My hard drive is full. No big deal, but...

Factual Questions
1

Hi!
I just installed a 200Gb (and 200 buck) external hard drive, put all my files in it, then chucked my PC files in the waste basket and emptied it. But the disk is still full, showing all 55Gb. Can you explain that, pretty please ? I’m having no problem except there’s no improvement in working speed.

Subsidiary question:
Is there any advantage in moving some software to the ext. drive, like Nero, Musicmatch, Winamp, Picasa, Adobe ? I’ve asked some sales people but their answers are conflicting.
(Have a Compaq Presario with Windows XP home, 256Mb RAM)

2

If I’m not mistaken, you cannot off-load the system files (XP) to an external drive, therefore the 55 mb that you quote still remains on your “C” or boot drive.

3

Don’t put your apps on the external drive. After all, it may not always be there.

4

Empty the recycle bin - until this is done, the files are still there if you wanted to recover them

5

Run chkdsk /F from the command prompt. You might have some file system corruption; this should correct it.

6

Assuming you’re keeping your OS files on the C drive and programs+data on the external unless you were down to your last few 10 gigs or so, overall system response is actually likely to be somewhat slower with an external USB/Firewire drive than an internal IDE drive if you’re running all your main apps off the external. Very much slower if your system is using USB 1.1 and not USB 2 ports.

IMO the biggest speed improvement for most systems short of upgrading and replacing the CPU and RAM is to save your data, format the disk and do a clean re-install of the OS and your apps. 90% of the chronic speed problems I see on modern systems are related to spyware-malware-shitware issues, incomplete un-installs, orphaned drivers still loading for long gone apps, etc. accumulating over time and choking system resources. XP with 256 megs and a CPU over 1.5 GHz or so should give adequate performance for anything short of multimedia editing & design or gaming.

7

[Slight Hijack]
In your opinion, is the program Easy Cleaner an effective tool for eliminating many of these problems short of an OS reinstall?

8

I would store stuff like pictures, mp3s, and videos on an external drive, since speed of access isn’t crucial there. Your applications and games should stay on devices internal to your PC, as the transfer rate for IDE, SATA, and SCSI is much higher than USB.

As for your files… not sure. If you right-click on your drive and select ‘Properties’ there should be a button marked ‘Disk Cleanup’. It might take an hour to start, but it might be worth a run.

To find where all your disk space is being used, I always hype the free Disk Scanner, made by a guy called ‘Steffen Gerlach’. It takes a bit to scan at first, but the resulting pie-charts clearly show where your disk space is going.

9

Thanks, fellow dopers, for your rapid-fire answers, and good advice.

10

Move the paging file to a different partition than the one your OS lives on.

11

Patty, that’s highbrow language (and Hebrew to me). What’s a paging file and where is that other partition ? (sorry for being so deficient).

12

Read This.

When you get to step #6, you’ll be able to see how many drives you have and which are available for virtual memory. I am not sure if outboard drives will show up here.

13

Crystal clear. Thanks a lot.