how to free up disk space

[tape]

The other day, I started getting message that my 200 Gb "D" partition was too full. 200 out of 250 Gb HD, how could this be? That partition holds My Documents and I do use it as a scratch disk for Photoshop. Last time I looked, it was no more than 1/2 full. When I add up the size of the foilders, etc, it is WAY LESS than full. Perhaps a disk error, so I schedule a CHKDSK at next startup. I followed dirs from microsoft and it began to process, that is until it got to stage 4 of 5. About 30 minutes after starting, 15% of the files were checked and then it stopped. 6 hours later, not a thing had changed. I was forced to do a dirty shutdown and then I could not get my PC to startup in anything but SAFE MODE. Eventually, I was forced to do a clean install (repair install had no effect). My C partition is running smoothly, but the document partition is still stuffed. I did copy about 10 DVDs woth of saved podcasts to free up some space, but I should have more free disk space available. Any suggestion for a utility that would reset pointers that are actually used by the disk? I've had similar problems on my backup disk that I save ms backup files to. I'll have 2 or 3 huge backup files that fill that disk, yet even when I delete them, I am still told the disk is full. My only recourse is to re-format. I'd rather not have to reformat my documents disk.

[Force Flow]

delete browser cache, emply the temp folders, uninstall unused programs, delete the $ntuninstall and $ntservicepackuninstall folders (those are the folders that allow you to uninstall service packs and updates...I've rarely had to do that, so that's one of the things that usually frees up 200-500MB).

[glc]

I'd run manufacturer's diagnostics on the drive.

I'd also buy an external hard drive and start backing things up. A 500 gig drive and a quality housing is not going to cost much over $100.

Force, this isn't the system partition that's having problems.