Hard drives are getting bigger, but somehow they always seem to get full of music, photos and movies. This is even more true if you’re using a solid-state drive (SSD), which has much less hard drive space than normal hard drives. If your hard drive is getting full, here are some ways to clean up your hard drive to free up space for Windows PCs.
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Uninstall unwanted programs. Uninstalling programs will free up space, but some programs use very little space. From the Programs and Features control panel, you can click the Size column to see just how much space each program installed on your computer is using. The easiest way to get there is to search for “Uninstall programs” in the Start Menu.
If you don’t see this column, click the options button at the top right corner of the list and select the Details view. Note that this isn’t always accurate – some programs don’t report the amount of space they use.
Clean up the temporary files. Windows’ Disk Cleanup tool is useful, but it doesn’t delete temporary files used by other programs. For example, it won’t clear Firefox or Chrome browser caches, which can use gigabytes of hard disk space. (Your browser cache uses hard disk space to save you time when accessing websites in the future, but this is little comfort if you need the hard disk space now.)
Run disk cleanup. Windows includes a built-in tool that deletes temporary files and other unimportant data. To access it, right-click one of your hard drives in the Computer window and select Properties. (Alternatively you can just search for Disk Cleanup in the Start Menu.) Click the Disk Cleanup button in the disk properties window. Select the types of files you want to delete and click OK.
You can also clean up system files, which don’t appear in the list here. Click the Clean up system files button if you also want to delete system files. After you do, you can click the More Options button and use the Clean up button under System Restore and Shadow Copies to delete system restore data. This button deletes all but the most recent restore point, so ensure your computer is working properly before using it – you won’t be able to use older system restore points.
