Hello Rod,
You could just erase the old, standard symbols -- they make up the lion's share of the size, anyway.
Another tact would be to buy a new hard drive -- they are pretty large these days, and not too much money either. You can get an
80GB Seagate for $58 shipped -- and it has a 5 year warranty.
Depending on your computer (you'll need the empty 3 1/2" drive bay, and available IDE channel, and the power connector, of course), you might be better of using this as your boot drive; or you could just add it for storage, and not disturb anything else. If it is getting creaky and sluggish (especially if it is Win9x/ME), then the former is maybe better: you'll boot and run faster after clearing the cobwebs -- but installing Windows and all your critical software can take a day or so.