Full "C" DRIVE

[dibble1]

I have an average lap top, an Acer Aspire 5735. It says on it 160 GB HDD and 4GB DDR2, whatever these mean. I don't have a lot of photo's stored and next to no video but I now keep getting windows popping up saying my C drive is nearly full and it won't let me store BBCi programmes and even flashed up on i-tunes. It gives me an option to remove unwanted and un-used programmes automatically, which I do whenever it flashes up, however this doesn't last 5 minutes before it tells me my drive is nearly full again. I've tried un-installing programmes myself which I don't think I use but I'm terrified I'll remove something vital to the lap top. I've been to Maplins to ask if buying an external hard drive would cure this and the unhelpful big ape in there said no and offered no advice whatsoever. I do miss BBCi but everytime I try to use it I get this window saying insufficient memory to download.
Any ideas gratefully received.

[MarkRae]

> It says on it 160 GB HDD and 4GB DDR2, whatever these mean.

These mean exactly what they say i.e. that your laptop has a 160GB hard drive and 4GB memory.

1) How much free space is actually left on the hard drive?

2) What operating system (manufacturer and version) is it running?

[flobadob]

Try downloading, installing and running this. However did you but your laptop from a reputable dealer, as I have purchased 8gb pen drives from ebay which ended up only actually holding 2gb worth of files.

[flobadob]

Sorry, this http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

[TTG]

Turning off the hibernate function can save one or two GB. Search on net for how to do this and what it is actually used for.

[Postdog]

And just an observation on the unhelpful big ape comment. Surely he would have been less help had he sold you an external drive, which after all is mostly used for back up rather than being and essential part of the system. It wouldn't solve the issue, and he was right on that.

[Cowtipper]

I don't know much about Mac's but in Microsoft this is a really common problem. Its not hard to fix but involves some steps.

[VHG]

All your files, including Windows and programs and personal files, will sit on that 160Gb hard drive.

The more you download from the internet and store on that drive, the quicker it will fill up. Videos are the largest files so if you have been downloading video files then that will take up a lot of space.

Note that while you may have a 160Gb hard drive it may be divied up into sections called "partitions". One of those will be C, the others could be D or E for example (you will also have a CD/DVD drive that will be one of these letters as well).

Your C may be full, but you may have a D or E that is empty or nearly empty.

You need to find out:

If your 160Gb hard drive is divided up into partitions (C, D, E etc).

How big each partition is, and how much space is free on which

How many large video files you have on C, and if you can delete some. Your video files will probably be in My Videos but may also be in My Documents or My Pictures.

DONT just delete programs. They will gain you very little space, and may well stop things working.

[VHG]

Note an external drive will only cure things if you move files (personal files) from your C drive to the external drive.

And to do this you need to identify what things you have on the C drive that you can move.

And if these are large video files that you may have already watched then you can probably delete them anyway.

Some things you can do to make some space in the short term:

Empty your recycle bin

Rin "disk clean up" (this is a program supplied with Windows).

Have a look in your personal folders (Documents, Pictures, Videos) and see if there is anything you can delete.

See if you have an empty D drive (or other drive) and move some personal files from C to D or E (I mentioned this above)

After you have deleted them empty your recylce bin again.

[dibble1]

You've all been most helpful, will see how I get on.

[R1Geezer]

you should have a D drive too that will be almost empty, look at "my computer" and you should see a D drive. Set the options on iplayer etc to use the D drive.

[VHG]

>>you should have a D drive too....

When giving computer advce it is not a god idea to say "you should have a D drive" when that may be their CD/DVD drive and that may confuse a new user.

I they have a spare partition it may be their E drive for example.

Much better to say like I did above that you may have a D or E and one of them MAY be your CD drive.