Need Computer Guru Help!

[Asiann]

My Sony 80GB hard drive is near full and slowing me down. I have removed most of the junk software installed but not much else I can do. I have a D: drive that has 40GB of space left but applications are needed on C: drive so cannot move things over. Besides replacing the internal hard drive what external hard drive is out there that is user friendly and actuall works! I have looked at Maxtor but read bad reviews. I looked at Western Digital, Seagate, Sony Giga Vault. Need some good advice! Thanks!

[Lagger]

Originally Posted by Asiann

My Sony 80GB hard drive is near full and slowing me down. I have removed most of the junk software installed but not much else I can do. I have a D: drive that has 40GB of space left but applications are needed on C: drive so cannot move things over. Besides replacing the internal hard drive what external hard drive is out there that is user friendly and actuall works! I have looked at Maxtor but read bad reviews. I looked at Western Digital, Seagate, Sony Giga Vault. Need some good advice! Thanks!

Why don't you just replace your D: drive with a bigger HD? It's really easy to replace internal HDs and you can get 150 GB to 300 GB fairly cheap these days. See http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...lc.asp?CatId=8 for prices.

[tissot]

You can make the D: drive the slave and put all your miscellaneous files in there. If you want an external drive, you can make your D: drive into a external drive by buying a drive enclosure.

[SoYank]

Defrag!

[mds82]

Defrag, also dont forget Adaware,

You can always find a copy of Partition magic and but all the drives together... take all the free space from D and move it to C. as long as no Apps are installed on the D: drive.

Try some forums for HijackThis, its a good tool

One last thing, remove excess stuff from the msconfig ( if you dont know how to use it though then DONT)

[lux.sh]

Defrag works well if you haven't done so in past few months, especially after alot of installing/uninstalling softwares.

I had same problem as you before. I only had 80GB C:drive that came with the computer.
I then bought a Western Digital 120GB external hard drive thinking that is enough. Wrong. then, I bought myself another 300GB Maxtor internal hard drive. Now even that is filling up, im thinking of replacing the 120GB external hard drive with 300GB one.

by the way, the Western Digital external hard drive has been FLAWLESS. Though it does perform a bit slower than built in hard drive, since its using 2.0 USB and all, but its good enough for a back-up drive. Plug-n-play is great. I would highly recommand them.

Organize your drives(if you start adding them) for your use. For me,

C: drive 80GB internal = mainly for Windows XP operating system, anything that needs "installation" is here.
D: drive 300GB internal = anything from Mp3s, pictures, cars, school work, etc.
E: drive 120GB external = mainly movies.

[Gearcraft]

maybe you should delete some of the pictures of the models that you post here. J/K

i remember you telling me you've got lots of resources. lol.

for now try deleting all of your cookies and histories and empty your recycle bin and run clean up disk and defrag. if you havent tried these.

it might help a little bit for now till you get a new disk or something.

[Richypc]

www.newegg.com

Fast shipping great service. I built my current computer from parts I ordered from there site. A lot of people review the products they buy from there, so be sure you read what they have to say. SOME OF THE BEST PRICES TOO!!!.

[NFS]

Originally Posted by Asiann

My Sony 80GB hard drive is near full and slowing me down. I have removed most of the junk software installed but not much else I can do. I have a D: drive that has 40GB of space left but applications are needed on C: drive so cannot move things over. Besides replacing the internal hard drive what external hard drive is out there that is user friendly and actuall works! I have looked at Maxtor but read bad reviews. I looked at Western Digital, Seagate, Sony Giga Vault. Need some good advice! Thanks!

Is this a laptop (sounds like it might be if you have only got an 80gig drive).

Also ... have you really got a separate hard drive for D:\ and C:\ - from what you write it sounds like this is just a partition set up to help you keep your documents separate from the OS - this is common practice for a company laptop for example.

First off there is no reason why some applications can't be installed to the D:\ drive and run from there.

The easiest option to increase space is a hot swappable external (usb 2) disc drive. I have a 320gig toshiba one I bought from PC world, which I use as a back up for all photo's, mp3's and movies.

My c:\ drive is 260gigs and it's nearly full, so I plan to buy an additional 260gig internal drive to slot in next to it.

If you have a laptop this is less straightforward, so an external drive would be the way - but with a PC if you don't mind opening the case up fitting an internal SATA drive is easy.

If your drive is running slow it may well be because it needs defragging or because you have lot's of crap clogging things up. So de-frag and adaware are a good idea. It's also a good idea to install something like autorun and switch off everything that you DON'T want to open automatically on re-boot. That will speed up you boot time markedly.

You could also look at banging in a bit more memory (it you only have 256mb / 512mb and have added a lot of stuff, that may be why the PC is running slow.

I also put my PC into hibernate most of the time.

You can do this by holding down shift whilst the turn off / restart window is displayed - one of the options should turn to hibernate - which is an excellent time saver.

[Gearcraft]

hmmmm... sometimes i use a vaio laptop with a partition. it used to annoy me a lot when the C:/ fills up because i forgot to change the directory when installing an application.



TO ASIANN: have you tried reinstalling some of your applications into drive D:/?

[Asiann]

Thanks for all the info. Yes I have done defrag when needed. This is a PC. I have 1 GB memory. Cleared the cache cookies and history. The D: has like 50GB and me and the wife split the 30GB on the C:. I think partition magic might be a good option or maybe just have to get a larger internal hard drive. I'm in the middle of moving so will have to wait until next week to actually do something. I have tried to move things over to D: drive as much as I can. Can I move some of the OS files over there?

[Asiann]

Originally Posted by Gearcraft

maybe you should delete some of the pictures of the models that you post here. J/K

i remember you telling me you've got lots of resources. lol.

for now try deleting all of your cookies and histories and empty your recycle bin and run clean up disk and defrag. if you havent tried these.

it might help a little bit for now till you get a new disk or something.

The resources are links not pics stored online! My wife is great but not that great Did all the above.

[Asiann]

Originally Posted by Richypc

www.newegg.com

Fast shipping great service. I built my current computer from parts I ordered from there site. A lot of people review the products they buy from there, so be sure you read what they have to say. SOME OF THE BEST PRICES TOO!!!.

I buy stuff from them too! Great place for computer parts!

[Asiann]

Originally Posted by BadBob

Do you need a larger C: drive? Is the D: volume on the same physical disk drive as the C: drive? Most computers can accomodate two internal physical disks. If you D: drive contains just data and not installed programs, you could install another physical drive and move it there and then use a program like Partition magic to expand the size of the C: drive on the fly without losing any programs or data. You can also reduce the size of your Internet Explorer cache and the size of your virtual memory swap file to gain some more space on drive C:. You can also move the virtual swap file to another drive. File compression is also an option for folders which are seldom used.

Might have to try some of your tips and see how that plays out. I mean my computer is not crawling but I think it could be a little faster. I just don't want it to crash on me later.

[Asiann]

Originally Posted by mds82

Defrag, also dont forget Adaware,

You can always find a copy of Partition magic and but all the drives together... take all the free space from D and move it to C. as long as no Apps are installed on the D: drive.

Try some forums for HijackThis, its a good tool

One last thing, remove excess stuff from the msconfig ( if you dont know how to use it though then DONT)

This sounds good and might just do the trick since I have about 50GB just sitting around. I have files and docs but not that much. I will check and see if HijackThis has the Partition magic. I'm trying to hold off on buying an interanl or external hard drive since I'm buying a new computer later next year. Thanks!

[txusa03]

make sure you empty your recycle bin also, do you have XP or 2000? go into the temp folder and delete all files with extension .tmp. Many of the .tmp are little but whose know, you might have a gigantic .tmp file. What ever you do, do not physicall move any OS files or you will be sorry.

If you are not familiar with partitioning or add extension on an existing partition, be very careful. Sometime you might accidentally delete a partition (if it is C, you will be very sorry).

I never heard a program having to be install on c drive. Only thing that is needed on C drive is OS, other programs, MS Office or Adobe Photoshop can be installed on D drive.

[SoYank]

Before you do much more, have you made a current backup? This is very important if you're tampering with the partitions. If you get a larger hard drive you might consider getting two and an external case. Put the second drive into the case and use it as a sequential backup.

[SoYank]

Originally Posted by txusa03

If you are not familiar with partitioning or add extension on an existing partition, be very careful. Sometime you might accidentally delete a partition (if it is C, you will be very sorry).

Make certain your OS and BIOS are new enough to accommodate any new drive(s). I had a 200GB hard drive I wanted to put into my PC but it wouldn't recognize it because the BIOS was out of date.

Originally Posted by txusa03

I never heard a program having to be install on c drive. Only thing that is needed on C drive is OS, other programs, MS Office or Adobe Photoshop can be installed on D drive.

The OS can be in a small ~15GB partition all it's own designated drive C: and everything else put on other physical or logical drives.

So much for Bill Gates' "640KB of memory is enough for anybody."

[txusa03]

god point about backup...can never have enough backups....

[Asiann]

Originally Posted by SoYank

Before you do much more, have you made a current backup? This is very important if you're tampering with the partitions. If you get a larger hard drive you might consider getting two and an external case. Put the second drive into the case and use it as a sequential backup.

Yeah I plan on making a backup before I do anything!

[Asiann]

Originally Posted by SoYank

Make certain your OS and BIOS are new enough to accommodate any new drive(s). I had a 200GB hard drive I wanted to put into my PC but it wouldn't recognize it because the BIOS was out of date.


The OS can be in a small ~15GB partition all it's own designated drive C: and everything else put on other physical or logical drives.

So much for Bill Gates' "640KB of memory is enough for anybody."

How can I tell if a new HD will be compatible?

[SoYank]

Originally Posted by Asiann

How can I tell if a new HD will be compatible?

Sad to say, I can't answer that. About the best I can offer is to stop by some computer store that assembles computers and ask. One thing you can do to find the date of the BIOS is to press the DEL key during the POST (Power On Self Test) that occurs before the computer boots. But when in there, be very certain you read the prompts and if you have any question whether to do something, select the one that doesn't write to the CMOS. BIOSs are different for different motherboards and manufacturers so the steps to find the information in one may be different in another.