My computer has a 40 GB internal hard drive and a 250 GB external USB hard drive, and Windows Explorer reports that the computer has 3 GB of software installed on the internal hard drive. However, there is only 3 GB of free space available on the drive! I have completed the Disk Cleanup and Defragmenter, and transferred large files (e.g. pictures and music) from the internal drive to the external drive, but I still don’t have much free space on the internal drive. Can you tell me where all the space has gone, and how to fix this problem? The computer is running Windows XP.

As the computer has reported there is only 3 GB of software installed on the hard drive, I assume you got this information by looking at the properties for the ‘Program Files’ directory. However, the size of the Program Files directory doesn’t necessarily give you an accurate indication of how much software is installed on the computer, as software can also install the program files (and large data components of the software) in various other places on the computer. Also, quite often a large portion of the hard drive is occupied with user data (e.g. documents, etc), as opposed to program files, so we can’t always blame programs for taking up the most amount of space on the computer. Therefore, we need to track down whether the lack of space is due to a combination of programs and data, or whether there is just a large chunk of data on the drive occupying a lot of space.

The best way to track down what is occupying the space is to look at the properties for various folders on the computer and tally up the size of each folder. Unfortunately, this can be a cumbersome process. However, a few years ago I was asked a similar question by another reader, wondering where all the free space on their hard drive had gone. In that instance, I recommended a program called FoldersReport (www.nirsoft.net/utils/folrep.html). This free program will generate a report of all the folders on the computer, including the size of folders (i.e. the size of all the files within the folder), which is a critical feature lacking in Windows XP. This would be a good utility for you to try and should help you identify which folders are taking up the most space. Once they have been identified, you can decide what action to take (e.g. uninstalling programs, or moving data to the external drive). However, should the data not be movable (e.g. programs) then you may need to think of alternative methods of freeing-up hard drive space, such as installing a second internal hard drive in the computer. The price of hard drives have come down dramatically in recent years, and you should be able to get a new 250 GB hard drive for around $100 - 150. This would perhaps be the most convenient option.