Checking available disk space.
To check the available disk space on your computer hard drives, in Windows XP find and double click on My computer
(
or Computer in Vista) either on your desktop or the start menu. In the list of drives that appears, locate
the Local Disk (C) shortcut and right click on it. This will bring up a small drop
down menu. Click on Properties to bring a graphical pie chart representation
and information of both the used space and the free space left on the drive.
The the example above this 1 Terabyte drive has plenty of free space. Windows Vista
shows the same information using a bar chart next to the hard drive icon in computer.
As the computer approaches 1 gig of free disk space, over all system performance begins to degrade at this point, adding more memory,
or defragging the disk may only temporarily help as the disk
finishes filling up and applications begin to fail when launched or trying to perform
a save.
At 1 gig its highly recommended to perform disk cleanup. Windows will begin to warn you about low disk space once you reach below half a gig, however usually by this time you've already experienced slow symptoms and application failures.
.
Disk performance is effected when a computer uses up all its memory, so as you open more and more applications it begins
to use up all its available memory then begins
to use the disk more to help keep up. This function is called the paging file.
At some point in time with a full hard drive the computer has no space left to write
to the paging file and the system becomes unstable leading to extreme slowness and
finally system failure.
Most new computers will come with generous amounts of disk space at least 160 gigs
now a days, however if you have an older computer more than say 2 or 3 years
old from this writing it may have as little as 80 gigs, and for systems as old as
4 years only 40 gigs and that's not much for the large applications, music and video
files being downloaded these days.
More than likely when not due to a virus its large amounts of data , music and video
files which take
up plenty of space on drives these days. Its a good idea to check on your disk
space periodically just to make sure it isn't getting to full. If necessary
back up and archive the files you don't need then delete them from the drive to free up space. Remember to empty the recycle bin or your deleted files will still
take up space on the drive. After you've cleaned up your disk then performing a defrag makes sense and will help use the freed space more efficiently.
Hard
drives have become less expensive with more capacity in the last few years
and so another option is to add an inexpensive USB drive to easily transfer your files freeing up
the valuable space your system drive needs to run efficiently.
Keep your disk cleaned up and I'll know you'll be happy.