Six Useful Tips in Cleaning Your Hard Drive and Freeing Some Space

Computers have good storage capacities ranging from several hundreds of gigabytes to several terabytes. However, hard drives may be filled with data, especially if users tend to save a lot of media files and software. Accumulating data affect performance in the long run. Fortunately, it’s possible for users to minimize drive’s contents with the right tools and procedures. Free up disk space with the following tips:

Monitor Program Installation Use

Countless applications are available today, but not everyone will find them beneficial according to their preferences or requirements. Some uninstall these applications to free up disk drive space. On the other hand, some forget to uninstall these programs.

One of the important tips to free space is to monitor software installation and use. A good practice is to check your hard drive and program sets every 30 days. Remove programs that you haven’t accessed within this time as they are unlikely to used in the future.

Load System Maintenance

System maintenance tool is a good option if setting up program monitoring schedule is impossible. This tool helps in doing various maintenance tasks in the computer including checking for unused programs or junk files. It scans and reports unused programs within the last month or so. Users can then uninstall these programs to free space.

Load system maintenance by going to Control Panel and type “troubleshooter” on the search box within the window. Click on Troubleshooting and results will show several tools used for performance and maintenance. Find this system maintenance tool under System and Security option. The tool will be launched by click Run maintenance tasks. Follow the instructions and start scanning. Remove recommended program to save space.

Apart from programs, this tool can also remove unused documents, which is beneficial if the computer managed to collect incomplete downloads or PART files. They are incomplete and corrupted, so users won’t use them. System maintenance will mark them as unused and delete.

Remove Programs with an Uninstaller

Uninstalling a program often leaves several components behind unless their uninstallers are designed to remove related components and folders. Therefore, uninstalling a program may not necessarily free space. This resulted to the creation of uninstallers, the special programs meant for uninstalling software. Depending on their build, uninstallers can remove folders and registry entries. Using these programs can be beneficial in significantly freeing hard drive space.

Scan Using a Good Junk File Cleaner

Junk files refer to unused files of varying types that simply consume space inside the drive. Most people notice that they have significant amount of junk components due to the amount of registry logs left after software uninstallation, documents, downloaded installers, and others. Apart from being junk, they also tend to cause various issues due to incompatibility with other software in the system. While removal is simple, identifying system trash is impossible because of their confusing descriptions and filenames.

A good junk file cleaner will scan the hard drive and report these detected components. It should have one-click junk file deletion to ensure its effectiveness in cleaning junk files. Some cleaners may have expert modes where users can select their needed documents and save them from removal for various reasons.

Remove Other Files with Disk Cleanup

Disk cleanup is one of Windows’ utilities that wipe out other essentially junk. It removes temporary files, thumbnails, downloaded programs, and a lot more. Temporary files are temporary documents that come with accessing a website or streaming videos online. A person who streams online videos regularly may have up to several gigabytes worth of these leftover logs. This tool will remove these temporary components and free space.

Besides temporary files, this tool can also deal with Recycle Bin files and error reporting logs. They also tend to consume space as the operating system keeps them for users’ benefit. Disk Cleanup also scans for unused programs and make them candidates for removal.

Access this tool by typing Disk Cleanup on search box after clicking Start menu. Select the component types and locations to clean. The amount of stored data is listed for your reference. Check and click OK to start deleting.

Use an Antivirus Program for Malware Detection

Some malwares tend to duplicate data. Most people don’t know that these are malware because they look like legitimate programs. An antivirus program will check for viruses like worms that duplicate data and delete them. The program will delete both the virus and replicated data.

Overall, freeing up space is easy with these tools. Use them immediately and save several gigabytes of space in your drive for performance enhancement.

Typically, the Windows Task Manager is often used to end unresponsive applications in your program. It is very easy to do especially for a computer novice. You just right click your taskbar and select the Start in the Task Manager Button to open the tool. In the Processes tab, you highlight the application then press End Process to kill it.

While this has been the main purpose of this tool, its other nifty functions are put to waste because users aren’t informed. As such, here are some of the unpopular uses of the Windows Task Manager (WTM) to get you on the know.

1. It lets you see which applications consume your CPU and RAM.

Upon opening the WTM, go to the Processes tab. It will list all the running programs in your computer. If you click on the Memory (Private Working Set) heading, then it will arrange the programs based on its “CPU” and “RAM” usage. You can also see how much memory is used by each application, which is expressed in kilobytes.

2. It shows your actual usage of CPU and RAM.

In the Performance tab, you will see graphs that depict your CPU and RAM usage. In the left side, the bar graph will show how much of the memory is used in real-time. Beside it are the history graphs for CPU and Physical memory usage. It will show you the usage spikes over a specific time frame.

3. It lists all the programs that frequently read and write in your hard drive.

The Resource Monitor keeps a record of the disk activity of each program. The disk activity is measured by bytes per second. In the right side, there is also a graphical representation of the total disk activity. Through this, you can see if your hard disk is being utilized at a maximum rate. What is the implication of these data? If you are going to use a disk-intensive program, then you might want to close the other applications listed in the Disk tab.

4. It gauges how long you have been using a program.

Are you interested to know how long have you been on your computer? If yes, follow these instructions. At the top of the WTM, go to View then click Select Columns. Check the CPU time, and click OK. In the Processes tab, you will see the time elapsed for each running application.

5. It enables you to stop background programs from running.

There are times when even though you have closed an application, it continues to hog your CPU memory. What happens is that this program is running on the background. To completely stop the application, go to the Processes tab. Next, select the background program and click End Process.

6. It lets you send a message to another user.

The Users tab will list all the users who are simultaneously logged in your computer, either through a remote desktop connection or through local sessions. To send a message to another user, simply click his username in the Users tab then click Send message. A dialog box will pop up; you can enter the message title and your message in the fields provided. Lastly, click OK to send your message.

7. It can arrange your program windows.

If you right click the taskbar, you can choose a windows arrangement option such as Show Windows stacked, Cascade windows, and Show windows side by side. The task manager lets you do this too. In the Applications tab, hold CTRL as you click each program that you want to be arranged. Afterwards, you right click on the selection for the options. You can either choose Cascade, Tile Horizontally or Tile Vertically.

8. It monitors your network activity.

Does a webpage takes too long to load? You may consult the task manager for some ideas. The Networking tab will show you the internet usage of each adapter on a percentage basis. If you see high spikes in the graphs, some applications may be consuming too much of your internet connection, which in turn causes your web pages to load slowly.

9. It tells you which applications use your internet connection.

Assuming that in our scenario above, you want to prioritize internet browsing over the other programs. Thus, you need to stop some irrelevant programs from running; but how will you know which programs to stop? To do this, go to the Performance tab then click Resource Monitor. In the Network tab, it will show the applications that are using your network connection.

Indeed, the Windows Task Manager is an indispensable application. These functions make it a great productivity tool for every computer user, so better share this knowledge among your friends and colleagues.