Freeing up disk space

[GoldenbanjoDJ]

Hey. I've recently upgraded to an SSD as a boot drive and I still have all my old files on an HDD so they are sitting side by side in My Computer. The SSD is called c: and the HDD is called f:

I want to free up space on the HDD and get rid of basically everything except a few files.

I started by going to add or remove programs to uninstall some of the crap... but the only programs it showed were the ones on my c:

Then I tried deleting individual files and then deleting them from the recycle bin, but it doesn't actually look like my free space is going up.

Then I tried disk cleanup for the f: but all it is doing is the recycle bin.

2 questions basically:

1) does deleting a file simply by clicking it and pressing 'delete' actually free up disk space?

2) if not, what will work?

I have roughly 300GB that I'd like to be able to reclaim.

Cheers fellas

Dan

 

[chudley]

Depending on the size of the file and your recycle bin settings most stuff just by clicking delete goes in the recycle bin. If you hold the "shift" button down while clicking delete this will permantly delete something( bypasses recycle bin).

I personally would create a backup of all the stuff you want to keep and set it to back up on your SSD, I would then quick format your HDD and then restore the backup to HDD. Only thing I do not know is how big yyour SSD is and How much you need to back up. The other not too expensive option is to buy an external HDD and save your studd to that if it is too large for your SSD.

 

[GoldenbanjoDJ]

sounds like a good plan. i don't really have that much that i'm bothered about keeping around, and the stuff i do want will be backed up on an external hard drive.

how do you do a 'quick format' on windows 7?

 

[benj3]

right click the drive click format tick quick format and click ok

 

[GoldenbanjoDJ]

and that just completely cleans it? mint!