Using Win XP on a Cpmpaq Presario 330 and i'm trying to free up some space on a friends computer. She lost the factory drivers disc so i'm trying to do it without wiping out the drive. There is no music, about 20 photos and nothing else i can see that would almost fill the 70 gb on the hard drive. I ran the system recovery to see what that would do and it freed up 16GB. Are there any programs you can recommend to wipe out more stuff on this drive?

The drive seems to be constanly scanning.

Hi Recorddork,
You could try doing a defragmentation. That might free up some space by organizing all the files correctly. Before you do that, run CCleaner
That will clean out all the temp files and can free a considerable amount of space. Be sure to uncheck the option for the Yahoo toolbar when you install it.

You could also go to add/remove and see if some programs could be uninstalled if she doesn't need or use them anymore.

Do them in this order: add/remove, CCleaner, then defrag the drive.

Are you sure there is no malware? That might also account for the drive constantly reading. Check here: Malware Removal and Prevention Do this first if you are unsure.

Hope this helps.

i did a defrag and it freed up no space. There are no popups are redirects on teh computer. I feel there is a problem with the drive because after the defragment it said it could still be defragmented.

ran cc cleaner and it barely freed up anything, running spybot and ad aware now, spybot is halfway thru and found nothing yet

What is it showing in task manager? Is anything using up a lot of cpu cycles when nothing is happening? Is is different in safemode? Does the HDD do the same in safemode?

Do you have SP1 or SP2? Spybot and Ad-Aware are good programs, but there are better ones in the MRP.

One thing to ascertain - do you know this is a 70 GB drive from Windows, or do you know it is a 70 GB from the computer specs from Compaq?

Compaq has long been notorious for putting hidden partitions that are not accessible to Windows on the drive, in effect lessening the actual drive space available on the main system partition (the one where Windows is located). I would go back and use the Disk Management too to verify the actual sizes of the partitions on the drive, and then use a disk analysis tool such as this one to see where all the space has been used.

Another thing to consider is that, with system restore turned on, it will take up a lot of space - to remove old system restore files, you'll need to use the disk cleanup utility as detailed here.

thanks that disk analysis found 50 gb of hidden music and videos, now 62.5 gb free.

*hidden*? And did the user not know [s]he was hiding music? Or are there multiple users of the computer?