What happens when a hard drive gets full?

Answer 1

You'll need to boot from either a floppy or a CD, and delete some unused files. Duriing normal operation, the system writes a fair amount of data to disk, and without sufficient free space you won't be able to use the computer. You might need to do a disk cleanup to clear some lost segments. If you can't get enough free disk space you may need to get a larger hard drive and transfer everything from the old disk. Good luck. Usually there is a lot of garbage and unused space available. 1. I presume you have run a program like WashAndGo (http://www.abelssoft.de/ordergo.htm) to tidy up and delete unnecessary stuff. You should also empty the recycle bin. 2. Use Windows Disk Defragmenter(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_defragmenter) to pack the disk. 3. If your disk is still full you need to backup (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup)the files on your disk. 4. Decide whether to delete the programs you don't use anymore using the Control Panel's "Add or Remove Programs utility." 5. You may decide you just need a bigger drive. In that case a new hard disk is the thing to get (http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,47370,00.asp). I'm guessing that you may be fairly new to this so before you get too enthusiastic drop by your local computer store and ask someone at the repair desk how hard it is to do yourself; you may just decide to let them do it. Good luck, Carlos