Hard Drive Full

[nam-thip]

Can anyone help me out with this?

I have just reinstalled windows xp professional and without loading to many programs my hard drive is nearly full.

These are the figures given from my C drive when opening My computer and properties for C drive.

Used space: 64.4GB

Free space: 5.14GB

Capacity: 69.6 GB

As this is the third time I’ve reinstalled windows do I have three O/S running alongside each other occupying all that space on the C drive?

Do I need to start again and reinstall windows from the CD and make partitions/format if so can someone guide me through bearing in mind I’m a novice.

[d0ndela]

If you are not prompted for which Windows installation you wish to use when you boot up your pc, then you only have one working installation installed. But you do need to format the hard drive before you install Windows each time.

When you are in the windows installation blue screens, it will at some point ask you what partition you wish to install on. There you have the option to format said drive and create a new partition. Just look at the key explanations in the grey bar in the bottom of the screen when doing so, and it will explain itself.

[garyh]

You don't need to reformat everytime you install windows, however you may have 3 directories holding windows installations, plus you most likley will have old user directories containing documents etc. Another factor is restore points that will also take up rather large amounts of space also. I don't hae a XP computer in front of me at the moment but if you go to help and support and ask to search for cleanup haddrive you will find the utility that will delete a lot of these unneeded files, also go to advanced in the cleanup and do the same. This should free up a large amount of disk space, when your harddrive fills to a preset level the cleanup utility will come up automatically.

Having said all this if you burn the files you require to cd then you can format the harddrive and start again this will give you the maximum space available and get rid of all the unneeded stuff, however I would try the above first.

[Supernova]

I have just reinstalled windows xp professional and without loading to many programs my hard drive is nearly full.

These are the figures given from my C drive when opening My computer and properties for C drive.

Used space: 64.4GB

Free space: 5.14GB

Capacity: 69.6 GB

As this is the third time I've reinstalled windows do I have three O/S running alongside each other occupying all that space on the C drive?

Did you reformat before installing? If not, you probably have unneeded files and folders left over from a previous Windows installation taking up space. Browse drive C:, if you didn't reformat, you should see folders with names like: Windows.old, Windows.000, Windows.001, etc.

Run the Disk Cleanup utility (Start >> All Programs >> Accessories >> System Tools) to remove unneeded files/folders. If this doesn't free up enough space, you'll have to do it manually.

Do I need to start again and reinstall windows from the CD and make partitions/format if so can someone guide me through bearing in mind I'm a novice.

It depends. First, try to find out what's taking up all that space. If you have no personal data (movies, music, pictures) you want to keep, then starting over wouldn't be such a bad idea. Only this time, partition and format your harddisk accordingly. Windows XP doesn't require a lot of space; 15GB is more than enough for Windows and programs. Create a second partition and use the remaining 50GB for data storage.

[richardt1808]

A 70GB C drive sounds a tad small, especially if you are using a microsoft office or other bulky programs on top of that. Bear in mind that in order to defrag a drive you need at least 10 to 15% free space and if you are in the habit of storing large files on your desktop then C drive will get full pretty quickly and will eventually become unstable.

You need to have plenty of headroom on your drive so I suggest that you take your PC down to Pantib and get one of the shops to install a nice large drive for you. It is possible to clone the old drive so you wont lose any information and any decent shop will do it for a small fee of around 100B for you or it may be free if you are buying the drive from them.

[Gary A]

You obviously have other problems. I ran Windows XP Pro on a 40 GB hard drive for several years. I never did fill it up. The operating system uses no more than about 4 GB. I have a dislike of partitions and huge hard drives. I much prefer to keep my data on totally separate hard drives.

You need to know what is on the hard drive. You can use a free tool called EASEUS Partition Master. That will tell you what is on the drive. It is also possible that you have some sort of malware.

[sniffdog]

My total 'Windows' (Vista) is 11Gb ... so Windows XP should occupy less than that.

[nam-thip]

Thanks guys it looks like I need to partition and format the hard drive before I re-install windows xp professional which is something I didn’t do on two previous occasion.

We amateurs maybe should leave these things to the experts but ‘hey’ how do we learn about computers and how they function if we don’t have a go ourselves.

I’ll let you know what transpires and if all else fails it could involve a trip to Tuckom and let the experts deal with it.

[nam-thip]

Thanks guys it looks like I need to partition and format the hard drive before I re-install windows xp professional which is something I didn’t do on two previous occasion.

We amateurs maybe should leave these things to the experts but ‘hey’ how do we learn about computers and how they function if we don’t have a go ourselves.

I’ll let you know what transpires and if all else fails it could involve a trip to Tuckom and let the experts deal with it.

My attempt to delete the C drive which is almost full failed when this notice appeared:

You cannot reformat a disk or partition that is currently in use, including the partition that contains Windows. This is a safety feature so that you cannot delete Windows by accident. To reformat your computer's hard disk and reinstall Windows, restart your computer using the Windows installation disc (this is commonly known as booting from the installation disc). During the Setup process, you can repartition and reformat your hard disk and then reinstall Windows. The process will erase your files and programs, so be sure to make backups of your data and program files before you begin. For more information, search Windows Help and Support for "installing and reinstalling Windows."

I have two other small un-partitioned drives one with 5 GB of space and one with 8 GB but was informed both are too small to install windows.

I tried to link them together but was refused every move I made.

Having failed the above I carried out all the usual cleans (CCcleaner, etc) which created little and my C drive is still clogged up giving me a paltry 7GB of free space.

What do you experts out there suggest?

[Daffy D]

As the notice says you cannot format your "C" dive from within Windows, it's like windows committing suicide. You can start fresh over by booting from the installation disk and reformatting from that before re-installing windows. You will lose all your data.

Personally I like to use the Hard Drive manufactures maintenance disk to reformat the entire disk as this will give you a complete fresh disk without some "unallocated" sections that may sometimes remain otherwise.

All HD manufactures have free maintenance programs to download from their Websites, you will need a floppy or CD burner to copy the file to in order to boot from it.

[garyh]

Do you realise by formating you will lose all your files ie photos, mp3's, documents from your computer? If you don't know what your doing take it to someone who does.

[kayo]

a few years ago I reformatted/re-installed WinXP

I made a mistake during installation however, and I made only one partition.

So on a brand new 120GB hard drive, I only had access to one single partition of 30GB.

I had to add partitions on the remaining 90GB>

Dunno if that helps at all.

[nam-thip]

Do you realise by formating you will lose all your files ie photos, mp3's, documents from your computer? If you don't know what your doing take it to someone who does.

Formating the H/D will create no problems as everything like photos, mail, videos, certain program downloads, etc are all stored on a 320GB portable external hard drive so no problems there.

I also have the instalation discs for my add-ons.