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No Free Space on Hard Drive

Discussion in 'PC hardware help' started by dkcfarm, Jul 17, 2007.

  1. dkcfarm

    dkcfarm Guest

    Hello, I am helping my sister again. She had Windows XP installed on her computer which only has an 11GB hard drive. Needless to say, after scanning photos for a family quilt and slideshow album it now has no free space on it. The computer is not working right, and her cd drive will not read or write. Strangely she is getting no low memory messages. I wanted her to reinstall Windows and get a fresh start but she has no installation disks. A service tech installed XP in the shop and added more RAM. Without her cd-r drive she can't copy her files. Would it be possible for her to install an external hard drive? Could she use her internal drive for the operating system, and the external drive to run her programs on? I am trying to find a solution that will keep her from losing all her files. Thank you.
     
  2. Waymon3X6

    Waymon3X6 Regular member

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    I think you could run disk cleanup, which comes with XP and cleans your HDD of all the unessessary stuff, or you can install CCLeaner, which is even better. It empties all the temp files and recycling bin, so if you havnt used it yet, then it will probably free gigabytes!

    Yes, but you will need to reinstall everything from the old HDD to the new external one...
     
  3. dkcfarm

    dkcfarm Guest

    Thanks for the reply. We ran disk cleanup and removed all temp files, cookies, etc. We also made sure the recycle bin was empty. She did manage to copy some of her photos to floppys, which took a lot of floppys and a lot of time. She then deleted the photos from her hard drive. She now has 17% free space, up from 6%. The cd-r drive is still not reading or writing, but everything else seems to be working except Home Publishing will not load.
     
  4. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    what is the cd drive doing or not doing? any exclamation marks in device manager? does the computer see the drive? any error codes like 39? could buy a bigger hd & clone old hd to new hd & use old hd for data like pictures. could buy a new cd burner or dvd burner for $30Can & up.
     
  5. dkcfarm

    dkcfarm Guest

    re:ddp

    The cd drive is recognizing that there is a cd inserted, but displays a message saying that it cannot read it and it will not write to disk either. When she inserts her Home Publishing disk, it does nothing (not enough memory?). There are no exclamation marks in device manager and the computer does recognize the cd drive. There have been no error codes. She does have a hard drive that was given to her that we could use but I have never tried to clone a hd before. Also I don't know what if anything is on the hd that was given to her. If we can get the hd issue resolved we can replace the cd drive if it's still not working. Thanks.
     
  6. jony218

    jony218 Guest

    If this is a real old computer (11gb hard drive), It might not have USB port's which are needed for an external drive. The reason your cd drive is not writing is definitely because lack of harddrive space. The computer need's to transfer the data to a temp area on the hard drive before sending it to the cd drive (this is done in real-time), unknown why it's not reading because hard drive is not really needed for that part.
    You might try disabling the system-restore in windows and reboot computer(It will free up some more space). If possible defragment hard drive, so that it'll reallocate the available space more efficiently.
    But whatever you do, make sure you save all the valuable data you have to another storage area.
     
  7. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    what capacity is that hd? does she have a floppy drive & if so do you or can you get a copy of win98 or winme bootdisk to boot off to see if the cd drive has a hardware problem or windows has a software problem. have you tried uninstalling the drive in device manager & restart windows so it can find new hardware & load it's driver?

    jony218, i disagree on both your points as that computer even a p2 will have usb ports but usb1 not usb2. also running out of space on a hd will not stop a cd drive from working.
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2007
  8. dkcfarm

    dkcfarm Guest

    jony218: I'm pretty sure she has usb ports because she has the same camera I do, and it came with a usb cable. She defragmented as soon as she freed up space by deleting her photos. It would not defrag before she deleted them. Error message, not enough free space to defrag.

    ddp: 11GB hard drive. I will call her tomorrow and have her try uninstalling the cd drive in device manager and restarting. She does have a floppy drive. Could she use a floppy copy of my XP bootdisk to boot off?

    Thanks to all and I will post again as soon as I find out how she is making out.

     
  9. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    I agree with ddp, It'll probably be USB1, which isn't fast enough for an external CD drive. No matter how little hard disk space you have, the CD Drive should be unaffected, I think that's a separate issue.
     
  10. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    the reason for asking if have a floppy drive & a floppy bootdisk is to see if can read a disk using the cdrom support off the floppy & not thru windows. if can read thru the floppy disk then is a windows software issue.
     
  11. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    That's true. Most of the time CD drive issues are software related, or at least, the one's that aren't noticeably bad are. When the drive makes odd noises or the read light is on with no disc in the drive, like as happened to both my acer/benq CD writers, you give up and buy from a proper brand lol
     
  12. dkcfarm

    dkcfarm Guest

    Hi All, I will be going to my sisters house tomorrow to work on her computer (she lives 45 miles away). I will try all your suggestions and see what I come up with. At this point she says that the cd drive just keeps trying to read the cd over and over. In her words, "I have to eject the cd to get the computer unstuck." No error messages or anything. Oh, she had her computers mixed up and she does have the install disks for that computer. Which doesn't help right now when the cd drive doesn't work. Will post back after working on it tomorrow. Thanks
     
  13. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    While that confirms the CD drive as being a problem, it doesn't narrow down what the problem could be. You have the tests to try, if no success, new drive time!
     
  14. dkcfarm

    dkcfarm Guest

    I would like to thank everyone for their help. I got my sisters computer working again well enough for her to continue her quilt making. We had to switch out the cd-rw drive with one in the extra tower she had. We cleaned out her hard drive and got her 1.2GB of free space (17%), which isn't much, but at least it works. I told her to keep her photos copied to cds and delete them from her hard drive and defrag often. Now the search is on for an appropriate new internal hard drive. Her extra tower only had a 9GB hard drive so switching them wasn't an option. There is no room in her computer to add another hard drive. Thanks again.
     
  15. dkcfarm

    dkcfarm Guest

    New Problem. I have never seen this before, so could someone tell me what type of hard drive we need to replace this with.
    "x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping
    3
    256 MB of Ram"
    That's all the info I could find on her computer about the hard drive and processor other than the serial number. The Ram was increased before XP was installed. Thanks.
     
  16. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    dkcfarm, the required info is not there. what is the make & model# of the computer or motherboard so we can see what she has to play with?
     
  17. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Hard drive?
    None of that tells us anything about the hard drive. If you want a replacement, all you need do is find an IDE drive that's ATA-100 compatible.
     
  18. dkcfarm

    dkcfarm Guest

    The computer is a Gateway Essential. Serial# 0020388244. The hard drive in the computer is a Quantum lct15 7.5-GB 4400-RPM Ultra ATA/66 Hard Disk Drive [Part #5501574]. When I tried to use Gateways link to look up a replacement drive the page was no longer available. Thanks again.
     
  19. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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