Hard Drive Full???

[Moltke]

Hi;I have linux lite X32 installed on an old laptop.
It has ran for over a year. I keep it updated at least weekly.
This past week it started locking up.  I then got error message hard drive full.I checked and it was at 100% 72gb. and it then started not loading properly..
I deleted all files in downloads and media. emptied trash. got it to 97%.
I had next to no files on this laptop.
How do I find/get rid of/clean up the excess files  70+gb excessive for OS and very few apps.
Why would drive fill up, I have no downloads/music/videos.

TIA

Have you ever cleaned the downloaded files stored in /var/cache/apt/archives? This is where all the packages for the software you've ever installed as well as those which've been updated/upgraded are stored should you ever remove/uninstall them they're available in case you want to reinstall them without having the need to download them again. To check the size of that dir, open a terminal and type

Code:

du -hc /var/cache/apt/archives

hit enter and check for the number reported, if it is way too big, you can empty that dir by running in the terminal

Code:

sudo apt-get autoclean

hit enter and type in your password when asked, wait for it to finish cleaning up the dir and check again with the du command to confirm the new size. Then check if it helped saving some space up on the HDD.

Hope this helps!