I'll never forget my first very own hard drive. It was massive--twice the size of the creaky old thing I had at work. But that cavernous 40MB drive soon filled up. Now, more than a decade later, the same thing is happening again on drives that are even larger.

The fact is that clutter sticks to hard drives, filling each free sector it can find, no matter how many gigabytes the disk can hold. Whether it's a wicked MP3 habit, a predilection for downloading new software, or just picking the full installation option on a two-CD-ROM software title, your hard drive's a magnet for junk you rarely use, if ever. Even if you have gigabytes to spare, maximizing free space is still important; the more weight your disk is carrying, the harder it has to work, and the more it has to thrash around to find the small bits of available free space. For this reason, freeing up space--at least 100MB, if you can manage it--will increase your hard drive's performance.

This article will guide you through ways to trim the odd megabytes off your hard drive. Think of it as the online equivalent of a Tae-Bo exercise video. As with any late-night infomercial, I have to stress that your results may vary. But the two hard drives I have enlisted as shills (oops, I mean satisfied customers) of this technique have reclaimed between 62MB and 210MB of wasted space--in less than 5 minutes.

Your disk, too, can join the ranks of the fighting fit, and no special software is required. If you've got the time, you're ready to begin.