Steve, if you have a lot of music or pictures, those take up a great deal of space. You might want to move the pics to a CD, then delete them from the hard drive.

Also, you could go to START, CONTROL PANEL, then click on ADD or REMOVE PROGRAMS, then delete any software you no longer use or need.

One simple way to clean up the computer is to go to START, All Programs, System Tools, Disk Cleanup. Click OK. Do that for both the C and D drives.

Finally, with Internet Explorer open, go to TOOLS, Internet Options. Under BROWSING HISTORY, click on Delete Temporary Files and History.

The above 2 fixes should be performed weekly. The idea of an external drive (hard drive or flash drive) is excellent.