Three of life's certainties: You can never be too healthy, you can never find too many tax deductions, and you can never, ever, have too much hard disk space. Despite the proliferation of double-digit-gigabyte hard disks, the amount of data you need to store can quickly expand to fill your available space.

Thanks to today's huge software programs and multimedia content such as MP3 files, most of us need every megabyte of storage we can get.

Fortunately, it's cheaper than ever to add storage: A 6GB, 8GB, or even 10GB hard drive costs less than $200. But if you don't want to spend money on a new hard disk, or you want to avoid the bother of installing one, here are a few things you can do to free up wasted disk space and extend the life of your current drive.

By Kirk Steers