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    HDD only 900mb left is this bad for the laptop

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by jwl3429, Oct 12, 2006.

  1. jwl3429

    jwl3429 Notebook Geek

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    my lap hd has only 900 mb of space left will this effect the notebooks stability and what happens if it get full will my laptop still function okay
     
    jwl3429, Oct 12, 2006
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  2. moon angel

    moon angel Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    No. You need a certain amount of free space for your laptop to run at all, really. If it runs out it will become very VERY slow. I suggest you backup some stuff to DVD very quickly!
     
    moon angel, Oct 12, 2006
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  3. jwl3429

    jwl3429 Notebook Geek

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    unfortunately no way to dvd backup, notebook is 4 years old looking to upgrade and this makes it a more immediate need
     
    jwl3429, Oct 12, 2006
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  4. Kil4Thril

    Kil4Thril Notebook Enthusiast

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    That isn't necessarily true, but Jess is likely correct. There may be some differences depending upon operating system and other installed hardware, but it sounds like some housecleaning/upgrades are in order.
     
    Kil4Thril, Oct 12, 2006
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  5. jwl3429

    jwl3429 Notebook Geek

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    i use windows xp home does anyone know what the minimum space i need is?
     
    jwl3429, Oct 12, 2006
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  6. unknown555525

    unknown555525 rawr

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    Every pc or notebook will begin to go extremely slow and unstable if you let it get under 250MB on windows XP. You should have atleast 15% of your hard disk left to keep it running good.
     
    unknown555525, Oct 12, 2006
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  7. Qhs

    Qhs Notebook Evangelist

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    Not quite. My six year old desktop was running without much problems with only 3% left. Try looking for HDMP files in the PCHEALTH folder in your WINDOWS directory. If you have a ton of them like mine did, then delete away. I got 14.4GB back from thoes useless dump files. HOWEVER, only do this if you are very experienced with Windows/PC/Troubleshooting.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 8, 2015
    Qhs, Oct 12, 2006
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  8. thekm

    thekm Notebook Guru

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    pah, I run out of room all the time... but you'll need about 100mb for running room. Depending on your burn rate, this may last a while.

    ...but now's the time to be throwing stuff overboard. Clear out your internet cache, and move that slider towards nothing. A lot of people leave the cache for IE on the far-too-high settings it defaults to, and simply run out of room that way.

    On top of this, clear out all your temp directories (c:\windows\temp)...
    ...remove any software you're not using (expecially any modern games)... delete any large files, etc etc.

    If you're a photoshop user, if it's ever crashed on you, or windows has crashed while using it, then it's left some nice juicy tmp files behind.


    OR... the easy migration plan is to consider an external USB hard drive. Can use it for any large files, moving PC's, and other fun things. Last time I ran out of room I didn't have anywhere for it to go, so this is the route I took.
     
    thekm, Oct 13, 2006
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  9. Fred from NYC

    Fred from NYC Notebook Evangelist

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    Right-click on the Recycle Bin, select Properties, and reduce its maximum size. That should free up some hard drive space.
     
    Fred from NYC, Oct 13, 2006
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  10. matt.modica

    matt.modica Notebook Consultant

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    Run the disk cleanup and CCleaner. Be sure to compress old files.
    http://www.ccleaner.com/
    You will need disk space to defrag the hard disk.
     
    matt.modica, Oct 13, 2006
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  11. Schmohey

    Schmohey Notebook Enthusiast

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    I've been running my comp with 0 bytes on the C drive. Yes, it will be SLOW and you will expereince problems with the internet.
     
    Schmohey, Oct 13, 2006
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  12. firstwave

    firstwave Notebook Evangelist

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    Defrag with Diskeeper, delete all temp files, and um... delete porn and movies? :p Or you could get an external HDD. They are not that expensive right now either.
     
    firstwave, Oct 14, 2006
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