Of hard drives and such...
 

I've got a couple old HD's from computers that went by the way side for one reason or another.
I've got a brand new Sabrent HD dock, this one has a cooling fan (lesson learned there) and I can access the drives no problem.
When I plug the biggest one (1TB) in, the 'recovery' portion of the disc comes up in file explorer.
I'd like to just clear that portion of the drive and the other Windows files in the program portion of the remainder of the drive so I can store more picture files on it.
Is it just a matter of going in and manually deleting all the individual files?

If you have stuff in the main portion (windows files) then yes, you can delete all of that stuff to create more space for your files.

The recovery portion is probably a separate partition. That would require you to remove that partition and then expand the other partition which is a bit more complex than just deleting some files. I believe some utilities can stretch a partition, but I haven't created/deleted/changed HDD partitions in a long time.

Yeah, I think I've done that partition stretch thing a time or two on some other drives as I think they've incorporated that into file manager or some portion of it.

If you are on a Windows computer you will need to use the Drive Manager. Just type Drive Manager into the search window, and it should bring it up. It is NOT an internet program to download, it is already part of the operation system.

It will show you all the drives on the system. Be 100% sure it is the right drive you have selected, then delete all the partitions, then format that one new partition, and it will give it a drive letter. You can name it during the format and it will be ready to go.

That method, will, of course, delete all files currently on the drives in question forever.

I believe there is a way (I think Partition magic could do it?) to enlarge an existing partition without deleting the data on that partition, but maybe I'm imagining things.

< edit >
I didn't read the article in detail, but this seems to be the way to do it without killing all of your existing data.
https://www.diskgenius.com/how-to/resize-partition-windows-10.php

I'm not going to be deleting all the files and re-formatting the drive. Just deleting OS files and other unused programs so I can use the drive for storage.
I'll be careful, trust me on that.

Right, you've got this old drive that was the primary drive on a retail computer. You no longer need the recovery partition or all of the OS stuff. So, delete the recovery partition. Delete the OS stuff, applications, etc..., except for the "my documents," "my pictures," etc... sort of stuff (was there anything on the desktop that you need to keep, check that too) and then enlarge the existing partition to use the old recovery space being very careful that it doesn't say "if you do this, all data will be lost."

Exactly, Steve. I think I'll be gaining almost 10gigs of space by doing this. Might not seem like a lot to you guys, but to me it's like a whole new drive's worth of space. I really should toss the old computer to gain some work bench space out in the garage too. I think the power supply quit on it. Was a good computer up until then.

I believe what Glen is saying is to use the manager to delete the recovery partition and expand the data partition into the empty space. I have done this hundreds of times.

Hard drives are so cheap now days. A one TB drive is 40 bucks. 1,000 Gig for 40 bucks!

Of course all of that is as misleading as the tube TV set screen measurements. But still, well over 900 MB for 40 bucks, and you will never fill that up. Get an external drive fixture and backup everything to it. 10 MB is such a small space it is not worth messing with.

Uh. I'm not sure about that. Photos and videos suck down Gigs like nobody's business.

Wn10 sez otherwise: "All your data are belong to us." "Your proprietary data is now part of the internet collective".

Is there a possibility of transferring all the files onto an external drive?
(both partitions, one at a time)
(over-write duplicate files)
("sort by" and erase anything other than data you are keeping)
Format original drive and transfer everything back.

As Steve surmised, it's an old primary drive from a dead computer so it's external now. I think deleting the files will work fine, just need to take the time to do it.

So do racing sims and flight sims. I have probably half a terabyte in racing stuff. DCS and MS FS2020 are huge as well. Then there is the VR stuff. I have 265GB free of 4TB on that drive. Everything sucks space.

YUP.
I've hesitated getting a new camera because of the file sizes it would create.