Thanks all for the advice so far.

The best solution, of course is for me to win the lottery, get a bigger computer and set it up as a server. But I can't count on that happening. h_vargas, I agree with you completely about just reformatting the hard-drive--it's external, data only--but then I will need to learn about how to re-seed some of the torrents I've downloaded...no biggie, I'm sure. There are a few (mostly DVDs) though I wanted to keep on that hard drive so they are out there and can be easily burnt or re-seeded. Rider, looking at the Windows defrag analysis, it is quite fragmented. I'm used to running defrag on 1 to 30 gb hard drive, have seen those take hours and haven't seen one this intense; that's why I asked if you all have run into this yet. I am doing a download and seed now, but then I'll probably look at doing what gsmyth79 said and let you know how it goes and how long it takes.

Unless, of course, I win the lottery and just buy a terrabyte-size storage system.

Thanks all. I appreiciate all your advice.