philip_stevens
regular
Reged: 16/05/2001
Posts: 2321
Loc: near Saint Ives, Cornwall
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One for Brendan or any expert. Two questions.
When I have completed a Defrag, I am left with 14p/c of fragmented files. The disk layout looks as though it is bleeding with so much red.
About 30 or so files are 93MB \Windows\Installer\(numbers/letters).MSP One is a GoogleEarth dbCache.dat of 142MB, and two are Thunderbird folders of Inbox and Junk or 178 and 109MB.
The question is, what can I delete to clear some of the fragmentation, and can the MSP files be deleted? I realise that to delete the Inbox would be to delete all my emails - but what of the Junk box? Is this where the junk reference data is installed?
Going into Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs, Sort by Size, I have dozens of security updates for XP, some Notifications, Updates, and Hotfix's etc. I am trying to get some more space on the PC and want to delete what is not necessary. Any advice?
At the moment I am down to 11 p/c available disk space, and am moving some stand-alone programs to the back-up disk drive to make more space on the C drive. The D drive is for data only.
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regards,
Philip
Westerly Owners Association website
http://www.sub-spaced.com
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BrendanS
regular
Reged: 11/06/2002
Posts: 33931
Loc: Me: Wilts. Boat: Lymington
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MSP files are update files, and are required. Don't delete.
Google earth file you can delete, but next time you use it will be created again, so not really worth deleting.
Thunderbird junk folder should be where spam is put, so you can clear that out within Thunderbird.
Within add/remove. You need to keep the updates and hotfixes, as they are mostly security related and performance updates to the OS. If you delete them, then next time you run OS update, they will all be flagged as needing downloading and installing again.
Best thing is to make sure you've run disk cleanup (or even ccleaner if you want a slightly more thorough job) then run defrag again.
As you only have a limited amount of free disk space, defrag may be struggling to work effeciently at shuffling things around, so it's a good idea to run it several times.
By far the best way of making room, is to remove any unwanted programs
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See http://www.frappr.com/ybw to add yourself to the forum map
and as everyone else is doing it
www.plaintalkconsulting.co.uk
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philip_stevens
regular
Reged: 16/05/2001
Posts: 2321
Loc: near Saint Ives, Cornwall
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Thanks Brendan, at least it is clearer in my mind if not on the disk.
I'll get ccleaner and give it a go tonight.
I am gradually getting rid of programs I haven't used in a long time.
Big programs like PhotoShop and MS Office 2003 take up a lot of space, but I use then quite often.
Anyway, thanks again.
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regards,
Philip
Westerly Owners Association website
http://www.sub-spaced.com
Visit MarinaSkip now
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BrendanS
regular
Reged: 11/06/2002
Posts: 33931
Loc: Me: Wilts. Boat: Lymington
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when making room on disks, sequoiaview http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/ is excellent, as it shows visually which directories and files are taking up most space. Download it, use it, then delete it until next time you want use it.
The run cleaner and defrag again.
As a note, always run cleaner before defraging, so you aren't defraging lots of temp and cache files
--------------------
See http://www.frappr.com/ybw to add yourself to the forum map
and as everyone else is doing it
www.plaintalkconsulting.co.uk
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BrendanS
regular
Reged: 11/06/2002
Posts: 33931
Loc: Me: Wilts. Boat: Lymington
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Just had a thought. I doubt defrag is actually running. If you are down to 11% free space, then defrag needs 14% minimum free space to run. Do you get an error message telling you that?
--------------------
See http://www.frappr.com/ybw to add yourself to the forum map
and as everyone else is doing it
www.plaintalkconsulting.co.uk
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philip_stevens
regular
Reged: 16/05/2001
Posts: 2321
Loc: near Saint Ives, Cornwall
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Yes, I get the error message, but it will allow you to defrag - "so long as you understand it will be slower", as it more-or-less says.
By using the ccleaner, it gave me another 3 p/c, and now up to 14 p/c but still blood red fragmentation.
I'll give the latest advice a go now.
--------------------
regards,
Philip
Westerly Owners Association website
http://www.sub-spaced.com
Visit MarinaSkip now
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BrendanS
regular
Reged: 11/06/2002
Posts: 33931
Loc: Me: Wilts. Boat: Lymington
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if you can get more than 15% free, most of that red will go first time. When you run it with less than that available, it only does a partial defrag, so you will never get rid of the red.
--------------------
See http://www.frappr.com/ybw to add yourself to the forum map
and as everyone else is doing it
www.plaintalkconsulting.co.uk
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philip_stevens
regular
Reged: 16/05/2001
Posts: 2321
Loc: near Saint Ives, Cornwall
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I've shifted a lot to the back-up HDD until I need it again, and have now got up to 17%, but using cclean and defrag is not making a lot of difference to the "red", and I have carried out 4 or 5 defrags.
Logmon is another with a big fragmentation. Strange this, as a month or so ago, I had only a few fragmented files, and now quite a few.
I'll keep with it and defrag as often as I can to try to clean up the disk.
Thanks for your help and advice.
--------------------
regards,
Philip
Westerly Owners Association website
http://www.sub-spaced.com
Visit MarinaSkip now
|
BrendanS
regular
Reged: 11/06/2002
Posts: 33931
Loc: Me: Wilts. Boat: Lymington
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If you've run defrag a few times, then things are probably as good as they are going to get. You probably have a few big files that are defragmented, and defrag doesn't have enough room to sort them. I shouldn't worry about it tho, you probably won't get a huge amount of performance increase out of defragging further, so quite OK to leave as it is.
--------------------
See http://www.frappr.com/ybw to add yourself to the forum map
and as everyone else is doing it
www.plaintalkconsulting.co.uk
|
philip_stevens
regular
Reged: 16/05/2001
Posts: 2321
Loc: near Saint Ives, Cornwall
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I discovered, by way of googling, that the .MSP and .MSI files are Microsoft update files, and can be removed with (apparently) no ill effect.
To make sure, I moved all the .MSP/I files to my backup HDD - just in case - and the rebooted.
The %free space went from 15% up to 55% !!! The .MSP/I files went back to when I bought the computer, and are the automatic updates and so on.
The files were in a hidden folder and the only way to see them was by opening up the explorer from within SequoiaView - that showed that about half the HDD space was taken up by these files.
I thought something weird was going on of late, as each time I defregged, there was less space. I appears that every time I went online, and an update appeared - more HDD space disappeared. I'll keep an eye out now for these update files, and delete them after installation.
So, with your help and a little bit of googling, the comp is now back to normal - or as normal as a PC can be.
--------------------
regards,
Philip
Westerly Owners Association website
http://www.sub-spaced.com
Visit MarinaSkip now
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