Maintaince for Vista

[klippy]

I really need to clean my computer up so I can have more space on my hard drive. I am unsure what I can delete and what other functions I need to do and how often I need to do them. I am sure everything I need is posted somewhere in this forum if someone would just guide me to them.

[sys-eng]

You need to provide some more details first. There are some files that can be deleted (update uninistalls, restores, fonts, etc) but you don't want to delete unless you really need the space.

Have you defragged and compressed the drive yet?

I use a free product called ccleaner to start.

[klippy]

I really just want to keep my computer running as fast as I can. This is my issue - I have a LARGE music collection on my computer along with a large collection of audio books. I am wondering if I should store this collections another way instead of on my computers hard drive/

[sys-eng]

Quote:

Originally Posted by klippy

I really just want to keep my computer running as fast as I can. This is my issue - I have a LARGE music collection on my computer along with a large collection of audio books. I am wondering if I should store this collections another way instead of on my computers hard drive/

Well that is a much different goal than you stated in your initial post.
If you want to help your disk performance some, then all your data files should be on a separate disk drive from your OS and programs. If you can't do that, then at least put them on a different partition.

You should also keep a copy of your music on CD's or DVD's so that you will not lose them in case your disk storage breaks. Even RAID arrays can go out. Though it is very rare, I have seen RAID controllers corrupt an enitre array.

[klippy]

It sounds like I need to be in the market for a external disk drive and I will use that to store all my data ( in my mind I am thinking of it as a large file cabinet for my stuff I want to keep) Any reccomendations on what I should look for in this external disk drive? I noticed one at Amazon that is a Seagate Free Agent 1 TB for $99.00 - is this something like I need and does this sound like a reasonable price? Feel free to tell me what you think - this is all new to me

[jrk86]

In regards to your music collection, here is what I have done with mine. I have bought a separate/second hard drive for all my music, movies, and such and put it all on that drive to keep it off my main drive in which the OS and other apps are installed. Hard drives depending on what you get are relatively cheap these days. The other thing I have done and I would or would not recommend this for you if you are not a "advanced" user, but I turned off the system restore in Vista. That saves space because it is not making restore points of your whole system at given points and storing them on your HD. Problem with that though is if you encounter a system errors or loose and delete something you have no restore point back to it. What I do also is installing apps with just what I need and know I will use. For example, I have a full version of Microsoft Office 2007, however I find myself using Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Publisher the most, therefore I only install those 4 programs. If I need another I will just install it later when I need it. But this does not just install the whole suite, but rather just what I need and will use. I also highly support open source programs which do (if not better) but the same as their better known counterparts. They tend to be less cost and size too. Another thing you can do is clean junk files off your system that just sit there and serve no purpose. To do that I would suggest a free program called CCleaner. You can get it free at ccleaner.com. Also like sys-eng said, regular defragments can help too. Just a few things I do to save space.