I have a laptop that runs on windows 7 and I have extremely low disk space on windows (C), in fact there is no space and I can't even view a photo in my albums. Clean up does nothing and it asks me to uninstall unused programs to free up space but I can't understand what the programs are to know if I am uninstalling something important. I have already taken out something I shouldn't have so am scared to remove anything else. I would be grateful for any suggestions but please bear in mind that I don't understand most of the terms used in computing so please use simple terms (and ever simpler than that)! Thank-you for any help.

Go to Start, click on the Computer listing on the right side. Then right click on your C drive and select properties. What does it say for Capacity, Used Space and Free space? Do you have any other drive letters? What do their properties say?

Videos, music and photos take up the most space on the hard drive. Move these files that you do not need on a regular basis to an external hard drive or to a cloud storage service.

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Originally Posted by cmeeks

Videos, music and photos take up the most space on the hard drive. Move these files that you do not need on a regular basis to an external hard drive or to a cloud storage service.

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Thank-you very much, have made a start clearing them out and saving them on a removable disc. I was told photos didn't take up so much room but it is making a bit of difference as I am going along so I am glad you told me of this . The music certainly helped. Still a long way to go but thanks again for your help.

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Originally Posted by ScottGem

Go to Start, click on the Computer listing on the right side. Then right click on your C drive and select properties. What does it say for Capacity, Used Space and Free space? Do you have any other drive letters? What do their properties say?

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Thank-you for responding. It says used space 74.2 GB and free space 234 MB. I have a data D whatever that is and that is pretty much free.

How big is D? Often your D drive is a small recovery partition. However, if your PC came with Win 7, then a 75G hard drive is pretty small. I would expect your hard drive to be minimum of 320G. That would mean that your C Drive is a partition and you can move a lot of your files to the D drive.

You can set up folders for Videos, Photos and Music on the D drive then add them as Libraries under your Video, Photo and Music libraries in in Windows Explorer for easy retrieval.

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Originally Posted by ScottGem

How big is D? Often your D drive is a small recovery partition. However, if your PC came with Win 7, then a 75G hard drive is pretty small. I would expect your hard drive to be minimum of 320G. That would mean that your C Drive is a partition and you can move a lot of your files to the D drive.

You can set up folders for Videos, Photos and Music on the D drive then add them as Libraries under your Video, Photo and Music libraries in in Windows Explorer for easy retrieval.

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Data D is 63.6 GB free of 74.1 GB. I spent most of the afternoon deleting and putting photos onto a removable disc but that seems to have been freeing D rather than C. I have very little videos and only a couple of songs downloaded now as I removed the rest. I will move things about anyway and see what happens. I do have 4 games from wildtangent on there however, would it be them taking up room? Many thanks again for your help.

I have no idea how much room is being used. But you need to check your specs. So it looks like you have 2 74G partitions, which would indicate a 160G hard drive. That's kind of low for a Win 7 machine. Can you check the specs from when you purchased it to see what size hard drive?

When you delete or move something you should be able to see what drive it is on.

One thing you might try to clear out is all the Windows Updates. They may be taking a lot of space on your hard drive. Its not a problem to delete the downloaded files. The updates were made from those files so they are now superfluous.

ANother thing you may or may not have considered is when you copy a file to an external drive it still remains on the main drive. In order to clear space you have to delete the files off the main drive that you have copied to the external drive.

That's right, use cut and paste instead of copy and paste to clear the drive if your going from the laptop to an external usb drive. If your creating dvd's to store your data "saving them on a removable disc" then you have to manually delete the stuff after you copy. Optical disks have a limited life and will eventually become unreadable in the future so I would go for an external usb drive if you can afford one. They also can fail but stored on a shelf, and unplugged, they should be good for a long time. I don't leave my external usb drives on, I disconnect them when not in use. It prolongs their usable life.

System restore can eat up disk space very quickly. If your system is running OK you can turn off system restore for both C and D and then turn it back on for C only afterwords. That will release the space that all those restore points are using and start anew keeping C backed up from that date on. Eventually it will do it again but there is a way for you to limit how much disk space system restore can use to limit its hogging ways. Search the net for "limit system restore disk use" adding your OS "for xp vista win7 etc.". With Drive D turned off it will have no restore points but since its not a system disk that shouldn't be a problem.

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Originally Posted by cdad

ANother thing you may or may not have considered is when you copy a file to an external drive it still remains on the main drive. In order to clear space you have to delete the files off the main drive that you have copied to the external drive.

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OK, thank-you for your help, much appreciated.

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Originally Posted by Appzalien

That's right, use cut and paste instead of copy and paste to clear the drive if your going from the laptop to an external usb drive. If your creating dvd's to store your data "saving them on a removable disc" then you have to manually delete the stuff after you copy. Optical disks have a limited life and will eventually become unreadable in the future so I would go for an external usb drive if you can afford one. They also can fail but stored on a shelf, and unplugged, they should be good for a long time. I don't leave my external usb drives on, I disconnect them when not in use. It prolongs their usable life.

System restore can eat up disk space very quickly. If your system is running ok you can turn off system restore for both C and D and then turn it back on for C only afterwords. That will release the space that all those restore points are using and start anew keeping C backed up from that date on. Eventually it will do it again but there is a way for you to limit how much disk space system restore can use to limit its hogging ways. Search the net for "limit system restore disk use" adding your OS "for xp vista win7 etc.". With Drive D turned off it will have no restore points but since its not a system disk that shouldn't be a problem.

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Thanks very much for your help. Its given me lots to think about and it may save me from losing some of my photos in the future too as I hadn't considered that the disks may not last. I appreciate all your advice so thanks again for responding.

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Originally Posted by ScottGem

I have no idea how much room is being used. But you need to check your specs. So it looks like you have 2 74G partitions, which would indicate a 160G hard drive. That's kinda low for a Win 7 machine. Can you check the specs from when you purchased it to see what size hard drive?

When you delete or move something you should be able to see what drive it is on.

One thing you might try to clear out is all the Windows Updates. They may be taking a lot of space on your hard drive. Its not a problem to delete the downloaded files. The updates were made from those files so they are now superfluous.

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I will see if I can find the size of the hard drive later on and reply again but I have been worried about the updates as they seem to keep running them and then any space I had free disappears. I looked for the windows updates after you said about them and I have just found a massive list of them so I will clear them out seeing as you say its safe to do so and will let you know how it goes!

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Originally Posted by ScottGem

I have no idea how much room is being used. But you need to check your specs. So it looks like you have 2 74G partitions, which would indicate a 160G hard drive. That's kinda low for a Win 7 machine. Can you check the specs from when you purchased it to see what size hard drive?

When you delete or move something you should be able to see what drive it is on.

One thing you might try to clear out is all the Windows Updates. They may be taking a lot of space on your hard drive. Its not a problem to delete the downloaded files. The updates were made from those files so they are now superfluous.

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All I could find was that the installed memory (RAM) is 3.00GB and that it's a 64 bit operating system. Used space is 72.7 GB, free space is 1.73 GB on the C drive and used space 9.53, free space 64.5 GB on data D. All of that is alien to me so I don't suppose there's anything helpful there. I did clear out all the windows updates and it did clear a bit of space so that was good.

Well it looks like you have a 160G hard drive that is partitioned into 2 partitions, a C and D drive It looks like your D drive is pretty empty. When you save files, you can save them to either the C drive or the D drive. You have the choice. I would save more of your data files to the D drive so you don't use up space on your C Drive.

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Originally Posted by ScottGem

Well it looks like you have a 160G hard drive that is partitioned into 2 partitions, a C and D drive It looks like your D drive is pretty empty. When you save files, you can save them to either the C drive or the D drive. You have the choice. I would save more of your data files to the D drive so you don't use up space on your C Drive.

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After reading what you said, I copy and pasted some things across to the D drive and have made a bit of space on C. Hopefully using that will stop the problems for a while. I really can't thank you enough for all your help. I appreciate you taking the time to advise me on what to do. You have been very kind and its been a relief to get the situation under control. Again, thank-you for everything, best wishes, Vanessa :)

Again, don't "copy" and paste, "cut" and paste. Copy leaves the files in both places.

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Originally Posted by ScottGem

Again, don't "copy" and paste, "cut" and paste. Copy leaves the files in both places.

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Sorry, yes I did mean to say cut and paste, so used to copying and deleting from the recycle bin that its become habit to say "copy".

You also have the choice whether to install programs to the C drive or the D drive during initial installation. Most programs will have an option for express install or custom (which is best if you want to avoid installations of crapware and toolbars). Some are just a simple section where it shows the default install directory with a browse button for you to change it. When you install to the D drive only registry entries and perhaps a few folders in MY Documents end up on C. What I do is create folders on my D or E drive that mimic the folders of C (Program Files [XP] or Program Files (x86) as well [Vista Win7]. That way during install all I have to change is the Drive letter at the beginning of the default install path the get the majority of the data to the other drive. If you have programs you can easily uninstall and reinstall without losing anything (except drivers, and important programs like firewall and anti-virus) you can move them during reinstall to get some room back. Browsers Games utilities etc. will do just fine from D. Just for laughs, right click your Documents and Settings folder, select properties and tell us how much space it takes up. You can also right click properties for individual folders in there to find the space hogs.

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Originally Posted by Appzalien

You also have the choice whether to install programs to the C drive or the D drive during initial installation. Most programs will have an option for express install or custom (which is best if you want to avoid installations of crapware and toolbars). Some are just a simple section where it shows the default install directory with a browse button for you to change it. When you install to the D drive only registry entries and perhaps a few folders in MY Documents end up on C. What I do is create folders on my D or E drive that mimic the folders of C (Program Files [XP] or Program Files (x86) as well [Vista Win7]. That way during install all I have to change is the Drive letter at the beginning of the default install path the get the majority of the data to the other drive. If you have programs you can easily uninstall and reinstall without losing anything (except drivers, and important programs like firewall and anti-virus) you can move them during reinstall to get some room back. Browsers Games utilities etc. will do just fine from D. Just for laughs, right click your Documents and Settings folder, select properties and tell us how much space it takes up. You can also right click properties for individual folders in there to find the space hogs.

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4.76 mb for documents. Is that high? Thanks for all your help, its given me lots of ideas on how to manage things in future. Very much appreciated.