How to save disk space!If you find yourself running short on disk space on your main system drive - the drive that has the windows operating system on it. You have some options as how to regain space; you can either delete a bunch of unnecessary files or programs (old restore points, temp files etc.) Or you can compress the files or the entire drive thus regaining a bit of space. You can only do this if you have the NTFS file system (as opposed to FAT32 or some others.)

Often times users will take a single hard drive and partition it into two logical halves, half for the OS and the other for data or whatever. Once the OS half gets used up you can’t allocate more space for it without erasing the partition entirely. Unfortunately windows doesn’t natively allow you to repartition the system drive and maintain the data on it, you will have to invest in third party software to do that (Partition Magic $70).

To compress your files in Vista and XP simply:

Click windowskey + R
type explorer
Click OK

Click My Computer
Right Click the drive to be compressed
Click Properties

Check the Compress drive… box

The amount of disk space saved by compressing is dependent on what type of files are being compressed. Bitmap files may compress 80%, text files may compress 60% while PDF files may compress %10.

You can always use the disk cleanup tool to free up additional hard disk space:

Click Windows Key + R

Type cleanmgr.exe

Click OK