Where'd my PC's memory go?

[THEYTOOKMYTHUMB]

OK, so I'm backing up all my photos today which is a real chore considering I am a proud father and a family man at heart. Couple that with the fact that I literally believe a picture is worth a thousand words so post as many pics as possible.

I figured my photos and video were taking up the bulk of my memory, so I figured I was overdue to move them to the external HD. Well, I'm left with this.


I have roughly 20,000 songs, but they're completely compressed on my laptop so they really are maybe 75GB at most. I'm meticulous with virus protection so I know it's not that.

Anyone have any idea how I can get my laptop's memory back? I'm no expert and would love some help.

Yes, I emptied my recycle bin.

[CamplinP]

So you are talking about hard drive storage? Memory just temporarily stores info and is generally less than 6 gig. If you moved pictures to an external hard drive then they will exist on both. You need to now delete them from the computer. This will not affect the external hard drive.

[THEYTOOKMYTHUMB]

So you are talking about hard drive storage? Memory just temporarily stores info and is generally less than 6 gig. If you moved pictures to an external hard drive then they will exist on both. You need to now delete them from the computer. This will not affect the external hard drive.

I deleted my entire picture files. Then emptied the entire recycle bin. It shows empty outside of the one C drive snip that i took for this post. There were a ton, but it freed up almost nothing.

[Jedi Master]

Check with the guys who took your thumbs, I bet they have it!

Seriously, I've just done a similar thing with my own photo storage and the same thing happened. I simply didn't realise that I had sooooo many photo's stored on my hard drive!

[Lowgear]

Well if you cut and pasted everything over and not just copy and pasted like was mentioned and you feel that you should have more free space than something has to be causing it of course. I worked on a persons computer one time that had a similar problem. They basically had nothing on their computer but the hard drive was showing as almost full. I found that theres free programs you can download that will scan your computer and tell you whats taking up what. I forget what the outcome of that persons problem was but I think their hard drive was failing.

A defragmentation of the hard drive might help as when you move around large amounts of data it could cause this behavior. If nothing else it will speed up your computer. Another thing that might help is to run a program called Ccleaner but you might lose some of your saved login information after its run.

[Coelacanth]

You're talking about disk space, not memory. Most people's digital cameras take pictures at very high, disk-space-unfriendly resolutions. If your cam is taking a picture at 3000 or higher resolution, each picture can be as much as 3 MB. Since most people have a lot more pictures than songs & videos, I'd be willing to bet that's what's taking up a large portion of your disk space.

I don't see why pictures of that high a resolution are necessary. The ONLY reason you'd want pics to be that high-res is if you want to print them professionally. If you're just storing them, or planning to share them online, email to friends, or *hint* upload them to a forum, they should be resized to no larger than 1024 x 768 resolution. JPG pics of that size are usually no more than 125 to 150 KB. At that rate, you could store approximately 4 million pictures on that 500 GB drive.

[THEYTOOKMYTHUMB]

Jedi- That was pretty good.

Lowgear- I'll mess with it a bit later as I was certain it was photo and video storage.
I clearly have a hard drive problem, but it's still blistering fast so I can't imagine it's that. More after dinner.

[Lowgear]

I doubt its the hard drive failing, I was just saying what the outcome was with that persons.


I just did some searching and I found the ones I used. I say "ones" because I can't remember which as they're too similar to each other. They map your hard drive and show you visually your storage space usage.


SpaceMonger


WinDirStat

[THEYTOOKMYTHUMB]

You're talking about disk space, not memory. Most people's digital cameras take pictures at very high, disk-space-unfriendly resolutions. If your cam is taking a picture at 3000 or higher resolution, each picture can be as much as 3 MB. Since most people have a lot more pictures than songs & videos, I'd be willing to bet that's what's taking up a large portion of your disk space.

I don't see why pictures of that high a resolution are necessary. The ONLY reason you'd want pics to be that high-res is if you want to print them professionally. If you're just storing them, or planning to share them online, email to friends, or *hint* upload them to a forum, they should be resized to no larger than 1024 x 768 resolution. JPG pics of that size are usually no more than 125 to 150 KB. At that rate, you could store approximately 4 million pictures on that 500 GB drive.

That's the most confusing part. I just backed up and deleted them all! 2.22MB each average. I'll take a better look around after dinner. Thanks for the help all! I will take any and all suggestions!

[trkneller]

Windows 7 saves all updates locally for easy repair. That could be some of it. Still, just download a hard disk analyzer to see where all your disk space is being used: http://www.ilovefreesoftware.com/25/featured/5-best-free-disk-space-analyzers.html

[Coelacanth]

Furthermore, since the disk capacity issue occurred after you transferred (whether you copied or moved them there is besides the point because that's the disk that's reaching its limits, not the laptop hard drive) the pics & other multimedia, it makes me think it's because you probably have a great many pics that are each a few megabytes in size. Look at some pics in your folders and see how big the filesizes are, then see how many files are there, then do some quick math.

[Coelacanth]

Windows 7 saves all updates locally for easy repair. That could be some of it. Still, just download a hard disk analyzer to see where all your disk space is being used: http://www.ilovefreesoftware.com/25/featured/5-best-free-disk-space-analyzers.html

Again, that's besides the point, because (as I understand it) he's referring to his 500 GB external drive being almost full. Windows updates don't store on external drives, and it doesn't matter if you copy, paste, or move files from the laptop drive...the disk space issue is on the external drive.

If I've misunderstood what Thumbs described as the problem, then it's a different story.

[Lowgear]

I think you might be... He's saying he moved his picture files off of his laptop in an attempt to free up storage space but he feels it didn't free up as much as it should have. So I told him if he can't figure out whats hogging all the space is to use a program that will scan his computer and tell him what is doing it.

[Coelacanth]

I suppose we'll need clarification, because this comment can be interpreted either way:

I figured my photos and video were taking up the bulk of my memory, so I figured I was overdue to move them to the external HD. Well, I'm left with this.

[trkneller]

You're talking about disk space, not memory.

BTW, hard disk space IS memory. It's non-volatile memory. In fact, Windows uses it all the time when RAM is at a premium; that's the swap file.

Regarding the external dive, he should still run the disk space analyzer to see WHAT is using all the space.