free up disc space/ hard drive

I am trying to defrag and the puter says it needs 15% at least of space to defrag properly and I only have 8% available, So it then says to delete unused files on my hard disc?, or hard drive, what is this and how do i do it?

 

Go to Start/Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs and see if there are any programs that you don't use. Games especially. Also look at your Java and see how many of them that are there. You only need the latest one which should be 1.6.0_16. The rest can be deleted. Then also do as Pete suggested with a disc cleanup with ALL the boxes checked. Also, I have gained a little space by using only 5% instead of the default of 12 or 15 (can't remember which it is) (old age). lol Clean up your e-mails also if you have lots of them saved and don't really need them. Make sure that your Sent Folder is empty and also your Deleted Items Folder.

 

You can also use WinDirStat to check what's eating up the space on your HDD. It's free.
http://windirstat.info/

For disk cleanup, I also second the in-built windows utility (as Evan has helpfully explained in the above post). It's quite effective, and the safest option.

Another good disk cleanup utility is Ccleaner, but don't change settings in that without knowing the implications.

For defragging with low disk space, the commercial defraggers (not free) are better than the native windows utility. For eg, I have defragged a couple of drives on my desktop with less than 5-6% free disk space, using Diskeeper 2009 Pro running in auto defrag mode (it's the defrag utility that I use; it's not free, but you can get fully functional free trial versions from their site and use it to defrag for your current needs). The advantage of utilities like Diskeeper is that they boot-defrag the MFT, pagefile and metadata ...these system files tend to get more fragmented when disk space is running lower than 15%.

 

open my computer click on the c drive then browse to the c:\windows folder all those windows update folders can go if your not planning on uninstalling any update thos can take up quite a bit of HDD space (if you cannot see them you'll need to open control panel and use the folder options setting open the second tab (VIEW) and tick hiden files and folder/ show hiden files folders and drives then untick the hide protected windows files checkbox)

 

This is my favorite - just ensure you use the custom install option and watch carefully to deselect the option to install the Yahoo Toolbar. Also, ensure Only delete files in Windows Temp folders older than 48 hours is unchecked. And with any cleaner, make sure you know your site credentials (username and password) as you may have to re-enter them on your next visit. Note CCleaner allows you to select cookies to keep so you can clean regularly, and not have to re-enter your credentials.

The recommendation to reduce System Restore size is not needed as SR always yields space when crowded. The only way to truly save space with SR is to disable SR completely, and that is not recommended. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300044

That said, deleting unused programs and files to relieve crowding is only a temporary solution as the disk will immediately start filling up again with updates and other files. So Pete was right on - time to buy a second drive, or replace your current drive with a bigger one.