I have a laptop that I got given to me brand new I've been using it since July (just till I can save up for my new PC I will be building late January)
There's a 500GB hard drive but the manufactures made it so that it is split into two parts, the C Drive is only 75GB (which EVERYTHING goes onto) and the other 373GB is used for drivers labelled as D drive (which there are less than 10MB of, so it's just space that can't be used)
(I've tried going into disk management, but cannot add / remove capacity to the "drives")
Recently though the C hard drive started to lose anywhere between 100MB - 1GB of hard drive space every 3 - 10 minutes)
I thought this was a virus or software fault so I did the "remove everything and re-install windows" (the one which reverts it back to factory settings, with all the free trials and that), and this is STILL happening.
Sorry for rambling on but I needed to explain the situation, so you could try and help me.
1 - What tools / software (preferably free) can I use to "check" that the hardware is still working as it should.
2 - If the hardware is working as it should, then Do I need to go into the BIOS of my machine and "reinstall" the windows 8 (and if so what do I need to do with the hard drive (the partion and the small C drive)?
Sorry for the noob question, but I have no hardware experience yet, and cannot begin to figure this one out.
Thanks in advance
You can move things into the D partion. Partions are actually recommended for instances where you have to reinstall windows you don't overwrite your data (though I ran into a issue when building my PC that I had to wipe my HDD completely anyway to install windows). For instance on my HDD I keep all my games/music on my D partion and basically nothing on the C partion.
Yeah. Your D partition should be usable space, unless something is wrong. You can save your music, movies, photos etc. or install programs to it (either by migrating your program files or by simply choosing D:\Program Files as the install location when installing a program). As for why your primary partition (C:\) is filling up, it could be a couple things. Your page file (virtual memory) can eat up a few gigs depending on what you are doing/how much ram you have. So switching that to your D partition should help.
Temp files can also take up a big chunk of your HD, so clearing them should free up some space. You can use a program like CCleaner to clear away that cache. Your system restore can also take up crap tons of space as well. Limiting the amount of space it can take up will help with that. You can also clean up your winsxs folder, which has a tendency to grow like a tumor if left unattended.
As for testing your hard drive (which I doubt is the issue), there are plenty of free tools you can use. DFT and HDTune both work. You can also run windows scandisk to check for errors. But like I said, I doubt it's a hardware issue.
Anyway, I hope that helps some. If you need anything explained further, just ask and either I or someone else will jump in and help.
delete all previous restore points this also eats tons of gigabytes.
Windows likes to eat a lot of hard drive space to keep copies of updates and etc, If your updates are installed and you are certain your machine is running good with them applied you can start by looking here as well - C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download, you can delete the contents of that folder. DO NOT DELETE THE WHOLE FOLDER, just what's in it.
Also as MisteryAngel has pointed out, you can delete restore points if you feel like you wont need to use them, personally I don't use them at all and have them disabled, I make my own backups to store else where on my own time.
As far as software goes, ccleaner is a free and easy way to clean up space, I run it at least once a day to keep my browsing cache and etc clean as it adds up to about 1GB at least a day.
There are some other things you can do to clear up more storage space, but I would start with the ones mentioned so far as they are among the simpler things to look at.
Thanks for the advice guys, I tried your suggestions but to no avail, but now I think I've found the culprit, just not the solution
C - Windows - Winsxs
I ran windirstat and found a lot of space being used by that, the trouble is, (and I'm just totally guessing this based on file location) that I can't touch the files?
Also, I cant access my bios on my laptop so deleting the partition and getting a 500GB drive back is a no-no.
Can you guys help me out any more, or is this as far as your knowledge goes?
Thanks in advance.
You can't get rid of winsxs, but you can reduce it's size somewhat. Here's a basic guide:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn251565.aspx
If you absolutely have to join your partitions (there are a lot of benefits to keeping them separate, Is there something wrong with your secondary partition? Why can't you use it for programs and files?), then you can use a program like Partition Master.
http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm
It's simple to use, free and works within windows. Should do what you need.
Also, RAVENS WIN, LIONS LOSE! BEARS ARE IN 1ST PLACE IN THE NORTH! WOOT!