Hello,
I am new here and was hoping to get some help. I keep trying to defrag my fat32 and a message keeps appearing that says:
Volume Presario_RP has only 6% free space available for use by disk defrag. To run defrag requires 15% usable free space. Not enough free space. Delete unneeded files on your hard drive disk and try again.

I am not really computer savy, but I do try. I do not know how to free up some of the fat32 space.
Can anyone assist?
Thank you in advance.

FAT32 is what you call a File System. This is how your computer writes data onto your hard disk. There are also FAT16, NTFS and more, each with their own technique in writing onto the hard disk.

So what the Disk Defragmentor is asking you to do is free up space on your FAT32 disk. If this is your C: drive, that's your main hard drive where Windows itself is installed along with other programs etc. You can free up space by deleting un-needed files, uninstall unwanted program, deleting temporary files etc. on that hard drive until you reach the required 15%.

You can risk doing a defragmentation without 15% free space but the defragmentor might need to move very large files and if it doesn't have enough space to move it then it wont defragment it.

I've been known to make things seem more complicated then it is, do you understand this?

If your system does not have enough space , you can still use the power defragementer from softpedia.com
This one does not really shift all files to pack nicely but moves the files so that they will be together. This will allow your system to run faster as well.

Thank you so much for your time.
Yes, you are very clear, but I really do not know what to remove...are there any files that I might remove that will effect other files?

What Operating System are you using so I can give specific instructions? (Windows XP, Windows Vista etc.)

Windows XP, thank you.

Well if you go into Control Panel you can go into Add/Remove programs. In their you can go through and see what programs that you don't need and uninstall them.

Can you also download a program called CCleaner. This program goes through your computer and removes temporary and un-needed files. When you install it, you don't need to change any settings. Just click Run Cleaner.

What size is your hard drive?

I downloaded ccleaner and that did seem to help some. I was in the add/remove programs once before and deleted programs that it seemed as though I did not use and my computer went nuts. I had to do a system restore to get back to where I originally was.
I feel really stupid telling you this, but I do not know what size my hard drive is. How can I tell?

I think I found it...it says 224 GB
Does that sound right?

Your computer shouldn't go nuts if you remove programs, what program was that?

To find out your hard drive space go to My Computer then Right-Click on Local Disk (C:) then click Properties. How much used space and free space do you have?

To make things easier, I'll go through your list of installed programs and say which ones you can uninstall.

Please download HiJackThis and save it to your desktop.

* Start HijackThis
* Click on the Config button
* Click on the Misc Tools button
* Click on the Open Uninstall Manager button
* Click on the Save list... button and specify where you would like to save this file
* When you press the Save button a notepad will open with the contents of that file
* Copy and paste the contents of that notepad here in your next reply

Okay, I did the hijack download and here is the list:
Update for Windows Media Player 10 (KB926251)
Update for Windows XP (KB904942)
Update for Windows XP (KB912945)
Update for Windows XP (KB920872)
Update for Windows XP (KB922582)
Update for Windows XP (KB927891)
Update for Windows XP (KB929338)
Update for Windows XP (KB930916)
Update for Windows XP (KB931836)
Update for Windows XP (KB933360)
Update for Windows XP (KB938828)
Update for Windows XP (KB942763)
Update for Windows XP (KB942840)
Update for Windows XP (KB946627)
Update for Windows XP (KB951072-v2)
Update for Windows XP (KB953356)
Update for Windows XP (KB955839)
USB CASIO Digital Camera Device Driver
Windows Installer 3.1 (KB893803)
Windows Live Outlook Toolbar (Windows Live Toolbar)
Windows Live Sign-in Assistant
Windows Live Toolbar
Windows Live Toolbar
Windows Live Toolbar Extension (Windows Live Toolbar)
Windows Live Toolbar Feed Detector (Windows Live Toolbar)
Windows Media Format 11 runtime
Windows Media Format 11 runtime
Windows XP Hotfix - KB873339
Windows XP Hotfix - KB883667
Windows XP Hotfix - KB885250
Windows XP Hotfix - KB885835
Windows XP Hotfix - KB885836
Windows XP Hotfix - KB885884
Windows XP Hotfix - KB887472
Windows XP Hotfix - KB887742
Windows XP Hotfix - KB888113
Windows XP Hotfix - KB890175
Windows XP Hotfix - KB891781
Windows XP Hotfix - KB892050
Windows XP Hotfix - KB893066
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 KB908246
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 KB912067
Yahoo! Internet Mail
Yahoo! Messenger
Yahoo! SiteBuilder
Yahoo! Toolbar

I also checked the space on the hard drive:
It says this:
Used space 18.6 GB
Free Space 206 GB
Capacity 224 GB

Most of all...thank you for helping me.

I think I've misread what you posted, when you say your trying to defragment Volume Presario_RP, is that your C: drive? What drive letter does it have?

If it makes it easier can you make a screenshot with Disk Defragmenter open. You can do this by pressing the Print Screen (Prt Sc) key, then opening Paint and pasting the screenshot inside. You can then save the picture and attach it to your next post.

Having a look at what you gave me you have very few programs installed and have well over 75% free space on your C: drive.

This post has been edited by Davonator: Jan 4 2009, 12:08 AM

I am sure it was me not being clear. It is really clear you know what you are doing.
Here is the D drive information.
Volume PRESARIO_RP (D:)
Volume size = 8.18 GB
Cluster size = 4 KB
Used space = 7.65 GB
Free space = 540 MB
Percent free space = 6 %

Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 5 %
File fragmentation = 11 %
Free space fragmentation = 0 %

File fragmentation
Total files = 16,653
Average file size = 480 KB
Total fragmented files = 11
Total excess fragments = 11
Average fragments per file = 1.00

Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 0 bytes
Total fragments = 0

Folder fragmentation
Total folders = 692
Fragmented folders = 27
Excess folder fragments = 110

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fragments File Size Files that cannot be defragmented
2 94 MB \PRELOAD\DATA9_01.INP
2 85 MB \PRELOAD\DATA9_09.INP
2 84 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_02.INP
2 213 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_04.INP
2 54 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_06.INP
2 78 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_08.INP
2 82 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_11.INP
2 68 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_12.INP
2 56 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_31.INP
2 66 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_33.INP
2 54 MB \PRELOAD\BASE_34.INP

Ah I see now, this is a recovery partition. You won't be able to free up space on Volume PRESARIO_RP (D:) so don't worry about defragmenting it.

Thank you, so this does not slow down my computer at all?