Expand laptop hard drive?

This question will undoubtedly reveal how little I know about computers but here goes anyway. While away from home for 3+ months I have been using my laptop to download images from my CF cards after which I delete the throwaways, process the best in C 1 and back up on CDs or external hard drives. But I seem to be filling up my laptop constantly (40G) despite deleting and transferring images. I can only seem to account for 17G of images and have no idea where the remaining 21G is being used up. Doubt you can help with that but the simple question is: Can I expand my 40G internal hard drive to 80G or more, and if so, how should I proceed?
Thanks in advance.

When you delete do you "send to Recycle Bin"? If so you can clear the trash bin and voila'! more space.

The recycle bin is a pain in the whatsit. If you hold down the shift key when you press delete, it will delete the files without putting them in the recycle bin. Obviously, use with caution as there is no easy way to get them back.

If that's not the case, check you temp folder. C1 maybe placing temporary files or copies of your images as it processes them.

As for your other question. Expanding can be done by putting in a different disk. Otherwise there is compression software that will compress the drive, then uncompress on the fly as you need the files. There is a time penalty as it uncompresses and it may have an adverse affect on battery life as well. I'm sure others will have better advice on this front for you.

You can install a new 80g hard drive but it isn't as simple as installing a new harddrive into a desktop as it requires a special connection kit to crossover the information from the old hard drive. That kit is usually fairly expensive if you do it yourself. It is probably best to have the dealer you purchase the drive from install it since they most likely have the equipment to do so. The upside to this is that if you do purchase the kit and upgrade your harddrive you can get an external firewire/usb2 hard drive case to place your old drive in that will give you a nice fast and compact backup drive to take with you.

If you use MS Internet Explorer and haven't changed the default settings for how many temporary Internet files are kept, this will account for a large chunk of wasted space. Internet explorer wanted to allocate well over 100 MB of space on my computer. That's ridiculous.

Here's how to fix that:
In Internet Explorer, click Tools, Internet Options, General Tab, next to Temporary Internet Files click Delete Files. Then in the Temporary Internet files section click Settings, and under Amount of disk space to use select 2 MB or 4 MB. That should be plenty.

That might help a little.

JM
I agree with the above..you should have plenty of "working space" with the 40G usually. My laptop only has 16 and I can usually get by on a trip.. You need to recover the other space. Temp files as above should get dumped. Check your set up in C1. Set it so that it dumps the previews when you close the program, otherwise it will continue to store them up taking up more and more space. Otherwise, just get an external harddrive firewire to connect while traveling, also good as a backup. I have an Ezquest slim 80gig that I sometimes use and it is about the size of a deck of cards..travels well.

Good luck..

Larsen wrote: Internet explorer wanted to allocate well over 100 MB of space on my computer. That's ridiculous.

thanks, just looked up mine and it was storing 1789 mb-no wonder it was slowing down.

I had no idea how much space the C1 previews consumed until I dumped them. Live and learn. Thanks to all for the sage advice.

FWIW, just got a 40Gb 2.5" HDD and an external USB2 drive enclosure for our laptop. It's very light and is USB powered so requires no external PSU. I shall be taking it out in the field tomorrow to see how much it drains the laptop battery when copying the files to it.

Dave,

Where did you purchase the enclosure?

Greg Downing wrote:Dave,

Where did you purchase the enclosure?

I got here in the UK, it's called a HotDrive, noit sure who makes it tho'

Heres the link to the site that I got it from:

http://www.directusbstore.co.uk/cnb/sho ... tegoryID=2

Thanks Dave! When I find one that is available in the US I will post it back here. I have been looking for a powerless USB enclosure for use as a back-up unit while on the road. Right now I lug around a larger unit with a giant power supply....

I also have lost a lot of hard drive space on my field laptop. Based on some of the suggestions above, I cleared the cache for the C1 program. Doing that freed up 12.5 GB of space! If you are using C1, you defiantely need to empty out the Cache periodically.

Greg Downing wrote:Thanks Dave! When I find one that is available in the US I will post it back here. I have been looking for a powerless USB enclosure for use as a back-up unit while on the road. Right now I lug around a larger unit with a giant power supply....

Greg here is a unit with a 20GB drive:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDe ... ode=102800

And here is a case with a PS/2 power tap cable:

http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=CASE-500291

And here are a few that are self powered:

http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=BLK-A-811

http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ME-910U2F

http://www.meritline.com/firusben.html


BTW, any self powered case would have to use a 2.5" drive... I am pretty sure that the 3.5" use too much power to be used with the USB bus power.