No Disk Space on C Drive

[videolady]

During a Disk Defrag before starting a new project, I realized my C drive does not have enough free space and I am so uncertain what I can move to E drive or delete (or add space somehow).

I don't know what specs you need to know to guide me through this. So here is some initial info:

Windows XP Professional
Hard Disk Drives are labelled:
WindowsXP (C:) that says Capacity = 34.4GB, and 31.3GB is Used with only 3.14GB Free and 500gb (E:) that says Capacity = 465 GB, and 166GB is Used with 299GB free.

Any work I do (MS Office or Adobe movie projects), I save on the E drive and thought my C drive only has Programs and other files that need to be on that drive.

I defraged E easily but when I tried to defrag the C drive, it said I need 15% free space. I started with about 2% free and so I moved C: My Documents to E so I now have 9% free and I ran defrag anyway. Then I tried to move things like Docs and Setting folder and a subfolder in Doc and Settings but it stopped me saying they had to remain on the C drive.

I think the lack of free C space is hindering my project that I just started. For example, after completing a 2.5 minute intro, I got an error trying to save it as an avi file before starting the next section. I closed everything, reopened and saved as AVI right away and was successful, but I am sure things will only get worse as I get deeper into this new project.

[Chris B]

As a first step I would suggest using the inbuilt disk clean-up. The below link tells you how to do this.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310312

I am assuming that the E drive is an internal drive and not a plug in one - if it is then the below is not helpful.

I would look where your paging file is stored - and if you have hibernate enabled disable this - both should free up space
Disable hibernate with this:
http://support.gateway.com/s/SOFTWARE/M ... 9422.shtml
and move your paging file to the E drive
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307886

34GB is very small for a primary drive and an older installation of windows may simply fill this up. I'm sure others will be along to offer additional advice...

[videolady]

Yes, my E drive is not external.

I ran Disc Cleanup and now am at 11%. I tried the 'second step' - Windows cleanup but got errors.

Syscomgr.exe - Ordinal Not Found: The ordinal 1118 could not be located in the dynamic link library WSOCK32.dll
And Windows XP Setup library iis.dll could not be located or function OcEbtry could not be found. Specific error code is Ox7e.

I moved the entire My Documents file from C to E drive earlier to free up 1.63GB of space and I wonder if it has some files that needed to stay on C?

[Peru]

During a Disk Defrag before starting a new project, I realized my C drive does not have enough free space and I am so uncertain what I can move to E drive or delete (or add space somehow).



Windows XP Professional
Hard Disk Drives are labelled:
WindowsXP (C:) that says Capacity = 34.4GB, and 31.3GB is Used with only 3.14GB Free and 500gb (E:) that says Capacity = 465 GB, and 166GB is Used with 299GB free.

Your best option would be to replace your C drive with a larger one.
Cloning would be the easiest way to do this.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

It sounds like your PC is quite old (Win XP, (relatively) small HDD as the system drive) .

If budget permits then I would consider buying a replacement PC rather than replacing the smaller HDD.

[videolady]

I have house renovations going on now so I don't know which way to go with the computer. Any idea of costs to compare - replace HHD or get new PC?

[Peru]

If you can change it yourself, check out the NewEgg link (Muvipix Store > NewEgg) on this site. You should be able to do it for less than $100.00.

See here to learn how to do it:
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+ ... e&ie=UTF-8

[videolady]

Call me a wimp, but that looks too intimidating for me to try! I think I'll call the shop where I bought this and see what he may be able to do for me to replace the primary drive. What suggestions does anyone have for a size I should ask for? Something that is worth my while but not too expensive.

Thx everyone.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

I live in the UK so I can't directly compare prices for you.

In general terms (using UK HDD prices and a system from Dell as comparators) a replacement PC built to a decent specification will cost about five or six times the cost of a replacement HDD, give or take.

[Peru]

I think I'll call the shop where I bought this and see what he may be able to do for me to replace the primary drive. What suggestions does anyone have for a size I should ask for? Something that is worth my while but not too expensive.

There is not much difference in price between 500 GB ab 1 TB, so I would go with 1TB.

Get a quote for the drive and labor before you have it done. It may not be cost effective if you don't do it yourself.

[Bob]

I suspect that the computer is old enough that the drives are the older IDE interface drives, not the current SATA drives. If so, choices will be limited. Generally, you'll find 160GB to 500GB new drives for around $80 or so and refurbished drives for less. But, I wouldn't recommend refurbished drives. The price should be about the same for ide drives, so you might as well go with the largest capacity drive available. Check with your dealer to see what type of drives are in the system and what replacements are available. Check also what the fee will be for installing the replacement drive and transferring the old drive contents to the new.

[videolady]

Yes, a quick talk with one employee said that I have the old IDE drive and it would be expensive to have them replace it for me. But suggested I make 2 folders on my E drive (Adobe Temp and Adobe Final) and then go into Preferences and redirect those files to those folders.
Then if that doesn't work, they could ghost all of my C drive content to the E drive.
Does this make sense?

[Bob]

I'm surprised they didn't quote you a price. IDE drives are still available. It sounds more like they didn't want to bother with it. I would have expected the cost of the new disk plus the service charge to clone and replace to be in the $140 to $200 range. You will need to decide whether it's more appropriate for you to invest that much on the old system or put it towards a newer system.

You could certainly use Ghost to clone the system C drive to the other disc, but that will wipe out anything on the other drive. I suspect you wouldn't want to lose that data.

Definitely check your Adobe settings. You didn't say, but I'm assuming you have one of the Premiere Elements versions. There are two things to check, the media cache database and the scratch disk locations. You get to both from the menu: Edit>Preferences. These screen captures are from version 7, your version may look different.

mediacachedb.JPG

Select "media" from the preferences window. Click on the "Clean" button to get rid of old entries. You need to do this from time to time or the size will build up considerably. The default location will be on the C: drive. To change it, click on the browse button next the location of the media cache database. Navigate to the desired location on the E drive and click ok, you will be given the option to copy the old database to the new location.

scratchdisks.JPG

Next, select the "scratch disks" option and make sure "Same as Project" is selected for each type of scratch disk. This will place all the scratch files together in the same location as your project. When you create a new project, select a new folder on the E drive for it. That keeps everything together and makes it easier to manage your files.

[videolady]

Thank you so much. I followed your instructions (great, by the way) and it has given me more free space on C - now at 13%. I will work more on the project and see if it is enough for now before I need to decide where to invest. Will be back soon with results.