how can i get my storage space back on my hard drive and back up my music files?

Question

out of almost 80 gigs i only have twenty percent left available.

Answer 1

there are two easy options i can think of:
1.) you can burn your mp3 files to a regular CDR or CDRW, however, since you have so many of them i would suggest burning them as data discs rather than the regular audio disc option. this way you can fit a whole lot more songs on a cd. i.e., on an audio cd you can only put about 80 minutes of material per disc, by using the data disc option instead, you could put about 700mb worth of mp3 files on that same disc(this would be equal to many entire albums as compared to 1 album on one disc.) one more thing, not all cd/dvd players can play data cds, many car cd players cant either, but they will work on your pc and on portable *mp3 cd players.

2.) you could also invest in a flash drive to put your music on. at walmart you can get a 1GB flash drive for about $20 bucks. a flash drive is also really handy, it is small enough to be put on a keychain, very light-weight(think of a BIC disposable lighter), and will work on almost any pc with a usb port. They are also pretty secure, your files can be encrypted in a vault on the drive and password protected. very fast way of transporting large files from one pc to another. ALSO, this is VERY IMPORTANT, flash drives will need to be replaced every few years depending on how you use them(about 2 years). this is because the ''flash'' memory works differently than say your hard drive which stores data magnetically. you can only write, erase and rewrite flash memory so many times before it becomes unusable.(no formatting neccesary i think) so with a flash drive you want to be selective/smart with how you use it, if you wanna store your music on it put it on there, but dont put it on there, erase it and replace it as frequently as you would with your hard drive. today's flash memory is very stable though and will only get better with time. usb flash drives are preprogrammed to store ''stuff'' fairly efficiently, they keep track of how many times a certain 'sector' has been written to and store your 'stuff' in the best place. ''bad'' sectors will accumulate with time and use, and all flash drives will need to be replaced eventually. I think it is still worth the money anyway, you get speed, convenience and portability of a large capacity for a low price. i would rather replace my 1GB flash every few years than waste my time with bigger floppy disks that in comparison provide virtually no storage capacity and are easily rendered useless. note, if you do get a flash drive, take good care of it, a large shock from dropping something on it or sitting on it could mess it up.


Space-saving tip: open my computer, right click on local disk (C:) click properties, on general tab put a check mark in box marked compress drive so save disk space. this will compress all files on your pc that can be SAFELY compressed. It will take a while, but it will save you a decent amount of space, and automatically compress new files as they are added.

hope it helps

Answer 2

You can defrag or run disk cleanup, but that will only help a little bit. you can compress some of your really large files, documents etc. You can delete some programs or files that you really dont use, or burn them on disk, if you have a burner. But the only way to really make a big difference is to delete stuff. If you have alot of music or video files, I bet that is the majority of the problem right there. If you dont have a cd burner, you can compress them even further. If they're allready mp3's they are pretty much compressed allready. You can set them to a lower bitrate, but the quality will lessen. Games take up alot of space too. You can uninstall the games, and just install them whenever you want to play them, then remove them again. That is kind of a pain, but so is running out of space!

Answer 3

Hello.

--------------------
Quick answer
--------------------
First and foremost - The reason you only have 20% available is because 80% of your hard drive is being used. There is no way to free up space without removing files.

Of course, you could lower the cache size of your internet browse and lower / remove the amount of space the recycle bin takes up (more on this below!), but the only way to really free it up is by deleting files.
--------------------------
To back up your music files, you have several options.
--------------------------
You can copy the songs onto a usb flash drive

You can copy the songs onto a seperate hard drive

You can burn the songs to a disk and then copy them back if you happen to lose them

----------------------------
Freeing up space
----------------------------
If you have a large file that is not needed then you can delete that.

To free up the space the recycle bin uses, right click on it, go to Properties, and then move the slider to the left.

For the file browser. go to the Internet Options menu and change the cache to a reasonable amount (say, 50MB or less).

Enjoy, I hope I was of service!

Answer 4

You can save your music or pic's and videos all on CD or DVD depending on your burner. Just burn them in data format.
file and catalog them and you can access them at any time just by playing them. It will free up your hard drive space..

Answer 5

well you can do both by burning your mp3s to DVD.