query on D Drive

bernieobr

Hi, My laptop is telling me that my D Drive is full and I'm being given the option to 'clean up' in order to free up space. My question is - if i click the clean up button, what does it actually mean to clean up. I am afraid that my documents and my photos may be lost although I think they may be on the C drive. I am not very computer literate and although I have looked at what information there is about cleaning the drive or disk, I need it in plain English please.

Thanks for reading.

BostonB

First off have a back up of everything important on a DVD or external HD or in an online backup.

I get the impression you don't have one.

bernieobr

Thanks BostonB. I do have all my documents on a usb key (these are word documents with college work. My photos are on a CD disk that I updated recently, other than these two things I dont need anything else that my be on the laptop. Can you explain what actually happens in a clean up

BostonB

If you have everything backed up, how can you not know where they are, or they will be lost. Thats contradictory. Anyway to answer your direct question the info is here, I think.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310312

bernieobr

Thanks BostonB. Sorry if I am contradicting myself - as I said I'm not great with computers. I appreciate you taking the time to reply and thank you for the link.

BostonB

I was trying to make you think about what you asked. It may be time to reconsider your storage and backup needs. Perhaps you need to delete stuff, or perhaps you simple need more storage.

If your Drive is full. I would use something like treesize free to get some idea of the space used and by what.

http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/

Generally a drive that is full is a lot slower than one that isn't.

Personally I wouldn't use the windows one, I manage it myself. Sometimes running something like CC cleaner will clear out all the temp files clogging up the system But be aware you'll lose your passwords, if you choose to clear them.

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

bernieobr

Hi again, I have 'cleaned up' both the C drive and the D Drive however when i look at the properties of the D Drive no space has been gained. it is still just about full. I will however look at the other links you have kindly sent me and go from there. Many thanks

Alanstrainor

bernieobr wrote: »

Hi again, I have 'cleaned up' both the C drive and the D Drive however when i look at the properties of the D Drive no space has been gained. it is still just about full. I will however look at the other links you have kindly sent me and go from there. Many thanks

Windows disk cleanup will only clear a very small amount of data. It's a waste of time really.

Now, before I go any further. Please, please, please sign up for, download and install https://www.dropbox.com/.

And save all your college work on there. I've seen too many people save all their important data on a USB stick, just to have the USB suddenly stop working, making the data completely inaccessible. And that's not taking into account that USB drives are really easily lost.

You have to look through the files on your D drive. Do you have lots of movies, music, pictures etc? Are they on that drive? If so, you'll need to either move them somewhere where there is space, or remove them completely.

BostonB

Just to note if you are uploading things like photos and movies to Dropbox, you might have many GB of data. So check how much space you need, are using. Also what you upload (not your download) internet speeds are and the limits on it.

bernieobr

Appreciate the responses from ye. To Alainstrainor - i have looked at the files on the d drive and they all seem to be something to do with the system of my pc - none of the names of them make any sense to me. I do not have any movies on my pc (wouldnt know how to get them), all i really use the pc for is my college work and my own personal photos. I am useless with anything else to do with computers - I might actually bring the pc to the college computer office and get one of the guys there to look at it for me.

bernieobr

Hi BostonB and Alanstrainor, Just to let you know I brought the laptop to college and it turns out my D drive has been backing up every Sunday without actually overwriting the previous backups, thats what has caused it to run out of space. My settings have been changed to rectify this. Just thought I'd let ye know out of courtesy, as ye were so kind to answer my query, Kind regards.

BostonB

Appreciate that cheers. I assume they found a ton of backups?

bernieobr

Ye loads, seemingly going back to 2010. Regards