Laptop freeing up space...

lewis

I have a 180gig HD on me laptop, around 45gig`s was being used, then I Defragged and took out all the programs I dont need. Its now down to 41gig of 139gig but it seems to be an awful lot of space that`s being used for what`s in there, I guess my question is, is there any way other than what I`ve done to free up more space or is this normal? Could I have a virus or something else that I cant see taking up all that space?

j1smithy

Go through your folders and see where the large files are. Check properties and the file size will be given, though if its large it may take the machine some time to compute it.

Remember media, and particularly films are large so they could be taking up a lot of space. There could also be a hidden partition for backup, which in my case is 20GB. Vista is quite a large program and takes up a sizeable amount of resources.

You really need to have a root around your folders to see where the large files are.

Soundman

Google for TreeSize Free. That will list where all the space is disappearing to.

My guess is on Volume Shadow Copy taking up the space. I changed my settings via the command prompt so it only uses 3GB of space on my drive where I think the default is something like 15GB for backup.

Diver79

Also you could try deleting your system restore points. I had a similiar space issue and found that system restore was using over 15Gb.

Click Start, Run and type CLEANMGR and press Enter
Select the hard disk partition and press OK
At the top of the dialog, click the tab More Options
Under System Restore section, click the button "Clean up..."
Now, all the System Restore points (except the recent one) are cleared and more hard disk space will be free

As soundman said, its a good idea to set a limit on how much space system restore uses.

joolsveer

Try getting rid of temporary files and looking at the size of the page file.
http://www.theeldergeek.com/paging_file.htm

CCSL

Its in the system tools menu under accessories. Very basic checks for things like temp files but a good place to start.
:cool:

Biggins

Surprised nobody has mentioned "Tuneup Utilities 2009" yet.
One of its great functions is to clean up hidden stuff thats not needed.
The download from the link above will give you a full time limited function.
Great tool in many ways. I use it on all my machines and servers.

Kinetic^

What operating system are you using? If it's Vista, then it's probably close to what it uses. Try Disk Cleanup. Click Start > Accessories > System > Disk Cleanup and tick all the boxes and then Ok. Should free up some space.

Overheal

Treesize is fine but I prefer Windirstat. easier to read.

lewis

Thanks to all the advice, I`l did it all and it freed up about 5gb. I`m going to assume that windows is just taking up all that room. That tuneup yolk found a few errors and such but it does`nt seem any differnt, but thanks again all.

mp22

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/reduce-system-restores-disk-usage-in-vista/
you can free up more space this way but you will limit the number of restore points you will have

lewis

mp22 wrote: »

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/reduce-system-restores-disk-usage-in-vista/
you can free up more space this way but you will limit the number of restore points you will have

Thanks man but I think I`ll leave it for now, there`s one thing I like and that`s plenty of restore points and etc just in case. But this time I will be deleting them more often.

Overheal

Ive been fighting my own disk space for days now actually.

Ill probably just jump ship and install the Windows 7 RC.