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Old 12-06-2019, 12:39 PM
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How do I remove data from a totally full Hard Drive, when you cant find it

Hi guys

I have brought home my daughters Desk Top, it is a bit old however it seems to run OK.

It has Win 10 installed and very few programs, and has a very small Hard Drive of only 75 G/byts and has started to run slow according to my daughter.

So I have had a look and went through all that she had loaded, plus all her Documents ETC.

The total space used for these documents, pictures, and everything else come to about 24 G/byts, leaving about 50 G/byts according to my calculations,
however according to the hard drive info it is totally full with 73.8 G/byts leaving only about 200 M/byts of free space, any wonder it is running slow.

So my question is this where is all this used data and how do i get rid of it.

Thanks for your help.

Leon
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Old 12-06-2019, 01:07 PM
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Did you emptied recycle bin?
Maybe the drive is fragmented....


Try this utility to see what's on the drive:
https://windirstat.net/
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Old 12-06-2019, 01:47 PM
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Thank You for that information, and yes, the bin is cleared, but i did not think of de/fraging the drive, will have a go at that now.
I will also have a look at that link you supplied.

Thank You.

Leon
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Old 12-06-2019, 02:27 PM
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It has also been defraged and tells me all is OK, I think we might have to get rid of some other stuff and free up the drive.

Leon
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Old 12-06-2019, 02:49 PM
dikman (Richard)
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Drives are pretty cheap, install a second drive and transfer all the misc. stuff over, just leaving the operating system and basics on the C drive.
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Old 12-06-2019, 03:45 PM
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It probably has another partition on it, Maybe a copy of Windows 10 so that it can be reinstalled. You will need a hard drive utility to look at the drive in detail but you can start with the Hardware Manager program built into Windows to look at it to start with. I haven't got a Windows machine here at the moment so can't give more exact detail.

Like someone said drives are reasonably cheap, one way of speeding the machine up might be to invest in a SSD (Solid State Drive).

Regards
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  #7  
Old 12-06-2019, 05:42 PM
Ukastronomer (Jeremy)
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.TMP files are TEMPorary un needed files

if you use file explorer and type .tmp in the search box it will find all temp files, highlight and delete
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Old 12-06-2019, 05:43 PM
Ukastronomer (Jeremy)
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Have you googled "finding and deleting unwanted files in windows 10"

https://www.windowscentral.com/best-...ace-windows-10

Just do NOT defrag a SSD, a hard drive is ok if it is a SSD don't

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/...0-disk-cleanup
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Old 13-06-2019, 06:03 PM
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Thank you for all your input, we have decided to remove all the pictures and videos etc to an external drive and free up some space.
She has a laptop now as well and hardly even uses this Desk Top.
Thank You for your help and suggestions

Leon
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  #10  
Old 05-03-2022, 02:00 AM
corissaaskew
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Hello, I think you cannot locate the necessary hard drive because of the driver error mess and wrong registry commands. Try to use the CCleaner application and clean the registry. If this doesn't help, you can visit the salvagedata online site. The site I mentioned provides hard disk data recovery services for their customers to restore the data from your disk when you solve the directory issues with your disk. Have a great day, and I hope you will solve your problem with my help,leon!

Last edited by corissaaskew; 07-03-2022 at 10:21 PM.
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Old 13-03-2022, 03:15 AM
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Search in windows start menu for “Computer Management” and there is a drive management feature in that which will show you the C drive and if the physical device (75GB) has other partitions using the space. Depending who installed the OS there is likely a “Recovery”partition which is mostly wasted space. Windows is great at bloating and people use it poorly (ie let it do what it wants) so you easily lose a ton of space, Microsoft updates take up a lot of space, Windows downloads the the update somewhere on the drive, when installing it extract that update to another spot on the drive, so even before it installs the update its used at least twice the space for the update files, Office updates are a big offender of this and once its updated it doesn't always delete the installer and the extracted files, as it may need to roll back to an earlier version if an update fails or introduces bugs etc, and windows basically “forgets” these temporary files are there wasting space. Similarly programs do the same and many programs use temp files or scratch space when running low memory. None of these do it the same way or put their garbage in the same place. Plus windows installs stuff even if you dont want it or have deleted it already, some of their funky new features do this: like 3d printing program and similar stuff you probably dont want or would ever use (if you buy a 3d printer you get the software you need with it, you dont need micrsoft insinuating their program). So you can go through and uninstall the stuff you dont need like the games pack.

Look into CleanMyPC in the decades of computer building and repair its by far the best program to clean up free space by finding and deleting all the garbage programs have downloaded in case you want to buy a feature or whatever. CCleaner is great for a storebought pc to get rid of all the marketing garbage thats the computer comes with but it doesnt do a great job later on to clean up garbage anywhere like CleanMyPC does. People just dont know how to use their computers properly to keep it clean and running well and I bet the machine has a ton of viruses and malware on it too using space, memory and cpu so its running slow overal, as well as loading more malware in the background. Even on computers of “professional experts” I’ve met who claim their computers are clean I can find a bunch of malware and virusesrunning. They usually think the nortons that came with their computer will keep it clean and safe, very very wrong thinking there. People are selfishly blind in regards to cyber security and trust a piece of software will protect them always, when they are often the problem. People want what they want and will drop their guard to get what they want its how people get scammed and get infected computers its bad habits and / or wanting to get software without buyin the expensive way (ie they let a friend install their “free” copy onto their machine. A clean machine is not a set and forget scenario, I regularly do a variety of manual checks, digitally walking my digital perimeter looking for holes in the fence if you will but a lot of that requires skilled knowledge so I can’t advise do this and this and your computer is forever safe because its not that simple and wont stop others with access to the computer from compromising your machine unknowingly and in particular it wont stop you clicking on a dodgy link in an email or a popup notification. I guess with a 75GB drive its an old machine and the rest of the specs are pretty poor too. Its probably long past the point of needing a new OS reinstall, its good practice to do this every couple of years to reformat the drive and reinstall the operating system (Never restore it) to kill all viruses, clean temp files etc and get you back to a happy working state. Most people just buy a new pc instead but that the sort of disposable culture we live in. Depending on the usage of the computer a reinstall with Ubuntu Linux may be best as it wont be vulnerable to the windows based malware thats most machines pick up. If you’re dependent on Office you can probably import your documents into Googles equivalent program and have your files “in the cloud” available to you on any computer or device. But thats another cyber security area people are lazy about.Of course to do an os reinstall you need your original Windows install disc and the license code. Ubuntu if free an you can burn to disc or mount on a usb drive to install. Both take hours to do so expect to leave overnight and have a heap of updates to download and install too.
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Old 13-03-2022, 05:31 AM
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Thank You indeed Sil for your very informative response, plenty to get me thinking and through this

Leon
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Old 13-03-2022, 10:32 AM
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Sorry its long winded, decades of experience and wanting to bonk people with their computers pent up inside I guess. If you were local I would offer to sort out the machine for you. I expect I could upgrade the ram, certainly that 75gb drive, but not really set up since my stroke for doing that sort of stuff much these days. If you do set up windows again I highly recommend you google “malware hosts file winhelp2002” its a page/site that provides a hostfile and installation instructions. The hostsfile in windows provides a way to block network access to certain IPs and domains and I’ve used the list on this site for years on my machines and friends I’ve rebuilt. Its invisible to user and I trust this list is ONLY Blocking malicious addresses and no services or update addresses of legitimate software. They update the list periodically so visit back periodically and reinstall the updated list. Its a text file and not a program, but you might have to install a program to get it to update your hosts file as windows changed permissions access to the file to stop people accessing it themselves with notepad and screwing up things if they do something wrong. This page provides good instructions for normal folk. If you do things wrong you can mess up internet access to legitimate stuff but if you understand what you’re doing you can also use it to block all sorts of things. I’m a privacy supporter and i hate how most people dived into mobile phones (ooo shiny thing!) and threw away their privacy without a thought. But this hosts file change Will work just fine and will help a lot of tracking stuff you aren’t even aware of, and after years of experience with it I’m confident there are not legitimate entries in this list that will cause any issues for anyone using their computer and the internet normally. I’f you visit pirate software sites you might find things being blocked or unable to download but the normal people dont ever need to visit such sites and should even go peek either. This is the ONE essential security step everyone should implement. And I repeat It wont stop your computer from infection, but it will stop some methods of infection and marketing tracking etc from working, and its just configuring a vital part of the windows OS, Its not a program itself so takes up zero resouces, everthing trying to make a network connection is first compared against the hostfile to see if its allowed or needs to go to a certain location. That website explains better, but you should do this on your daughters desktop as well as her laptop too and really everyone should with any windows machine they have, its just a help and reduces thousands of attack vectors from the equation.it only takes one attack vector to get a foothold in a machine to open the floodgates for more.

Its a simple no brainer thing to do but most people dont understand windows and networking and wont ever be exposed to the existence of the hostsfile. Because it controls networking so fundamentally it is powerful and great for customising your home /office network. Its just a plain text file so easy to edit but therefore easy to type in a mistake and screw up networking which is why microsoft implemented permissions change to prevent people editing directly which of course make it avector of attack itself, an outsider could configure say google.com to take you to their own server that looks like google, same address etc, same look and same login, now they can capture your google credentials, paypal, amazon etc whatever they want really its just a little bit harder for people to edit their hostfile now so if a scammer convince someone to install a remote access program on their computer its just a little harder for them to modify your hostfile. Its confusing to simplify for people to comprehend. Hostsfile is just a tool, like a steak knife, (or if you’re American a fully automatic assault rifle), its something that is used under normal usage it can be improved (which is what I’m suggesting with the configure file from the above WinHelp200 site) but if handled badly or with bad intent can cause much damage.

My advice, do the search exactly as I provided above, read the site for your own information, then follow their installation instructions and do this at least once a year on every machine. I think their easies instructions does involve dowloading a tool specialised for editing the hostfile but beyond that and the archived hostfile they provide I think thats all to download, PM me if you like. Some internet security software keeps an eye on the hostsfile and might block or restore the default, but its easy enough to confirm its done anytime like afte a reboot just open Notepad, go to where the hostsfile lives in the c drive and drag it into notepad to view its contents.

Ok I’ll shut up now.
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Old 13-03-2022, 12:59 PM
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Sil, fell free to offer any advice, trust me mate i need it sometimes, thank you for your advice

Leon
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Old 13-03-2022, 03:08 PM
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Happy to help and its up to you to decide to follow it or not, its why i prefer helping in person where I can just set up stuff like the hosts file and its done and doesnt need updating but updating periodically does help expand its effectiveness and I can usually put together some quick and dirty instructions for them to follow in future and even if they lose or ignore it the machine wont stop working as a result. It dont blame people fore their ignorance, my knowledge comes from decades of experience both good and bad and i sometimes do things oddly but its a way i’ve learnt to trust. Its not as simple as checking out a course on youtube or buy this book, teaching doesn’t teach understanding. And most people just dont have interest in this sort of stuff and just trust Nortons will protect them always (which it wont) sp i’m happy to help someone i feel isnt skilled enough to help themselves, people who really should or even do know better i tend to remain quiet and let them drown instead of help. I get treated poorly a lot so some types of people just rub me the wrong way but i feel good about you and want to help. Just the years of reading you around the forum so feel free to ask me stuff just not Mac related i’m dumb as a bag of dead oxen thereas well as not an Apple fan..
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