Bruce

Programs create and use temp files for various reasons while the program 
is installing and/or running. A well written/behaved program will delete 
temp files it has created when it is done using them. In a perfect 
world, temp files would only be present for currently running programs. 
They are not needed over the longer term as they will be recreated by 
programs as needed. I have never had a problem after deleting temp 
files. BTW there are lots of places where temp files are stored on a 
hard drive although most are stored in the location designated by the 
"environment" settings.

There are also temp internet files. As long as you are using a higher 
speed internet connection (not dial up), you can also delete those 
files. The next time you go to the site from which those files came, 
they will be downloaded again.

I'm not sure of the standard size of the profile file in Firefox.

2GB is on the large size for restore files. If you can, reducing it to 
1GB will help your issue somewhat.  What is the capacity of the hard 
drive you are working on? If it is large, 2GB may be the smallest you 
can go.

I would not be concerned about the real estate used by programs until 
you have a handle on the current issue. Then you can look into fine 
tuning your computer through uninstalling programs that are rarely or 
never used. If you have a lot of data files, you might consider storing 
the older ones on another media or another drive. If and as needed, you 
can restore file(s) back to your computer.

Tom


On 4/11/2013 1:03 PM, Bruce Lund wrote:
> Interesting. Program has a couple pet peeves of mine (doesn't have the
> ability to cut and paste and cannot make display bigger) but I think it
> has helped me identify a couple issues.
>
> My Firefox
> profile is taking up a full gig of drive space. Is that normal? Sure, I
> have a lot of bookmarks but they are bookmarks! Why should a profile
> take up that much space? (And if it shouldn't, what would the cure be?)
> I have 4G in temp files. Can I blow the folder away or is there something with which I need to concern myself.I have 2G in a restore file. Overkill?Intuit programs sure grab a whole bunch of real estate. Not looking to get rid of the files. Just an observation.I will be following up on some of the other suggestions, but for now, if I get the OK, blowing
>   away the temp folder would sure buy some time.
>
> Bruce Lund
>
> --- On Mon, 4/8/13, Don Penlington<[log in to unmask]>  wrote:
>
> From: Don Penlington<[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: [PCBUILD] Need to free up hard drive space
> To:[log in to unmask]
> Date: Monday, April 8, 2013, 1:17 PM
>
> Bruce writes:
>
> <<I have a grand total of 946MB of free space on my hard drive>>
>
> There's a brilliant little stand-alone program (it doesn't need to be installed, and you can run it off a USB stick---it's tiny). It will show you exactly where everything is on your computer in a pie-chart, from which it will be obvious what's taking up space. Just hover your mouse over each segment for details.
> http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/
>
> Don Penlington
>
>              

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