Computer HD expansion Gateway 5472

[Hugh R]

My 500Gb hard drive is almost full (98%). Computer is about 5-6 years old. It has an expansion slot and something I've never used called a Portable Media Drive Bay which has a bunch of holes for plugging stuff in the front.

Question, should I buy a second HD for the expansion slot, they seem cheap, and are they plug n play? Or an external HD. Computer meets my needs. I'd imagine another 500 Gb HD would meet my needs for a while. Or should I just buy another puter at walmart? I turn it on, it works, I'm happy.

[gr8fl4porsche]

Are you sure its full of important data?

Win7 can store mucho gigs of restore points filling up the drive. Delete all restore points as well as other unnecessary stuff and see what happens.

[Hugh R]

I see restore points that only go back a week. I don't know if this is normal or not. I'm a neophyte on computers.

[Hugh R]

Trying a system clean-up program right now.

[Hugh R]

Trying a system clean-up program on Windows right now. Cleaned up about 500 Mb.

[slodave]

Two directories can fill up and up, though not really to the point of filling the entire drive...
C:\Windows\Temp and (if on Vista or Win 7) C:\Users\_username_\AppData\Local\Temp.

There should be plenty of room to install a second HDD in the case as well. I'm around if you want/need help.

[Hugh R]

Thanks Dave, I think I deleted those with the clean up process. I have XP, I think.

[Joeaksa]

Get a new larger and faster hard drive and copy the stuff over to it. Then keep the old one for backup. If yours is that old, its prolly a 5000 rpm drive and really slow...

[Scott R]

Originally Posted by Joeaksa

Get a new larger and faster hard drive and copy the stuff over to it. Then keep the old one for backup. If yours is that old, its prolly a 5000 rpm drive and really slow...

+1 this is the way to go. New drive, nice 7200 RPM 1 to 2TB job, and get one that comes with like Acronis to make the copy painless.

[id10t]

I'd get soemthing like this - Newegg.com - BYTECC BT-M252U3 2.5" Black USB 3.0 2.5" Dual-Bay RAID 0/1 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 to Sata External Hard Drive Enclosure

Plug in 2 drives, set it up for RAID-1 and move all your data to it - pictures, movies, documents, etc. Leave your internal drive for quick use, the OS, and applications.

[RonDent]

Get a new HGST 2TB hard drive.....we need the business!