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General discussion

Running out of space on Hard Drive!

Jan 11, 2009 7:00PM PST

SOMEBODY PLS HELP!My daughter has got a 1 yr old Acer laptop(basic)running vista.We are running out of space on the C drive but there is 30gig free on the D drive.PPl tell me to move stuff over but I'll be str8 I aint got a clue!I got registry mechanic to help a bit but its not curing the problem.Can somebody pls explain in dumb azz terms how i can sort this as my daughter is nagging for a new comp now!!All help will be v.v.v.grateful! Daz.

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what's using up the space?
Jan 12, 2009 3:20AM PST

you need to determine what's using all the space (music, photos, videos, games, etc.) so you can move the correct data. you can move most of your data files by moving the "Documents" folder for the main user. http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1371

you can also move the files for many apps. for example, iTunes' library can be moved by the Edit->Preferences menu, in the Advanced tab.

of couse, you'll need to check the size of the folders' you're moving to make sure there's room for them on the D: drive.

also, check how much space system restore is using. by default it's 15% of the hard drive which is way too much for most folks. (on my laptop, that's 22GB so i scaled it back to 5GB.)
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/reduce-system-restores-disk-usage-in-vista/

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clean c drive and extend it
May 24, 2012 12:18PM PDT

it's been a long time since the thread started, just want to add my experience, to solve such kind of c drive low disk problem, try the way below:
1. Get CCleaner - a free utility that will clean up all your temp folders, internet files, index.dat, cookies, recent file lists, Windows Installer programs, cache folders, etc. [more information]

2. Delete everything inside the Windows Prefetch folder (\\Windows\Prefetch) - you may save a couple of MBs and may also notice that Windows loads faster.

3. Change the location of your Windows Temp folder by chaning the values of TEMP and TMP environment variables to something like D:\Temp (Control Panel -> System -> Advance -> Env. Variables)

or if you want to get free space from D to add to C drive, use some free software like partition assistant, partition wizard, etc. all are totally free of charge, get here: http://www.partition-magic-free.com/
But be sure to backup important files before all operations, we do not know whether strange things will happen.