need help

[Escape-The-Fate]

ok so i got a toshiba laptop..nothing special cost about 1100 18 months ago..not really computer minded so my question is its got "low hardisk space" as it keeps reminding me and ive done a disk defrag and deleted programs i dont use blah blah..but still very low disk space, mind you ive got a little over 9 gig of music playing through itunes wondering if thats wats taking up all the space?..i get music from limewire downloads aswell as bought cd's also got anything to do with low hard drive space??

my option would be buy an external hard drive and put music on that or something..dunno how they work?? or anything tho

programs i run are:

limewire, firefox, msn messenger, itunes, gimp2 (photoshop pretty much), fast stone image viewer and shrinker, adobe reader and my camera and mobile phone software and avg free antivirus.

[arrow224]

Windows Vista?
Click Start, then in the search box, type disk cleanup.
Do the clean up. It is safe to delete what it finds.
Windows XP?
Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk cleanup


Head into the control panel. In XP, open Add/Remove programs. In Vista, open Programs and features. Uninstall any programs that you don't use/haven't used in a while/aren't going to use again.

[JimmyMcDuff]

If you don't use the hibernate feature of Vista, you can also disable that (through the Disk Cleanup feature). This can save a few GB's of data if you don't use it!

[holdenhero]

Ok well something you might want to check out first is your iTunes options... I can't remember the default but there is an iTunes option called something like "Copy files to iTunes directory when adding to library". What this does is once you add a song/folder of songs to your library, it doesn't read them from their initial saved location but copies them to a subfolder inside the iTunes directory (organised by artist name/album/song) however it does not delete the original. That means you end up with all of your imported music files saved twice! Meaning, your 9GB of music in iTunes would equate to 18GB of music. I think to get to iTunes preferences its "CRTL+," and then I'd assume this option would be under advanced or something.

Also, follow arrow224's advice and do a disc cleanup.

Also, something you might want to check out is that you empty your recycle bin (I know it sounds stupid, but I've had over 50gb of space being held up in there).

As for the topic of an external hard drive, I think they are good ideas. They aren't exactly the most portable of things, due to the size and the fact that most of them require a power source (in the form of a power point) so if you get one realise that it would mainly only be able to be used at home or in an office environment and not say, in a park. All that they do is plug into a powerpoint to get power and then plug into a USB (some can use firewire, etc to connect but USB is most common) to connect to your computer. They will just appear as another drive (EG: F: drive in My Computer) and you can save/delete/edit/run files as normally as if they are on your local hard drive. Prices vary but I picked up a 1TB (1000GB) external hard drive for a couple of hundred bucks, and it doesn't sound like you need to have alot of stuff saved, so in my advice you would get by without having to delete anything. (PS. large external hard drives are also good for creating a back up of your computer, incase it is hit by malware or damaging user error)

[Tsunamix]

probably best to find out what size your current hard drive is.

If it's a laptop thats been owned by someone else in the past, you may find that theres a 100gb HDD thats been partioend into 2 seperate drives for dual booting linux or something.

the drama is that windows wont recognise partions for other os's.

So you might have 100gb HDD with 20GB for Windows and 80Gb for linux.

So find out what size your HDD is and go from there

[TMM]

CCleaner - Home
Give this a shot. It's pretty effective at removing redundant temp files and such .

[Escape-The-Fate]

cheers for help guys..managed to clean up a bit of space

[Jesterarts]

Also, if you are beginning to run out of room on your laptop you can pick up a 250GB external pocket drive for like, 100bux. And keep any non essential files on there.

For example, I have a 250gb external on which I have my music, images and other documents.

Just plug it in when I need those files.

OR, you could see about upgrading your laptop HDD, 200 buck should get you a 500gb drive.

Just some options.