Free up hard drive programme ?

Channel Hopper

OK, now have a functioning laptop with Win XP, updated to Service Pack 3, with independent firewall and AV.

Trouble is the hard drive shows no more than 7% free (6GB), even though I have cut back the excess fat by removing games/MSN/Messenger/Outlook express and really everything else surplus to requirements.

Is there a good programme, possibly specifically for XP users, that cuts out the dubious extra capacity taken up . I once used Tonyarts on a Win 98 machine but I recall making some mistakes on manually removing duplicate files to the point where I removed some stuff that was pretty important to the machines operation.
( Mind you that ran quite happily on a 2GB drive with 500 MB to spare for pictures and files)

Thanks in advance.

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

compufunk

You could use the built in disk cleanup utility, but this misses most of the junk folders. It doesn't even clear all of Microsofts own junk files.

I used to use a program called System Mechanic to remove duplicate + junk files. Its been a a few years since I last used it, but I think it worked well.

These days I just clear the junk manually.

I search the system for 'Temp' making sure you are searching hidden files and folders. This will find all the temporary storage folders the contents of which can be safely deleted. These folders can accumulate a lot of junk over time.

Another folder worth emptying is the 'Prefetch'' folder (Search the windows folder for it). Its safe to delete the files here because they will automatically be created again as required.

Service packs and updates also leave behind some instalation files that can be removed provided you dont want to roll back to a pre-update state.

To be honest, you'll probably be lucky to recover about 1G by doing the above. It sounds like you have a lot of data on there.

A typical installation with minimum software should only take up about 10-15 Gb leaving plenty of room on your 80Gb disk.

If you were given this laptop by someone else, try searching for hidden video files, some people hide certain videos for some reason

2cvbloke

Hmm, XP on a 6GB hard drive, you're lucky to have any free space!!! XP is sooooo bulky these days with all the service packs, updates, additional software (including IE7/8), it all adds up to a full drive (I have a 10gb partition on both my laptops, and I'm forever getting the "Running out of disk space on Drive C:" bubble thing, especially after updates, but the trick with those is to reveal the hidden folders in the "Windows" folder and delete them, that can free up a fair amount of space as it is useless backup junk...

I remember years ago I put XP on a 2GB drive, long before SP1 came along, and that fit fine, with about 300mb free, but these days, not a chance!!!

compufunk

Ooops!
I read that as meaning that the 7% of free space amounted to 6Gb. If total capacity is only 6Gb then I would have to agree with 2cvbloke.

If its a laptop thats old enough to have been shipped with a 6Gb HDD, then I'm surprised its not crippled under the weight of XP.

aileen

Best bet is to buy a Mac. So simple to use.

2cvbloke

Nah, once you buy one, it instantly loses a grand in value...

Topper

Why not tick the compress drive to save space option on the first tab of drive properties. It will only slightly slow down things when it requires to uncompress something, most regularly used files will not be compressed

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Formerly toppervte33h
whose six pack has turned into a keg

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Channel Hopper

That was my last resort, but I would rather clear out completely uneccessary, or duplicated files first.

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

Channel Hopper

Nah, the laptop came off Ebay with a damaged 20GB drive, I just happened to have a spare 6GB (well 6.5 GB, with 500M allocated as Drive : D) lying in the drawer, formatted by the XP install disc, so I know it is completely clean.

Will look into System Mechanic - thanks .

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

mhku

CCleaner will clear most temp files and has an uninstall part as well to remove unwanted programs.

Add/ remove programs > Add/ remove windows components will allow you to remove unwanted parts of Windows

irart

20gb is quite small these days for a hard drive. I thought my 40gb one was small! The ToniArts programme, called Easycleaner, you referred to in your original post is still going, and much improved these days. It has a function - space usage - that lets you see exactly what you have on your computer, as well as cleaning the registry, duplicate and unnecessary files etc. It has a back up facility in case you remove something important. As also mentioned CCleaner is very good as well.