Another ? for the computer guys

[huskertko]

Ok, I have an external HD that is at capacity, and I don't have the funds to buy a new one now, even though they are under $100.  I have backed up all the photos, video, music, and documents to DVD recently and I was looking at the folders that are on the HD.  There is a folder called "archive" that is 99.8 GB in size, will it cause catastrophic failure if I delete this folder to make room on the HD?

[J Francho]

Archive?  What type of files are in there?  Sounds like an Outlook PST storage directory.

[huskertko]

Not sure what kind of files they are, this is what shows up when I open the folders: "a0baaa82-eb71-443d-afd5-35d9a8b4b6bf-2". When I click on it to open I get asked what I want to open it with.  There is also an Index file with the extension of . arb.

I can't believe that I would have 99.8 GB of archived Outlook files though.

[BrianinMD]

.arb files? do you do woodworking, or use some type of computer aided design?

[J Francho]

Yep, those are Alphacam files.  Unless you need them, you can probably just delete them, and defrag the drive afterward.

[huskertko]

Need them, I don't even know what they are and where they came from.  So, why would they take up 99.8 gigs of space?

[huskertko]

Ok, after some deductive reasoning, I think I have figured out that they are archive files from McAfee.  The files are created every Monday, and that is what it appears McAfee is doing, not to mention the location for the McAfee archive is the same one that I was looking at, so I would think that I can delete this folder without much problems.

[farmpond1]

Stupid question which might be irrelevant but have you defragged your 'puter lately?  That might help.  Or just ignore this.

[huskertko]

Well I deleted all the archive folders except for the last two, and I now have 95GB of free space that I didn't have before.  I also changed the archive schedule to do it once a month rather than weekly.