How To Stop A Mistake

 For those of us who own a PC... let me put you in on a secret. If you have two drives; like "C" and "D" and the company gives you like a whopping 235 gigabytes of space on "C." Yeah, I know. It sounds like a lot of space.

IT's NOT!!

You start adding programs and ALL of them want to install on the "C" drive and store all your work data of the program on the "C" drive, too.

Even 'downloads' go to the "C" drive.

That's when I discovered the problem. I was attempting to download a new program and well, I'd run out of space on "C" and it wouldn't download to completion.

Are you ready? My "D" drive had over 900G of free space. I'd only used, in all those years, only a measly 82G on the "D" drive. 

I had to go through the "C" drive and purge what I thought I could afford to lose.

All of this didn't happen overnight. I've had my laptop for about four years; maybe five. Okay, six years.

Going through all those old files was a nightmare. I had copies of copies. I decided to use the most logical method of deleting files. List them from largest to smallest. Get rid of the BIG files first. That seemed the best method.

I had a whole 683 megs of free space. Deleting files, starting in the Download directory, biggest first, I quickly was up to 1.2G of free space.  Whoo-hoo!! UGH! So much work, so little gained.

But, I kept at it. Then I realized, I was deleting files but the programs would just put more files back and fill up what little gain I had.

Move the programs to the "D" drive was my inspiration.

I created two directories on "D" named "Applications" and "App Data" which I would use to reload the programs from "C" to "D."

I made sure I had my data saved to another temporary area, made sure I had the registration key, and then I deleted the program. Once that was done, I reloaded the program but rather than allowing everything to go to default locations, I put the applications in the "Applications" directory, and if they wanted a storage or temporary work directory, I forced it to the "App Data" directory.

After a "delightful" day of moving programs to the "D" drive... all SIX of them so far, I had gained a little over 13G on the "C" drive.

I still have about another ten programs I hope to move. 

My future is simple.

Any new programs will be loaded to the "D" drive.

With any luck, when I get all the files moved to "D" as I hope, perhaps I'll have maybe 50G of free space on the "C" drive.

Of course, one good thing, with much of the "C" drive being emptied, perhaps my laptop will once again run quickly. Wouldn't that be nice?

So, what and why this blog entry?

If your computer is running slow, it might be running out of work space.

If you get a new computer, check and see how the manufacturer set it up - 1 HUGE drive, or 2 or more drives.

If ONE drive, enjoy. If two drives - remember, install as much software on the SECOND drive, not the "C" drive.

Trust me, "C" will fill up fast enough.

Okay, I've warned you, do as you wish.

Until next I ramble on...

UPDATE: I now have 30Gig of free space on my "C" drive. My laptop is flying in speed. I haven't seen this fast of reaction for almost two years. CLEAN OUT YOUR "C" drive.