Receiving Lots of Double Talk for Disk Celan up @ Defrag.

First thing you need to understand, is that drive letters are not in any way fixed or significant. When I first got into using computers in the Windows 3.1 days, D was generally used for optical drives. Mostly by convention, but the point is that drive letters can be wildly different between systems. Just because something is on the D: partition on your system, doesn't mean that's how it is on everyone else's system.

That all being said... MOST of the time, though you failed to give important details like the bit in red above where you entered your post suggested, a partition like that is used by the manufacturer to avoid having to ship reinstall CDs with a system. They just dump all the files from the CD onto a partition on the drive because it's cheaper. Assuming that's the case with your system, you shouldn't need to worry about this partition.

As for the rest... I have to say that of all the various utilities included with Windows, disk cleanup has got to be the single most pointless and useless of the entire lot. Pretty much all it does is delete anything in the recycle bin and IE cache directories.

The defragmenting program ranks a close second on the pointless and useless scale. It's a holdover from days long since past. Defragmenting of drives is no longer really necessary for the average user. If you're running a large database server, doing a lot of high end AV work, or even running a large web server... Anything that is considered disk intensive... It'd be a different story. But the majority of computer users spent the bulk of their time doing non-disk intensive things. Meaning that fragmentation levels have a negligible impact on performance. I'm sure others will disagree, and that's fine... Fact still remains that there are far more fruitful areas to spend your time and energy if you're looking to improve system performance, which is all that defragmenting could ever offer. Some people seem to have attached some kind of diagnostic and repair expectations onto it, which don't exist, and never have.

So, I suppose the long and short of things for you, is that you don't really need to worry about it at all. You can blissfully ignore the both of those things on any and all drives/partitions.

Apparently, you've got 2 hard drives (or 2 partitions on the same physical drive, but that doesn't make any practical difference). There's more or less agreement on what should be on the c:-drive in such a case: windows folder, program files folder, temp files, basic user files in Documents and Settings, swap file, spool space for printing.

Where you put all other files is up to you, and only you know what you put on the d:-drive and why you choose that policy and not another one. Nobody else knows but you.

Probably disc cleanup will clean some files from the c:-drive and (if it's present there) empty the recycle bin on the d:. It doesn't harm to run it.
Defrag doesn't free any space. It doesn't harm to run it (but the drive needs to have at least 15% free space), but it's never necessary. Defragging d: makes less sense then defragging c: but is certainly possible.

If your drives are getting fuller and fuller you've got 2 choices:
1. Throw away stuff you don't need any more
2. Buy a larger hard disk

Hope this helps.


Kees

For disk cleanup, download and run the free program called Ccleaner. It will empty the browsers' cache, temp files, recycle bin, usage tracks etc. Depending upon the size of the files deleted, especially recycle bin and temp files, you might be able to recover some space. But please read the instructions/help file for the program so that you don't erroneously delete wrong files.

If you have junk programs which take up a lot of space, then uninstall those to reclaim some more space.

Short of this, the only way is to compress some of the contents of the drive, or better yet, get a larger hard drive.

For defragging, you'll need about 15% free space, depending on the size of the files on the drive. It's good practice to incorporate disk cleanup and defrag as part of a regular maintainence regimen that includes spyware scans, anti-virus scans etc.

Defrag will not suddenly put your PC on 'turbo' mode (lol anyone remember that?) but it will prevent performance degradation that occurs over a period of time from increasing file fragmentation. This is particularly relevant for laptops with slow drives and limited battery life. You can defrag with the built-in XP defragger itself or try out a fully automatic defragger like Diskeeper pro. (I use it, and it's great. But it's not free).

1. The Disk Cleanup (Cleanmgr.exe) tool includes one confusing option that can leave an inordinate amount of used space on your hard drive. When run, one of the available options offers to delete Temporary files. Unfortunately, this option may display a value of zero even if your Temporary folder contains hundreds of useless files since this value lists only file in that folder with a date more than one week old (Note #5a below for peculiar reasons however). Therefore, if files still exists is this folder after using the tool, you may at your convenience delete any and all unused and unnecessary files manually.

2. The article [Q310312] states the Disk Cleanup tool helps you free up space on your hard disk by searching your disk for files that you can safely delete. You can choose to delete some or all of the files as follows:

? Remove temporary Internet files.

? Remove downloaded program files. For example, ActiveX controls and Java applets that are downloaded from the Internet.

? Empty the Recycle Bin.

? Remove Windows temporary files.

? Remove optional Windows components that you are not using.

? Remove installed programs that you no longer use.

Note: If you start the Disk Cleanup utility and click the Disk Cleanup tab, a System Restore: Obsolete Data Stores entry may be available. These are files that were created before reformatting or reinstalling Windows and are obsolete and can safely be deleted. If you choose to cleanup and delete these files, this option does not show again.

3. The article [Q315246] describes how to use command-line options to configure the Disk Cleanup tool (options) to automatically clean up certain files by using the Scheduled Tasks tool.

4. The articles [Q812248] and [Q812930] state the Disk Cleanup tool may stop responding (hang) and you may receive the following message -- that would require an edit of the system registry to correct.

? Disk Cleanup is calculating how much space you will be able to free on (C: ).
This may take a few minutes to complete.
Scanning: Compress old files

Note: Two important things to know is that the system registry copies changes immediately and there is no Undo command. The editor does not wait for a Save to be issued since it does not have one and therefore makes changes permanent as they happen -- you make a change it's gone forever unless you remember it or have already backed up a copy. Use the editor sparingly and soberly and do not leave it open unnecessarily.

a. Click Start, Run, type regedit, and then press Enter.

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches\Compress old files

Note: Click the "Plus" before each of the words preceded by a back-slash in the above registry address until you reach Compress Old Files, which you will then bold/highlight by clicking it.

b. From the Main menu, click Edit, Delete, or after an entry has been bolded simply press the Del key on the keypad and respond with an affirmative.

5. The article [Q823302] provides the steps and explains that when you try to run the Windows XP Disk Cleanup tool, it may stop responding and occurs because you have corrupted temporary files on the computer that will require manual deletion.

a. The article [Q320081] explains why you may not be able to delete a file or a folder on an NTFS file system volume and how to address the different causes to resolve the issue.

b. The Windows Recovery Console can be used to obtain limited access to NTFS, FAT, and FAT32 volumes without starting Windows, [Q314058]. Please also read, "HOW TO: Install and Use the Recovery Console in Windows XP (Q307654)."

c. Otherwise, please read Doug Knox's tip, "How do I delete an "undeletable" file?"

d. The article [Q320081] explains that you may not be able to delete a file if the file is being used, and the symptoms may vary. You may be able to use the delete command to delete a file but the file is not actually deleted until the process that has the file open releases the file. Additionally, you may not be able to access the Security dialog box for a file that is pending deletion. To determine what process may have a file open, "Display a List of Processes That Have Files Open (Q242131)."

6. Please read "Forcing Windows XP's Disk Cleanup to delete all temporary files" that gives procedures for editing the System Registry to cause all "Temporary Files" to be deleted.