as mikey g and doug have already pointed out if it is your pictures that are filling your hard drive then you will need to clear some room by moving them to another location. you say you take a lot of pictures and need easy access to them so i will take a stab in the dark here and guess that you use programs like photo shop to work with these pics which tends to make me think that you may have possibly a virtual memory issue.
Virtual memory is simulated RAM. When you have used up all your RAM,
your computer will shift data to an empty space on the hard drive.
The computer swaps data to the hard disk and back to your RAM as needed.
When you increase your virtual memory you are increasing the empty space
that is reserved for your RAM overflow.
First you need to check how much ram your computer has installed to start with,
1. click on start, click on run, type in ms info32 and click on ok.
That will bring up a page with the system information for your computer and will look something like this.
OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Version Service Pack 3
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name
System Manufacturer BT___
System Model REDCAP
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 2 Stepping 4 Genuine Intel ~2020 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date Award Software International, Inc. 6.00 PG, 5/28/2002
SM BIOS Version 2.3
Windows Directory C:\WINDOWS
System Directory C:\WINDOWS\system32
Boot Device \Device\Disclim1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "5.1.2600.5512 (PSP.080413-2111)"
User Name MAT\Mat
Time Zone AIS Eastern Standard Time
Total Physical Memory 1,024.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 239.60 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 2.37 GB
Page File C:\page file.says
the number you need to take note of is the Total Physical Memory
in the case of this computer you will see that amount is 1,024.00 MB (1,024 mb = 1 gig)
when calculating the figures to set you virtually memory at you need to use the following equation.
Initial size (MB) = Physical Memory x 1.5 eg. 1024x1.5=1536
Maximum size (MB) = Physical Memory x 1.5 eg. 1024x1.5=1536
both figures should be set to the same amount.
To manually change the size of virtual memory, follow these steps:
1. Click Start, click Run, type SYSTEM.cpl in the Open box, and then press ENTER.
2. Click the Advanced tab, and then under Performance click Settings.
3. Click the Advanced tab, and then under Virtual memory click Change.
4. Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file that you want to change.
5. Under Paging file size for selected drive, click Custom size, type a new paging file size in megabytes
(MB) in the Initial size (MB) or Maximum size (MB) box, and then click Set.
6. Click OK to close the dialog box and apply changes.
Note After you change the size of the paging file, you may be prompted to restart Windows.
If you are prompted to restart, the changes will not take effect until Windows is restarted.