How to Tell How Much Free Hard-drive Space is Left on a Computer

Although some people would like you to think the computer is a very complicated piece of equipment. It isn't. You can easily perform much of the needed maintenance yourself without paying a computer technician a lot of money. Some of the more common maintenance can be broken down into simple steps that anyone can follow.

You maintain your home and you should maintain your computer also. One task you can do is check the how much free space is left on your hard drive. A full hard drive can slow your computer down to a crawl and it can also crash your computer.

It's very easy to find out how much hard drive space is left on a computer hard drive in Windows XP.

The Easiest

Click on the Start button and select My Computer. My Computer might also be on your desktop.

This will open the My Computer Window. This window will show all drives in your computer and also any mapped network drives.

Click on the drive you want to check. Most often the hard drive is the C Drive

In the Details Pane on the left hand side of the window the File Type, Free Space and Total Size is listed

More Details

Click on the Start Button and select My Computer.

This will open the My Computer Window.

Right click on the drive you want to check.

A computer menu will list options to select from: Choose Properties.

The Properties of the Drive you selected will open. On the General Tab you will be able to see the Used and Free Space.

You will notice that for your convenience a Disk Cleanup button is located on this page also. This feature can free up space you might not even think about such as Temp Files and Temporary Internet Files. Also remember the obvious the recycling bin. You may have thrown something in the trash but until the trash is emptied it is still there.

If your hard drive is out of space you need to think about what is on the drive that you do not want to lose. Most likely it will only take one time of losing everything on your hard drive to help you learn a very valuable lesson MAKE A BACKUP! Always keep 2 copies of important documents and pictures. Burn them to a CD, copy them to a usb drive or a floppy disk make a backup!