HARD DRIVE FULL

[STUMPY007]

I have a fairly old computer, unfortunately my hard drive is full.

Does anyone know what the best way to free up some space, i.e External Hard drive, compressing files etc.

Suggestions please

 

[Anonymous]

A 750GB external USB drive costs around £70 and is the quickest (and safest) way. I use these ones...

http://www.verbatim-europe.co.uk/en_1/productc_desktop-hard-drives_2498_0.html

 

[STUMPY007]

I assume it will work like my current hard drive.

I will still be able to access my itunes files and photo files at a click of the mouse??

 

[PJPro]

Go for one of these.

Plug it in a usb port and away you go. It's like a massive memory stick.

 

[professorhat]

STUMPY007:I assume it will work like my current hard drive.

I will still be able to access my itunes files and photo files at a click of the mouse??

Assuming you're using Windows, it will be presented as a new hard drive in My Computer e.g. if your current hard drive is called C: and you maybe have a CD/DVD drive called D:, then this new one will be called E:

If you want to move your iPhoto and iTunes files to it, you'll need to to do some re-jigging. Do a search on Google for "moving itunes library to external hard drive" and you'll find numerous articles and even videos to help you do it.

 

[nads]

a faily OLD PC! does it have USB 2.0 profile USB ports? or is it 1.1?

if 1.1 copying any data will take quite some time.

what about having a chat with your local PC shop and see if it is possible to fit an extra hard drive?

it does depend on what the "fairly old" PC is though.

 

[John Duncan]

yeah, if it's like the PC in my shed it might only have an 8gig hard drive. How big's the current drive, I like the idea of transferring everything to a new 500gig internal...

 

[idc]

professorhat:Assuming you're using Windows, it will be presented as a new hard drive in My Computer e.g. if your current hard drive is called C: and you maybe have a CD/DVD drive called D:, then this new one will be called E:

This is how my Western Digital USB hard drive works. When I plug it in it automatically switches on and calls itself E. I have a short cut to it on my desktop.

professorhat:If you want to move your iPhoto and iTunes files to it, you'll need to to do some re-jigging. Do a search on Google for "moving itunes library to external hard drive" and you'll find numerous articles and even videos to help you do it.

I have to this a lot because the hard drive on my PC is only 50gb and about 20 of that is taken up with stuff. So for phots and music I have them in folders and drag and drop between the the external drive and My Music and My Pictures. Drag and drop works quickly , leaves a copy and I have not had any issues. So when you get a new hard drive make a folder in it called itunes and then drag and drop all your music files into it. I do it in batches of about 5 files at a time. I only move the music files there, itnes remains on the computer. I then go into itunes and tell it where to locate the music on the hard drive. Do the same for pictures and anything else.

 

[nads]

Wow 8Gb.

I remember being very when i got my first PC in ï97 and it had a 2Gb hard drive. and then in 2001 when i got my second PC with a 160Gb HD.

Still got the 160 drive and it is in a case that has another 2T of hard drives!

 

[John Duncan]

Yeah, and that was me pushing the boat out - 512 meg ram and the fastest processor I could afford, which might have been a 1.66ghz. 1700 quid it cost me.

 

[professorhat]

I remember my Dad's first PC had a 20 MB hard drive - and that was huge!

 

[Anonymous]

nads:

I remember being very when i got my first PC in ï97 and it had a 2Gb hard drive. and then in 2001 when i got my second PC with a 160Gb HD.

Still got the 160 drive and it is in a case that has another 2T of hard drives!

showing my age - my first PC in '92 had a whopping 40Mb HDD, I used DR-DOS 6.0 which had a compression utility to 'double' the space. I then upgraded to a 340Mb drive at a cost of £300!!

re: OP try one of these, it takes IDE or SATA drives, can be networked if desirable and accessed remotely via FTP.

 

[professorhat]

rogueelement:re: OP try one of these, it takes IDE or SATA drives, can be networked if desirable and accessed remotely via FTP.

Worth noting this is just a caddy to allow disks to be accessed on the network etc. - you need to buy the actual hard disk which goes into it separately.

 

[Anonymous]

professorhat:

rogueelement:re: OP try one of these, it takes IDE or SATA drives, can be networked if desirable and accessed remotely via FTP.

Worth noting this is just a caddy to allow disks to be accessed on the network etc. - you need to buy the actual hard disk which goes into it separately.

= TRUE - I should have made that clear

 

[aliEnRIK]

Stumpy ~

You dont say how big your drive is but clearly an external hardrive would be of use to you (And can be had for around 50 quid for a good size these days. You could even buy a PCI USB2 compliant plugin for the computer to speed things up (If you need to)

As for what you have now ~

Uninstall anything you dont need. Backup what you can to disc (music, video, photo files etc)

Perform a DISC CLEANUP

Download CCLEANER (Make sure you click 'DOWNLOAD LATEST VERSION' ~ make sure YAHOO TOOLBAR is unticked on installation)
http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/
Run the CLEANER scan (UNTICK 'cookies')
Then run the REGISTRY scan (Backup the registry when it asks)

Install DEFRAGGLER

Defrag the drive with it (Better at freeing up space than the inbuilt one)

I wouldnt bother using any software to compress files as its too much hassle and rather pointless

 

[STUMPY007]

I am unsure what size my hdd is due to being at work. I believe it might be 80GB

I know that I cannot run a De-frag as there is not enough space.

I think that it is 80GB.

Have been looking at A Seagate Expansion 500GB desktop hard drive from Tesco @ 49 quid.

Any thoughts????

 

[John Duncan]

Buy two.

 

[idc]

Incidentally, any recommendations for a USB hard drive that will stand on its side and is silent when operational? Cheap would also be good.

 

[aliEnRIK]

STUMPY007:
I am unsure what size my hdd is due to being at work. I believe it might be 80GB

I know that I cannot run a De-frag as there is not enough space.

I think that it is 80GB.

Have been looking at A Seagate Expansion 500GB desktop hard drive from Tesco @ 49 quid.

Any thoughts????

If there truly isnt enough room then you MUST remove some items from it (As I said, backup what you can to disc)

Running on the hardrive limits will bring your computer to a crawl as it struggles to move things about (The hardrive is always in use wether you want it to or not as it 'caches' to it) . Simply adding an external hardrive will not help speed the computer up (Save giving you more room to store to)

Seagates are very good drives. I have....erm....4 (i think)

defragler might still run anyways (Especially once youve run ccleaner)

 

[Anonymous]

Have you cleaned up the cache in your internet browser? Also delete any files with a .tmp extension. CC cleaner will do this for you, as Rick suggests. You need about 25% free space before you can run a defragger effectively.