you need to look through your folders on the pc and find out where the space is being used. Look for what has big files. That does not sound right at all it would take a LOT of pictures to fill that drive, movies would take up a lot of space but you did not mention movies.

there are a couple free programs that are very good at showing you exactly where your space is being eaten up
TreeSize Personal - Ultimate Disk Space Management

WinDirStat

and this one which I think is one of the best
Xinorbis Analyzes Your Disk Usage

pick one or 2 install and find out what it going on with your hard drive.

One thing I have seen happen is that the system restore feature is taking over and creating too many restore points and taking up space.
Also if you have a program that is creating logs somewhere.

Check your event viewer and see if anything is showing red flags.

The one option we really do not want to see is that you have been hacked and your pc is being used as a zombie and it is storing stuff for some hackers botnet.
Try running this scan too.
RUBotted

do you have a good antivirus program set up and running fully updated, doing scans? When did you last update and run a malwarebytes scan?

I assume since you said it is new this is running windows7? please do give us your system info.

A flash drive will hold a lot less than a 500 gig hard drive, so that's not going to be the answer.

I would try running chkdsk to see if that will solve it.

The easiest way to do that is to open Windows explorer (not internet explorer), right click the C: drive and select properties. Select the tools tab, then click the check now button in the top (errors) section. Make sure you check to automatically fix errors and to try to repair bad sectors, then run it. I think you'll need to reboot.

Clear out system restore points in Vista, keep the last one. Then Google Shadow copies in vista. You can set adjust how much space for system restore in vista Google that too. (Adjust System Restore vista)

Same applies for Windows 7

You really do not tell us too much making help more difficult. Do as Bpgreen notes, right click the Start button, click Windows Explorer then right click on the C: drive and select properties. now you have a visual of space used and space free. How much free space is there?

If this is a Windows 7 computer there might be a small triangular flag near the clock, you can hover over it or click for info on problem areas and the computer will offer to fix any issues it finds.

I would definitely start with a chkdsk as bpgreen suggests, there may be an error with regard to how the freespace is being reported.

thanks. yes it is windows 7. i did the checkdisk and it told me to restart my computer and i did but nothing changed. then i ran the virusscan which came up clean. then the malwarebytes and it did find a hijack display data registry (can someone tell me how i might have gotten this? i thought having a good router was supposed to protect me from those things?)
but fixing that didn't change anything either.

my c drive says that 14.2 gb are used and 361 is free with capacity showing 14.5 mb. i started out with 380 mb free, so not sure what happened there.

my d drive is showing used 221 gb, 428 gb free with capacity of 451 gb

when i looked through files the 2 largest i found under the c drive were data 2 cabinet file of 52,625 kb, and data 1 3,964 kb also cabinet file, so what could these be?
it says they are compressed files so i am not sure how to open them to see what they are..or maybe i can't?

i am not sure where to go from here, i am willing to try the links above to see how the c drive is partioned but i am not sure i would understand the results? should i go ahead? any more advice help would be appreciated, thanks so much!!

p.s. the size of my files in the photo library is 712 mb, the video library is 25 mb, music is 16 mb, and documents is 249 mb.. if this tells you anything

it tells us that you have plenty of room on your drives you show only a mere 14.2 gig used on your C drive with 361 Gig free so it makes no sense that you would get a notice that your c drive is full
the amount of photos and videos is very small which would not be making any difference.

are you certain it said you were low on space on your c drive could it have been something else?

those 2 files you mention are not that big you are showing a kb size there not a gig size so not so big and not to worry about.

if you try one of the free programs I suggested like xinorbis it shows you in graph form and many types of ways exactly where big files are located and how your hard drive is being used.

having a good router will not stop you from getting infections at all, having good antivirus and antimalware programs will help but they have to be kept updated and scans run. A router helps as an added firewall, a hardware firewall, your windows firewall or what ever 3rd party one you choose to use as a software firewall helps prevent any thing that might get onto your pc from being able to phone home and create more infection problems.
What are you running as a firewall, antivirus and malware programs?

it is 360 mb free not gb if that makes a big difference. when it shows the pie graph it shows it in blue and pink with blue being filled space and pink being free space and there is only a little tiny bit of the pie showing free space. i haven't gotten any more notices about it being full since i did the check disk thing yesterday, but like i said on that pie graph it is still showing full even though according to size it shouldnt be so i am confused i guess...

i am using avg free for antivirus, windows firewall and malwarebytes

Something is messed up there. A Dell should have a restore partition which would be smaller than the other partition. The larger partition should be your C drive and the restore partition your D drive but it looks like they are reversed. You should not be using the restore partition for anything except in an emergence to restore your computer to the state it was when you received it. Also, did you make recovery disks? They can be used if the hard drive fails and you put in a new drive and don't have the recovery partition.

Yeah makes entirely no sense at all. 428GB free on "D" partition!!! That's all you space right there.

i have no idea what you mean but when i first got this computer i never could get on the internet with it so i called dell and they wiped out and reinstalled the whole operating system and is it possible something happened when they did that and now i have enough stuff on the computer that it is just showing up now, or what do you think? i have had so many issues with this computer...

here is what i got from the analysis:
Analysed : "D:\"
April 12 2010, 22:47.21
Processed in 1 minute 46 seconds

===================================================

Number of Files : 94276
Number of Folders : 19066

Size of Files : 23.14GB
Size of Files (on disk) : 23.33GB
Disk space wasted : 193.25MB

Null files : 105
Empty folders : 0

Average File Size : 257.34K
Average Files/Folder : 4.94

Largest Folder : \Windows\ (11.43GB, 67% of files)
Largest File : D:\pagefile.sys (3.93GB)

User with largest share : SYSTEM (9.69GB, 20%)

: Quantity Size
Programs : 2608 :: 2.54GB (11%)
System : 21342 :: 15.21GB (66%)
Graphics : 11383 :: 279.95MB (1%)
Movie : 202 :: 298.27MB (1%)
Audio : 704 :: 66.73MB ( Office : 6406 :: 159.68MB ( Programming : 378 :: 4.78MB ( Compressed : 4159 :: 318.93MB (1%)
Other : 47094 :: 4.29GB (19%)
Custom1 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom2 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom3 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom4 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom5 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom6 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom7 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom8 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom9 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom10 : 0 :: 0 bytes

===================================================

Analysed : "C:\"
April 12 2010, 22:51.31
Processed in 1 minute 37 seconds

===================================================

Number of Files : 82894
Number of Folders : 15777

Size of Files : 17.37GB
Size of Files (on disk) : 17.53GB
Disk space wasted : 167.86MB

Null files : 1768
Empty folders : 0

Average File Size : 219.67K
Average Files/Folder : 5.25

Largest Folder : \Windows\ (10.87GB, 74% of files)
Largest File : C:\hiberfil.sys (2.95GB)

User with largest share : TrustedInstaller (9.21GB, 66%)

: Quantity Size
Programs : 2214 :: 797.99MB (4%)
System : 17599 :: 10.46GB (60%)
Graphics : 7221 :: 481.60MB (3%)
Movie : 159 :: 555.87MB (3%)
Audio : 669 :: 65.39MB ( Office : 9583 :: 128.44MB ( Programming : 374 :: 4.70MB ( Compressed : 78 :: 356.16MB (2%)
Other : 44997 :: 4.57GB (26%)
Custom1 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom2 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom3 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom4 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom5 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom6 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom7 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom8 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom9 : 0 :: 0 bytes
Custom10 : 0 :: 0 bytes

===================================================

seriously if you just got that machine and already had that kind of problem with it I would demand a new one, something is not right, I am totally confused with the numbers things are not adding up here.
There is no reason to put up with that kind of nonsense on a brand new computer. Call Dell. something may well have gone wrong when they tried to fix it previously for you.

Hi. Firstly, whoever depoted this machine built a C and D partition on your hard drive. This is usually done when you want to place the operating system on C. D should be used for everything else. With only a small amount on C, it is not suprising it's already full -- Windows 7 eats a lot of disk space. You need to be putting all your new files on D. If "My Documents" is pointed at C, move the files to D and re-point it.

Also, your numbers don't add up:

my d drive is showing used 221 gb, 428 gb free with capacity of 451 gb

221 + 428 = 649. Should the GB free on D be 228? 221 + 228 = 449 = very close to capacity number.

Lastly, as to why D has so much file space used, I agree with the other responders. You have to download one of those freeware programs that give you space usage by folder and analyze what's being used by what. I also agree that many, many restore points stored is a likely culprit, though I'd think those would go on C drive.

ok thanks i am going to have to give dell a call i have had enough with this computer, it has given me nothing but grief since i got it.