How to clear c drive memory

Factual Questions
1

I was loaned a Buffalo Ministation that contains over 200GB of Grateful Dead concerts :slight_smile: I have our previous computer, a 2002 Dell running Windows XP, set up and ready to receive as much of that music as it’s 75GB capacity will take.

What is the easiest way to clear out the c drive memory of the 65GB of data that is on it now?? I do not need any of it, I already copied all the old family pics to our current machine, and the rest of it is crap.

Google fu has told me to delete stuff manually, but that seems like a lot of work and risky as well. There must be a simple way to open up some much needed space.

As you can probably tell, I Am Not A Computer Geek (IANACG). Thank you.

2

Doing it manually is probably safest. Just delete a whole directory at a time once you have a quick look to see what’s in there.

Before you do that, run Ccleaner and clear all the caches, and delete all the programs that you don’t want. Obviously leaving all the system ones alone. Then run the registry cleaner to clear out any residuals.

To do it completely you would have to format the disc and reinstall the operating system and any other software you need.

3

The C drive is normally where your system files reside. Unless you have more than one hard drive and purposely installed Windows onto a drive other than C, it is not a good idea to clear out any files you didn’t create yourself (i.e., your own pictures, music, etc.).

To find those you can use Windows’s Find feature to look for files by type (images or audio) and delete them.

But frankly it’ll be easier just to spend $50 to $100 on a new hard drive… you can get at least a terabyte (1024 GB) for that kinda money now.

4

And being a non-geek you can get an external USB drive in that price range, plug it in, and you’re ready to go.

5

Costco is selling Seagate 1TB external hard drives for about $50-$70, give or take. Or a 3TB drive for about $120.

6

it would take time to delete data. it will take much time to decide what 1/3 of the data you can copy.

buy a 1TB external drive and get it all. it will take a long time to listen to 200G.

7

Looks like purchasing another external drive and copying the music to it is the way to go. Thanks, guys, that’s what I’ll do. :smiley:

8

Geek kibitz: You do not have “memory” on your C drive. You have storage capacity. Memory is on your RAM chips, not your hard disk.

I’m not a Windows user but I think you can safely toss anything that’s within your personal folder (all that “My Documents”, “My Pictures”, “My Pretty Pony” etc etc crap that exists @ C:\Users\YourNameHere\ )

9

Only 200GB? Amateur :wink:

Serious answer, get an external hard drive and then get the rest of the gigs you haven’t already got!

10

c:> del .

11

** Don’t Do That. YOU WILL DELETE YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM **

12

Heck, you can get a 128 Gig thumb drive for $70. Carry your music on your keychain. I carry a thumb drive in my pocket every day.

I’d trust a real hard drive more than a thumb drive. Thumb drives are great but you need the files backed up somewhere.

13

Probably nothing will happen. The OS files are either hidden and/or reside in subdirectories.

del . doesn’t get any subfolders, just whatever’s in the root C:\ directory (which usually isn’t much, at least not from the system itself).

14

One thing you can check is the size of your winsxs folder; there is a cleanup tool for it that you can run on a one-time basis to compress/clean it up.