re: Hard Disk is Full
Thursday, September 27, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Posted by gewg_
(4061 messages posted)
|I've been getting this error a lot:
| Hard Disk is Full
| You have run out of disk space on drive C.
| To free space on this drive by deleting old or unnecessary files, click Disk Cleanup.
|The weird thing is that I still have about 5GB of hard drive left,
| Devarshi Patel
I'll bet your Recycle Bin is still set to the (ridiculous) default size.
For anyone else who stumbles upon this and has a more serious problem:
Making Hard Disk Space
First, do a standard cleanup:
cache of http://lists.evolt.org/archive/Week-of-Mon-20001204/021479.html
+Start-Programs-Accessories-System.Tools-Disk.Cleanup+*-Temp
Crap Cleaner http://www.ccleaner.com
can do even more.
Now, understand that if you have done a normal cleanup
and your hard disk is *still* THAT full,
anything you do is just a stop-gap measure
and will only delay having to deal with the real problem
**UNLESS you PERMANANTLY move some of your files off your hard drive
and onto removeable media**.
If you already have a backup strategy, this should be painless.
** You DO back up your files to external media. Right? **
If you have a data file on your HDD that you haven't used in a while,
and it is also on backup media, DELETE it from your hard disk.
Prime candidates:
1) Video files (MPG, AVI, MOV, WMV, etc.)
2) Audio files (MP3, AU, etc.) WAV is another; see CAUTION (below).
3) Downloaded page-layout-type documents (PDF, PS, etc.). See CAUTION (below).
4) Clip art, drawings, etc. (BMP, JPG, GIF, DXF, etc.). See CAUTION (below).
CAUTION:
There is a lot of stuff associated with programs that carry these extensions.
If it is in C:\WINDOWS or in C:\Program Files, best leave it alone.
NOTE: This does not hold for C:\WINDOWS\My Documents.
(I don't have a C:\WINDOWS\My Documents directory.
I moved it out of C:\WINDOWS, removed the stupid space in the name,
and gave it a name with fewer than 9 characters to make it 8.3-compatible).
Other useless junk:
1) Fonts that you never use.
Just because some program loaded them on your hard disk
doesn't mean you have to keep them.
Windows Fonts That Should Not Be Deleted
2) Cookies in your (Internet Explorer) Cookies folder
(for those foolish enough to still be using THAT piece of junk).
If you had to actually fill out a form to use a site
or you clicked on settings there to establish your preferences for that site
*and you plan to return to that site*, keep that cookie.
Delete cookies that you made no effort to get.
The easiest way for most folks to make more HDD space available
is to change the size of the Recycle Bin.
It's 10% ! by default.
With the size of the HDDs we have today, that's just ridiculous.
Right-click Recycle Bin; Properties
Slide that sucker down to 1%.
Now let's get serious.
Uninstall 3rd-party programs that you never use.
Have 2 programs that do the same task? Dump one.
Now let's REALLY get serious.
Uninstall Windows components that you never use.
The default install of Windoze puts a huge amount of unnecessary junk on your HDD.
Dump whatever you don't use:
Control Panel; Add/Remove Programs; Windows Setup.
Ever use NetMeeting? I didn't think so. Kill it.
Planning to have a Virtual Private Network any time soon? Same deal.
Online Services? Total waste of space.
Desktop Themes? I never use them.
Internet Tools? I dumped it all.
Multilanguage Support? I'm American; I only speak 1 language.
Address Book? You couldn't punch me hard enough
to force to to use Outbreaks in Excess.
If you have a Windows Install CD--or have the install files on your hard disk
(now THERE'S something that will eat up HDD space),
you can put any of these optional components back at any time.
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