HARD DISK IS FULL AND NOW I CANT ACCESS WINDOWS

[ste1981]

Hi, ive somehow managed to totally fill up my notebook hard drive (60gb) , i was moving films from my external hard drive onto my notebook pc so i could format my external hard drive andas its been tranfering the files across, a message has popped up saying hard disk space full?? the notebook then switched itself off, when i restarted it back up i noticed all the desktop icons had gone, i cant access task manager or anything at all, i can see the cursor moving around but thats all... is there a way of getting into my files so i can delete some things and create some space to get windows working again? any help would be appreciated, thanks

 

[phil22]

The only thing to do that I can think of is to remove the laptop hard drive and put it into a 2.5-inch hard drive enclosure, then plug that enclosure into a working PC or laptop.

Open the laptop drive in Windows and delete the films you put on it, then put the laptop drive back into your laptop and see if Windows will run properly.

If Windows runs properly after doing that, do not copy anything else to the laptop drive. You need to put a larger capacity hard drive into your laptop if you want to copy anything else to it.

 

[ste1981]

thanks for the reply phil22, ive got another external hard drive (WD Combo 250gb) would i be able to open that one up myself and put the hard drive from the notebook into it?? would it work that way? cheers

 

[Hawkeye22]

Boot from a live CD and delete files from the hard drive. knoppix comes to mind.

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

 

[game junky]

+1 - remove the drive, get a USB to SATA adapter and plug it into another PC to delete unneeded files. It might be worth it to upgrade your internal HDD if you envision this happening again down the road. Laptop drives are incredibly cheap right now

 

[ste1981]

i think i`ll try the USB to SATA/IDE adapter, ive just found one on ebay for a couple of quid so hopefully that will do the job.... thanks alot for the help

 

[Hawkeye22]

Well, if you want to pay for it... my option is free.

 

[ste1981]

Well, if you want to pay for it... my option is free.

hi hawkeye, i went onto the link which you provided (which i`m very grateful for),, but as i am new tothis i didnt understand what i was ment to download from that page??? if you could guide me through it i`d be glad to try it, cheers

 

[Hawkeye22]

Click on the download button. Pick a server to download from and pick one of the files that ends with -EN.iso. (EN = English). Burn the ISO to CD and boot from it. Once booted from it, you can find your drive and start deleting or moving files off of your full drive.

If knoppix seems confusing to you, you can google "live linux boot cd" as there are plent of others out there. heck, you may even be able to get away with using UBCD (ultimate boot cd).

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Anyhow, do what's easiest for you to understand.