My Dell 4600 Desktop is about 5 years old and has a 40GB hard drive that is pretty much full right now. I know for a fact that I don't have 40GB worth of stuff on it right now. I've used Disk Cleanup and deleted every unused program and gone through folders and deleted unwanted stuff and it hasn't even made a dent into it. What is taking up all my space and how do I get rid of it?

I'm guessing you have xp? Or did you get vista?

Alright first step defrag it. I recommend JK defrag its better then the built in windows one.
http://www.kessels.com/Jkdefrag/
but for now just use the windows one.

Make sure you've deleted all temp files, cache files etc. Empty your recycling bin too.

Run some sort of virus / spyware scan just to be sure.

Now do you have a second hard drive, flash drive, or external hard drive, or external media storage you can use? Take a fairly large file(s) at least a few gigs and move it over to the storage device. See if that makes an impact on your C: drive reading. If your not all up and going to get another one then delete a fairly large program that you can re install and see if that changes it.

If yes your drive is reading ok. Go through Add/Remove programs screen seeing which ones take up the most space. Do you have type of P2P? Torrent downloader? If yes make sure all your incomplete files are deleted as well.

Now idk how comfortable you are in popping that case open and dropping in another hard drive? Or some type of external? Just another place to store files while leaving programs on your c: drive. Personally I would back up my drive then buy a larger one put a fresh install of xp on it put the backed up files on it again and be all set. You could just buy either another hard drive and put it in or buy an external to help free up some space.


If taking those files and putting them on another storage device doesn't change the reading on you HDD then there's some sort of conflict in between your hard drive and the operating system. I would run chkdisk to make sure there's nothing up with it. If this is the issue where it isn't reading ill explain further after.

A few games, microsoft programs, and a few years of use could load your 40gig up pretty easily.

Have you looked at your folder size for all folders on your C drive? Make sure you include hidden files & folders.

What about removing all programs you do not use anymore with add/remove programs.

Trust me, I've gone through every single folder in My Documents and deleted every single program I don't need or use and I've barely made a dent into it. I know I should really get a new hard drive but as today isn't one of the best days to go shopping around here and I need to install a program for school, this is kind of my only option right now. I've almost got enough room, gonna run Disk Cleanup one more time and hopefully that will be enough to get this program running.

http://www.foldersizes.com/

download the trial version and run the report.

it will show you a tree structure of every folder/file on your system and give you the sizes.

you can go about deletion from there.

if I virus has done it you should be able to find the folder pretty easy.

it could also be that you have bad sectors, windows will recognize bad sectors as used space because it cannot write to it.

try running a check disk. start > Run > type
Chkdsk
press enter

let it fix anything it finds.

the report at the end will let you know if you have bad sectors.

Alright finally I have enough room to download my program (AutoDesk Inventor if anyone's wondering) and I'm running chkdsk as I type this. I think I'm gonna go with a new internal hard drive and found this on NewEgg. Now I don't know much about hard drives but this seems like a pretty good deal to me. What do you guys think?

I would spend 200 bucks and get an external USB harddrive. For that cash you can get 100 gigs or so nowadays.

And try running the defrag

What's so much better about an external over an internal? Aren't the internal ones faster?

I have an external 250 gig HD, and I love it. It holds EVERYTHING, and lets me free up space on my computers hard drive.

you can get a lot more than 100gigs for 200 bucks. I think my 300gig external was in the 125-150 range several monthes ago.

you want your windows install on an internal drive, but music and videos can go on the external, which saves a lot of space. I like to install programs to my internal as well, but you can get away with putting them on the external, as long as they don't require too much data transfering (eg: don't install games to the external).

another dump question, but I have seen people who never delete their sent email items. That had gigs and gigs and gigs of email.

What about file sharing programs? Do you use any? They are very bad for taking up space that you do not know about. It is in the TOS you agree to when you sign up.

Nope no file sharing programs over here.

I actually caused myself a little bit of trouble on this one. I made enough room to start the download a few days ago but something happened and the download had stopped. Somehow there wasn't enough room for the program the second time around and that's when I went on the hard drive cleaning spree without even thinking about deleting the partially downloaded file, turns out it was over 3GB in size when the download stopped so now I have more than enough room.

I'm still not understanding why you guys are telling me to go with a 300GB external for like $100 instead of that 500Gb internal one I found for $60.

good deal on the drive from new egg

make sure that you have a sata connection and not IDE.

I hate to say it but you may wanna consider an upgrade pretty soon, 4-5 years tends to be the max life for a desktop system these days (there are exceptions) but I would def think about upgrading or new PC sometime soon.

What else besides the hard drive should I upgrade? I'm running 512MB of memory so I should probably step up to 1GB but besides that I really don't know enough about computers to know what needs to be upgraded.

First off internal hard drives are much cheaper. Yes they are faster as well. Do you have EIDE hard drive or SATA? Make sure you get the right one. Also yea upgrading to a gig is good, but you can usually find a 1 gig stick cheap anyways. I will guarantee that your system can handle at least 2 gigs. Depending on how much your willing to spend. Do you do any type of gaming? If so then upgrade your graphics card. I'm guessing you have an agp slot which means you can run up to an Nvidia 7600 which is a good card, but like I said this is only if you do any type of gaming.

check out the manufacs site and find out what ram it takes as well as the drive type brfore you order anything.

2 gigs of ram can be had for about 40 bucks is you hunt a little... look for kingston or corsair. ram is finiky and the cheap stuff comes doa alot. the harddrive should be all set assuming you grab the right type.

the only thing I would look at if you are really wanting to notice a difference is the proceessor it self but thats a little more of a job than ram and hard disk

sounds like you are on the right track

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134046

be sure of the type you need forst but here is a good example of what you are looking for,