled up with large files like movies, music, or photos. Applications and system files usually don't pile up enough to fill a hard drive. So check your media/entertainment/photo folders first.

    Beware of spending hours winnowing out fonts, printer drivers, odd files, etc. Those often are very small and not worth your while to delete, and in some cases not safe.

    One method I use is to do a search for files larger than a certain amount, like files or folders larger than 100MB, and sort the results window with the largest files on top. I look at that list and say, do I need the files I see in the list that are so big?
  • angevin1angevin1 Registered Users Posts: 3,403 Major grins
    edited September 28, 2010
    colourbox wrote: »
    One method I use is to do a search for files larger than a certain amount, like files or folders larger than 100MB, and sort the results window with the largest files on top. I look at that list and say, do I need the files I see in the list that are so big?


    #1 Suggestion!!thumb.gif
    tom wise
  • AshleybAshleyb Registered Users Posts: 24 Big grins
    edited September 28, 2010
    Ok, sorry.

    My internal is only 220gb. It is a Dell inspiron 1525 laptop. Windows, obviously.

    My external is 1 tb.

    Thanks for the tip on searching for large files. I am going to give this a shot! Good tip.

    Thank you both for your help!
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,370 moderator
    edited September 28, 2010
    On Windows, you might want to run the Disk Cleanup utility. It can be found under Accessories... System Tools. It will look for temporary files that can be removed.

    Do you have programs installed that you don't use? If you do, uninstall them.

    --- Denise
    https://www.denisegoldberg.com ... https://denise.smugmug.com

    Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
  • ian408ian408 Administrators Posts: 21,938 moderator
    edited September 28, 2010
    Windows also makes a bunch of log files that can go too. I'd look for the disk cleaner utility called Ccleaner and give that a twirl.

    I would also make sure the trash is empty too :)
    Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
  • Herr_RausHerr_Raus Registered Users Posts: 8 Beginner grinner
    edited October 14, 2010
    Well it's always nice to know where your disk space is going to. I suggest you install the following small application:

    http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/

    After you run that you'll see where all the big files are.. Maybe after that's done you can post the top 10 directories and we can help some more.
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