Okay, here is the situation. I have 2 hardrives in my rig C: (main) and D: (music, videos, and battlefield 2142) My C: really isnt supposed to have any really big programs on it, except that it does have World fo Warcraft on it, and its numerous patches, along with microsoft office and a few other minor things. The problem is my computer runs a bit slow at times and I heard that once the hard drive gets past around 75% filled, this can slow that machine down. Well my hard drive is at 91% full, and I cant seem to figure out what is on there that is hogging teh space. I did disk clean up and defrag and it doesnt free much up. MY suspicions is that I hard a hard time installing BF2142 due to installation bugs, and while I ended up trying to install/reinstall it on both drives, it was a total mess, and was advised to clean out my registry, but use "system restore" in case I messed up my machine in the process. Make a long story short, I think I have hidden "restores" that are not needed, that are clogging up my drive. so.... after all of this I could use some advice on: 1) what is the best way to see what is actually tying up all the space? 2) If saved "system restores" DO TAKE up space which I was told, how do I find them do get rid of the 3 or 4 I have? Or anything else would be valuable. thanks!
Portable programs like Disktective and i.Disk can show storage usage by folder. There are other portable programs like Disk Cleaner and CCleaner can "clean up" crap on hard drives. I don't know if those programs identify system restore snapshots but the first two can get you and idea of where the storage piggies are.
One thing that might help is to bring up Explorer, do a search on your C: drive, and look for all files over some size (like, say 10000 or 100000 k). This will show you all the very big files on your drive. You can also use Explorer to right click on folders and see the properties, which will tell you how much disk space all the files in that directory take up (and if there are lots of small files, this can take a while). Right click on My Computer icon and select "Properties" from the menu. This brings up the System Properties menu. Select the "System Restore" tab. You can turn off System Restore by selecting that check box at the top (which I really do not recommend). Otherwise select the drive letter, hit the Settings button, and change how much disk space you use. You can turn off system restore on any drive without your system files on it.
I was surprised at how much space System Restore took, like a few gigabytes! So every little while I clean it up (it keeps the most recent): (assuming you have winxp) Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Cleanup -> More Options -> System Restore Clean Up
If you check your C: properties and do a "Disk Cleanup" that may or may not help. Sometimes those temp files (both internet and install) get in the way. If you save downloaded installer files, maybe you could put them on a CD or delete them.
That depends on what you change. If like the thread originator (and me) you have data on one drive and a rarely changing system drive, the restore could just take up a small amount of disk space of you manage it right, and you still have lots of restore points.
thank you everyone. This has been helpful (all of it) and it has freed up some space. There were some BF2142 files that were stil left over from one of the earlier botched installations that were hogging up space.