Itunes laptop help!!

[porsche911girl]

OK as many of you know, I have a new laptop. I love it very much but I am having a bit of a problem. I imported my old itunes library (some 5,000 songs/podcasts,etc) and successfully got them into my itunes on the new comp.

However, I have downloaded some other albums, and I noticed the other day that my C drive was almost full, something I can't comprehend on a 200GB hard drive. How is this possible? Under the system properties, it says: 14.6 GB free of 178 GB on C Drive (the rest of the 200GB is being used by the D drive HP Recovery (whatever that is).

I have cleared temp files, deleted offline content, ran a disk defrag and disk cleanup. This laptop is all of 3 months old. I have not gone nuts installing loads of programs on it; in fact, I have only installed MSN messenger, firefox, itunes/quicktime, and utorrent.

Second, and more important question, I have an external hard drive that I use to back up all important stuff (docs, pics, music, etc) and I am thinking of moving the folders/albums off the laptop in an attempt to increase space on the drive. However, I know from experience that if I do that, the majority of my itunes library will go missing (very annoying!!)

Is there a way to free some space up by moving the folders onto the ex-h.d. without losing my itunes library? There's got to be a way!!

Thanks!
A very frustrated Katie

[Jesset100]

From Windows help

If your backups are saved to CDs or DVDs, you can discard discs containing earlier backups, but make sure that you keep the most recent backup of your files. If your backups are saved to an internal or external hard disk, you can delete a backup by following these steps:

Open the location where the backup is saved.

For example, if you backed up your files to an external hard disk labeled "E," connect the external hard disk to your computer, and then open drive E.

Right-click the folder containing the backup you want to delete, and then click Delete.

Notes
Backups are saved in this format: \\Backup Set . For example, if your computer name is Computer, your backup location is E, and you backed up on April 2, 2006 at 16:32:00, that backup would be located in E:\Computer\Backup Set 2006-02-04 163200. You would right-click the folder named Backup Set 2006-02-04 163200 to delete that backup.

When you make a full backup, a backup folder is created and labeled with the date for that day. As you add updates, that date stays the same, but your backup is not out of date. The next time you make a full backup, a new backup folder is created and labeled with the date for that day, and any updates are then added to that new folder. You should not delete the current backup folder.

[sketchers356]

I am willing to bet that you have 180 GB of backups for 20 GB of data.

My itunes Library has over 30,000 songs and I am only using 180 GB

First thing to figure out is where is all of this data. I would start with that HP backup protocol that you mention.

[stomachmonkey]

200 GB is not all that much these days.

I carry over a Terabyte in portable external drives along with my laptop and it's not enough.

I've given up backing up to discs and simply fill and file hard drives. With the relatively low cost of storage it's actually cost effective considering the time it takes to back up 500 GB to DVD.

[Gogar]

Do you have TV shows or movies in your iTunes? They take up a little more space than you might think.