Hard Drive Horror!

[Burnsie]

Yikes! I have run out of space on my hard drive, so I have been copying files to 3 (yes 3! I'm paranoid!) EHD's. One is 1TB, so I also do a backup of my computer on it, in case I need to restore.

 

So here's what's weird. I have three copies of stuff, and so I feel it is safe enough to delete those files from my hard drive. The files are photos, finished LOs, PSD files, nothing that should mess with my computer settings, programs, etc. So I delete the files, and get a weird message about deleting something that will cause windows to not work properly (huh?) so I cancel.

 

Then I figure I better do a complete backup. But I get an error message partially through the backup that says it cannot be completed. So I restart, and get some crash dump message! Ack! It says if I have never seen taht before, then restart the computer. Restart..seems normal. Try to back up again. No luck. So I attempt an incremental backup, and that worked. Whew!

 

So today, I go to advanced boot, and start the computer from "last known good configuartion" and the startup goes faster than ever, and things seem okay, but I don't know if I need to do anything from here. Any ideas? Will it always start up from that point form now on?

 

Maybe I should try a full backup and see if the problem is still there?

 

Ugh, of all the things, messing up my computer while trying to backup and make room! Thanks in advance for any wisdom!

[J9Buckles]

Yikes is right!!! Hope everything gets sorted out!

[PhotoshopScrapper]

Julie,

 

You should have 20 to 30% free HD space on your HD for the computer to run properly. If you don't have that, I suggest you systematically delete the files that you don't need (after making sure they're not corrupted on your EHDs).

 

After you do all that moving you should probably defrag the disk (maybe 2x). If you have a utility that will defrag on boot, use that as well because if you're deleting a lot of files off the drive the master file table will probably be too big (I just went through this recently).

 

You really should only use the system restore as a last resort. It can mess up your programs. It's done this to my mother several times ... took her hearing me repeating for her to NOT using system restore as a catchall that she finally caught on (course someone else had to tell her this for her to believe me). Turns out she messed her machine so badly she had to send it back to the factory to get it reimaged (she wouldn't get acronis at that point either).

 

She's getting a little better at listening to me now. Took the factory several weeks to reimage the HD (course she sent it back to them at Christmas time). She purchased Acronis and we took an image of the factory image (which I am also storing for her as long as space permits to have a 2nd copy). THEN she started installing all her programs again. It's been painful but she's not using system restore every week or so anymore.

 

Hope this helps!

 

Denise

[Vaughnde]

never heard that about system restore. I have XP. Mine wouldn't take because there was NOTHING to restore. and I have more than 20-30% space on my HD. The problem? Registry errors...622 of them. UGH! Fixed that and did scandisk and optimize and its running much better. The other culprit? DUST inside the box...so I shut down, cleaned out and rebooted. I have a little utility called speed fan and it tells me how hot the computer runs. Its way way way less than what it was with the dust inside the computer. So that tells me no matter how allergic to dust you are...take the computer cover off and use the cleaning duster spray at least 2x a month or every two weeks and optimize your hard drive weekly! So that's my plug But my computer is running much faster today and everything is hunky dory so I'm happy