Limited Space On My Laptop.HELP!!!!!!?

Question

I have HP Laptop and it orginally had like 22GB but know theres only like 4 GB left I've check my music and videos.etc.
But I cant find where all that space is coming from what do I do?

I've Check and my laptop has 37.26 GB to start with and has 5.12 GB left.!!

Answer 1

Sounds like you need to do some computer Spring Cleaning!

1. Clear out all Internet browser (IE, Netscape, Firefox, etc..) history, cookie, caches.

2. Empty out the Recycle Bin - competely.

3. Delete all and any temporary files. You did not say what operating system you had, so I'll assume Windows XP. The procedure is basically the same - even on a MAC.

a. Go to Search and type in *.tmp and and when all these files appear, just delete them.
b. Go to c:\windows\temp and delete all the files and folders within that directory.

4. Go to your download directory (I name mine "My Downloads) whatever file name you gave to the default directory where you download all your files from the Internet and delete all the files that you no longer need. Excutable files for applications that you have installed, trial programs that you tried and do not use anymore, funny pictures that got a laugh but are just taking space, etc.

5. Remove any programs that you no longer using. Go to Add/Remove Programs to perform this task safely.

6. You'll want to next perform a Disk Cleanup. In XP, go to Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Cleanup and follow the prompts.

Finally after all this is done, make sure all windows are closed and run Disk Defragmenter. In XP, go to Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Defragmenter and follow the prompts.

Answer 2

22 gigs on a laptop? Honestly, that sucks. I would just go to your nearest computer store and ask them how much it would be for an upgrade, hardware and installation. Music and videos eat up a lot of space. I've got over 40 gigs of videos just on one harddrive. It's not uncommon.

Answer 3

Here are some suggestion.

Running out of hard drive space? Here are some remedies.

When you bought your computer, you probably thought you would never use up all of your hard drive space. However, the impossible has happen and you need more space. You could always buy a larger hard drive but you don’t have to spend money. There are a number of things you can do to recover space on your current hard drive.

The most obvious solution is to delete useless and obsolete files. Windows XP comes with a disk cleanup utility, appropriately called “Disk Cleanup.” To access it, go to Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup. A new window will appear, be sure to check: Download Program Files, Temporary Internet Files, Offline Webpages, Microsoft Error Reporting Temporary Files, Recycle Bin and Temporary Files. You can elect to include Compress Files. This last option does not delete files; instead, it compresses old files. You can see the list of files which will be deleted by clicking [View Files].

After cleaning the hard drive, you should also defrag your hard drive. Oftentimes, files are saved on different sectors on a hard drive. You can consolidate the files and decrease the gaps between them by using Windows XP’s Disk Defragmenter. To access it, go to Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter. A new window will appear. Click [Analyze] to see if your hard drive needs to be defragmented. If so, click [Defragment] to begin the process. The process can take minutes and even hours depending on the degree of fragmentation on the disk.

Windows XP comes with a backup utility, System Restore. System Restore creates backups of the registry. It comes in handy when your system crashes. System Restore can roll your computer back to a healthy state. By default, System Restore can commandeer up to 12% of your hard drive space. Most users don’t need such a tremendous amount of space. You can manually adjust the amount of space allocated to System Restore. Right click the “My Computer” icon and select Properties > “System Restore” tab > under Disk space usage, slide the bar back to a more reasonable 3% > [Apply] > [O.K.].

System Restore is not the only utility which hogs up hard drive space. The Recycle Bin also takes up space. You can adjust the size of the Recycle Bin, right click the Recycle Bin icon on the desktop and scroll down to Properties. A new window will appear. On the “Global” tab, slide the bar back from 10% to a more reasonable 3%.

Besides deleting temporary Internet files, you can also decrease the size of Internet Explorer (IE) disk cache. The default setting is 1024 MB (1.0 GB). Start IE and, from the menu bar, go to Tools > Internet Options > “General” tab > [Settings] > under disk space, enter a value of 50 – 150 MB.

There are several free third party utilities which can even recover more hard drive space. My favorite disk cleaner is CCleaner (a.k.a. Crap Cleaner). CCleaner can permanently delete a long list of files, such as: temporary Internet files, temporary files, temporary download files, cookies, Windows log files and, the ever difficult to delete, index.dat files. CCleaner can also delete obsolete files generated from nonWindows software applications, such as: Firefox, Opera, Spybot Search & Destroy, Lavasoft’s Ad Aware, WinZip, WinRAR, Nero, Kazaa and Macromedia Flash Player to name a few. CCleaner can delete files with multiple passes, permanently deleting the files – not even a forensic team would be able to recover them. There are 2 other programs that deserve a honorable mention, EasyCleaner and IE Privacy Keeper.

Oddly, Windows XP Disk Defragmenter does not defrag either the paging file or the registry. There are 2 ways to defrag the paging file. The easiest way is to use Sysinternal’s Page File Defrag. By the way, Microsoft bought out Sysinternet a few months ago. The utility is quite easy to use and there is no installation required. Start Page File Defrag and select to defrag at the next reboot. You can defrag the paging file manually. I listed the instructions to defrag manually on a previous post.

If you want to defrag the registry, the twin software programs ERUNT and NTREGOT are the best. ERUNT creates backups of the registry much like Windows System Restore while NTREGOT defrags the registry. ERUNT has a distinctive advantage over Windows System Restore since ERUNT allows you to manually delete any registry backup.

Answer 4

run disk clean up on ur C drive, delete all your temp internet files and cookies, that will gain a little ground back, remove any proggies your no longer usuing, go through your documents folder to see if something is lingerining there..but most will be used up by music and video...maybe u could burn some of that onto a CD or DVD....

Answer 5

Dial 22 gigs on a laptop? Honestly, that sucks. I would just go to your nearest computer store and

Answer 6

If you partitioned your HD-Drive then this is where the problem could be: it's posible that you didn't format all your partitions corectly. Recheck that all your partitions are formated.