How large a hard drive do I need ?

[dzj]

Nothing that Format C wouldn't fix.

A HUGELY irresponsible comment without knowing if the OP knows what that means.

If a statement is followed by a it is meant to inflect a joking statement.
I'm sure he knows that much.

 

[Graham Orm]

Hmm, disk cleanup only yields 0.75 gb, worthwhile but not addressing the bigger issue. Just analyzing with CC too but expect it will show much the same.

Downloaded WinDirStat by coincidence in the meantime after googling and have run that but not sure what the results mean !

It shows the C drive as being 80 gb or so and then lists below it the various folders and their sizes, which I guess are subsets of the 80 gb, in which case it's telling me what I thought at the start, that the Windows Explorer pie chart thing is misleading massively when it says that 270 gb is used ?

I'll take a look at the system restore stuff in a minute if CC doesn't pick it up....

Cheers, Paul

Have you tried a de-frag?

 

[RogerS]

Hmm, disk cleanup only yields 0.75 gb, worthwhile but not addressing the bigger issue. Just analyzing with CC too but expect it will show much the same.

Downloaded WinDirStat by coincidence in the meantime after googling and have run that but not sure what the results mean !

It shows the C drive as being 80 gb or so and then lists below it the various folders and their sizes, which I guess are subsets of the 80 gb, in which case it's telling me what I thought at the start, that the Windows Explorer pie chart thing is misleading massively when it says that 270 gb is used ?

I'll take a look at the system restore stuff in a minute if CC doesn't pick it up....

Cheers, Paul

Have you tried a de-frag?

I can't see how that is going to achieve anything. The OS will report on total free space whether it is one contiguous block or fragmented.

 

[Rhossydd]

Nothing that Format C wouldn't fix.

A HUGELY irresponsible comment without knowing if the OP knows what that means.

If a statement is followed by a it is meant to inflect a joking statement.
I'm sure he knows that much.

Not everyone reading your 'advice' will understand the graphic or what is meant by it. Never over estimate people's understanding of what you're suggesting.
Formatting hard drives is usually an absolute last resort for resolving issues and should only be undertaken if the user fully knows how to reinstall the operating system, programmes, data and has the necessary installation files available.

 

[Graham Orm]

Hmm, disk cleanup only yields 0.75 gb, worthwhile but not addressing the bigger issue. Just analyzing with CC too but expect it will show much the same.

Downloaded WinDirStat by coincidence in the meantime after googling and have run that but not sure what the results mean !

It shows the C drive as being 80 gb or so and then lists below it the various folders and their sizes, which I guess are subsets of the 80 gb, in which case it's telling me what I thought at the start, that the Windows Explorer pie chart thing is misleading massively when it says that 270 gb is used ?

I'll take a look at the system restore stuff in a minute if CC doesn't pick it up....

Cheers, Paul

Have you tried a de-frag?

I can't see how that is going to achieve anything. The OS will report on total free space whether it is one contiguous block or fragmented.

So what exactly does a de-frag do? i was under the impression it tidied up the HD and created more space?

 

[Rhossydd]

So what exactly does a de-frag do? i was under the impression it tidied up the HD and created more space?

No it doesn't create more space it just makes accessing the files faster by moving each allocation unit of the file closer together.

To use a woodworking analogy;
If every time you put your router down an assistant took it to bits and placed the bits anywhere around the workshop that had a free space, when you next needed it it might take a while to find it and put it together again.
If you 'de fragged' the workshop you'd put all the router bits next to each other and tidied up all the other similar tools into the same place. Saw blades next to the saw, jig saw blades into the jig saw box etc.
No more space, but much quicker to find anything and get on with work.


A side note:
This isn't necessary on SSDs as they have no moving parts to slow down access. De-fragging an SSD isn't recommended.

 

[thick_mike]

When you use a hard drive for a while files are constantly being written and deleted and written over again. The hard drive will write those files in whichever spaces it sees and not necessarily in a continuous block. This means that a single 100Mb file may be written in 10 different blocks of 10Mb each in random places on the hard drive. The disk controller knows where these blocks are from an index and nails them back together again when you need to use them.

The blocks can become so fragmented (split into smaller files) that the time taken to retrieve them and nail them back together again becomes significant and it leads the system to slow down.

Defraging the hard drive shuffles the files around so that they are stored in larger blocks and the files can be accessed more easily. The amount of space taken up by the files is the same, but they are in lager blocks (like a 60 piece jigsaw rather than a 2000 piece jigsaw of the same picture).

 

[dzj]

Not everyone reading your 'advice' will understand the graphic or what is meant by it. Never over estimate people's understanding of what you're suggesting.
Formatting hard drives is usually an absolute last resort for resolving issues and should only be undertaken if the user fully knows how to reinstall the operating system, programmes, data and has the necessary installation files available.

You sir, are absolutely correct. There are all kinds of people out there.
To the OP: Do not format your C partition on hard drive. It was suggested in jest, hence the

 

[paulm]

No formatting going to happen here !

How would I post a screenshot up on here of the WinDirStat results ?

As mentioned, it shows and confirms what I had figured out, that there is around 80 gb of disk space used, yet when I change the option on that same programme and results to display free space as well, it shows the used space up to 273 gb (file count etc remains unchanged though) which is what all the other windows views were showing.

Maybe WinDirStat is using the windows explorer stats for free space rather than calculating itself ?

There aren't any partitions on the disk showing except for the C (just under 500 gb) and a system reserved area of 0.1 gb.

CC cleared out 1.7 gb of stuff but that's just tickling around the edges.

There's a fair few system restore points listed but not sure how to clear the older ones ?

Cheers, Paul

 

[Rhossydd]

How would I post a screenshot up on here of the WinDirStat results ?

You grab a screenshot by hitting PrtScn on your keyboard. That then puts the screen image into the clipboard, so go to your image editor of choice, create a new blank image and then paste the screenshot (Crtl + V). Then adjust to suit (crop etc.) and save as a JPG. Then add the image like any other to your message.

 

[dzj]

This might help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0BfkkWf56c

 

[Harbo]

I think, unless you are going to be continuously ruthless removing stuff from your hard drive, you will eventually find 256 too small?
I got fed up of running out of space and having to dump things so I recently upgraded my MacBook to 1Tb hybrid one for the princely sum of £70.
Much faster than the old one and by all accounts not much slower than an SSD?
I'd go for maximum capacity every time.

Rod

 

[paulm]

Thanks for the utube link, got rid of another 5 gb !

And now WinDirStat and Windows Explorer both show 87 gb used and the rest free

So I guess must have been the system restore points and other stuff like that ?

Great, so now confident I can get by on a 256 gb ssd drive with no issues, and learnt a lot of other stuff along the way that I didn't know before :lol:

Thanks to all for the help

Cheers, Paul