C Drive almost out of room

Ronald1973

Ronald1973

8-trackin', Hank, Sr. man
Stupid question I suppose but I'm honestly not sure. My C drive is saying it's almost full (could have something to do w/ having 566 albums on it in .wav format lol) but D, which says it is a "recovery" drive has tons of free space. Would I be making a tragic mistake to start using D drive? I know I need to invest in another hard drive and/or an external to get more room, but until then would I be harming my computer by using the portion of that's formatted for D?:scratch2:
 
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I use my second (D) internal drive for all my music and video . Works out fine so far for me .


Barney
 
"Name brand" prebuilt computers come with recovery partitions, rather than installation disks. Overwriting that partition would be like destroying your original installation disks. Not a good idea. Storage is dirt cheap right now; invest in another drive, like an external USB drive. They're great for storing music, and you can transport them between different computers.

Another thing, when you have a nearly-full hard drive, your computer's performance really bogs down. Get that music onto an external drive, and off your C: drive. You'll be pleased with the results.
 
jhoyt said:
"Name brand" prebuilt computers come with recovery partitions, rather than installation disks. Overwriting that partition would be like destroying your original installation disks. Not a good idea. Storage is dirt cheap right now; invest in another drive, like an external USB drive. They're great for storing music, and you can transport them between different computers.

Another thing, when you have a nearly-full hard drive, your computer's performance really bogs down. Get that music onto an external drive, and off your C: drive. You'll be pleased with the results.
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That sounds like the preferable option. This computer will be 4 years old in about 6 months and it is starting to show its age. I could invest in more memory, another hard drive, etc. but I think I'd just as soon go ahead and get another computer after the 1st of the year.
 
Oerets said:
I use my second (D) internal drive for all my music and video . Works out fine so far for me .


Barney
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If a computer runs seperate drives, then whatever letter (be it D or G or whatever), than that is a open drive, for any information. As stated previously, when it's a section of hard-drive, especially a "recovery partiton", then it's a unsafe endevor to mess with it. Sometime ago, they stopped shipping disc with computers (all the 2002 onwards I find never use a disc), which is good...but it represents a unusable area.

A new computer may be a good thing, in terms of performance. What model do you have now? (ie;processor/ram, etc). If the hard-drive were not filled, it may run much better. You could de-frag as well, which sometimes helps. As Jhoyt mentions, memory is extremely cheap. You can get a new, standard, 500Gb drive for $60. That's a lot of music;)
 
Ronald1973 said:
That sounds like the preferable option. This computer will be 4 years old in about 6 months and it is starting to show its age.
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Unless you do some pretty advanced computing, read more than surf the net, word process, excel, a couple of pieces of software (but not new games), what you have will probably work great for a while to come.

Get a new HDD, you can get a huge one for cheap now, put all your files/documents on it. Re-install windows on the original drive as it is only good for about 200 reboots before things start going funny.

By doing this, if you decide to get a new computer, you should be able to just transfer the new HDD to the new PC with no problems.
 
New computers are so cheap right now that it's becoming a very tough decision...upgrade the existing one or just go new.

10-15 years ago, a four year old computer would have been completely obsolete due to the incredibly rapid pace of change in hardware and operating systems. Now, a 4 year old computer really isn't a problem since there hasn't been any significant advances in any area.

Well, except for Vista.:scratch2::lmao::no:

So, if your existing machine is meeting all of your needs just fine, except for storage, I would keep it and add an external drive. I saw a 1 TB external USB drive for $65 just yesterday. That is mind-boggling. While you're at it, if you haven't taken your memory to 4GB or thereabouts, (if your mb can take it), I'd do that too. Single biggest performance enhancement you can do, and the cheapest.
 
I wouldn't bother with a new computer. What I would personally do is buy a nice big hard drive and stick it in there, then put all your important stuff on it, and reformat your main c drive. If you don't have a cd for your os, just download one and use the key on the little sticker on the front of your computer. It's perfectly legal. Also, 4gb of ram would probably be a bit overkill if your not doing any photo shopping or anything of the sort. 2gb should be great.
 
I have to agree with the second drive route. I do this and find that with my OS on one drive and data on another that the OS is much happier and runs a little faster as well.
 
Fisherdude said:
New computers are so cheap right now that it's becoming a very tough decision...upgrade the existing one or just go new.

10-15 years ago, a four year old computer would have been completely obsolete due to the incredibly rapid pace of change in hardware and operating systems. Now, a 4 year old computer really isn't a problem since there hasn't been any significant advances in any area.

Well, except for Vista.:scratch2::lmao::no:

So, if your existing machine is meeting all of your needs just fine, except for storage, I would keep it and add an external drive. I saw a 1 TB external USB drive for $65 just yesterday. That is mind-boggling. While you're at it, if you haven't taken your memory to 4GB or thereabouts, (if your mb can take it), I'd do that too. Single biggest performance enhancement you can do, and the cheapest.
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7 is worth the RAM upgrade, though :)
 
2gb is great for windows 7 too. I would run xp on it though, seeing as how that's what it came with so you have a key for it and stuff.
 
I must of read the the 1st post wrong last night , you only have one hard drive ?

I've have two a "C" and a "D" running on my computer . When you go to my computer how many hard drives show up ? If only one then get another one and put it into the case . Your computer should have the place for it along with the wires .

I just picked up a hard drive with a Terabit for around $100.00 .


Barney
 
Have you run the XP cleanup wizard? It might not get you much space, depending on whether you run it regularly, but running it will:
  • Clear out your browser's cache - which may have tons of crap in it, especially if you watch a lot of YouTube or other video-based content
  • Delete unused crud you don't need like the install files for applications you've installed on your hard drive
Also, if you run your disk defragger, you may recover additional space.

Uninstall all programs you don't use (like game demos, various cd ripping apps you've tried but not liked, etc...

You may be surprised at what you recover.

Still, that's only a stop-gap measure. If you have hundreds of LPs ripped to your hard drive, you're gonna want at least a one terrabyte external drive.

I'm about to get one. They're cheap.
 
Hmm I have a Puter I built about 6 years ago with a 2.8 gig HT Pent IV 2gig of RAM and now 5 HD's 2) 120g SATA's internal 1) 80g IDE internal and 2)250g SATA externals running on a USB connection as storage drives to back up the good stuff.

If I decide to add any more I'll just use the external USB 2 connection and move more stuff from the internals to the externals. Most of my 1000's of photo's are on 3 drives. All of my Music is on the 80g IDE I should back it up but it's all from CD's anyway so i have the hard copy anyway.
 
I'm actually running Vista and have thought about an upgrade to 7 but I know I don't have near enough memory right now. I priced memory and I think 4G was going to be about $100. I've emptied recycle bin, deleted .tmp files, etc. and did come up w/ a bit more room.

I may add an internal hard drive as I'm wanting to slap a diskette drive in it anyway lol!!! I've never taken apart this computer but the one I had previously I had it apart several times (diskette drive, extra CD burner a couple of times-managed to burn out one lol!!!) so not afraid to open it up! :D

Oh, and the computer is a Dell Dimension E521. A Wally World special and nothing to write home about, but I'm not a gamer or a photoshopper either one. Music, web and scanning old photos is all I do. Once I have enough photos for a CD, they get removed but I can't bear to remove my albums! Still got another 500+ to get on here! :music:
 
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