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94 Managing Your System
Hard drive management practices
By deleting unneeded files from your hard drive and managing the space that
is automatically allocated for saving certain files, you can help maintain the
performance of the hard drive. We suggest that you first check your hard drive
for available space, then back up important files prior to deleting unneeded
files, in case you delete important files by mistake.
Checking hard drive space
In Windows NT, you can see a chart of the available hard drive space. If you
are using another operating system, refer to your software documentation for
available hard drive management utilities.
To check hard drive space:
1 Double-click the My Computer icon on the desktop. The My Computer
window opens.
2 Right-click the drive you want to check.
3 Select Properties. The drive’s properties window opens. The General tab
shows you the available and used space on the drive.
Backing up files
Regularly backing up your files protects you from losing data and lets you
keep fewer files on your hard drive. Back up old files to a large capacity disk
drive or tape drive and delete the files from your hard drive. You can use the
software that came with your tape backup drive or your large capacity disk
drive to back up the files.
You can also back up files by running the Backup utility that came with your
operating system. In Windows NT, Backup copies files to a tape drive.
To run Backup in Windows NT:
1 Click Start, then select Programs, Administrative Tools, then Backup.
2 Follow the on-screen instructions.
Deleting unneeded files
By deleting unneeded files from the hard drive, you free up space on the hard
drive and help improve hard-drive performance. The following sections give
you some simple ways to delete unneeded files.
8508366.book Page 94 Tuesday, October 23, 2001 11:29 AM