Tips to Cleanup Your Harddisk

[neteater]

If you checked your hard drive may have contained hundreds of thousands of files. And if you ask about the contents of the disk, the answer is, of course, contains a file system and some programs are installed on the computer. As we know there are many documents and spreadsheets, thousands of audio files, images, and so on.

But most of the hundreds of thousands of these files may be temporary files and back-ups, and some cookies files from the Internet. One also resulted in a decreased performance of hard disk itself.
Clearing the browser cache is the first step you should do. After doing so, you can see a reduced number of files could reach thousands. Then you can open a command prompt and run the command del *. bak / s, del *. bk! / S, del *. tmp / s, and so on. This method could eliminate thousands of unnecessary files and regain disk space that has been empty.
However, this is not the best for you to do. Why? First, you may not know any temporary file extension. Second, you can just delete the files that were still needed. Third, if you are not careful then file damage could happen. To overcome this, you are advised to use a special utility to remove temporary files. Microsoft includes a utility to do so. The utility is Windows Disk Cleanup. This utility can delete temporary files in a relatively short time. After deleting unnecessary files, it is time to run a disk defragger. However, fragmentation has a negative impact, because the disk heads have to keep moving when read and write files, so that hard disk performance may decrease.
To overcome the problem of fragmentation can be done by running regularly defragging utilities. Defragging utility can read every file and make each part arranged on a regular basis, so that files can be more quickly accessed. Defragmenter utility is limited in terms of existing features, and if you want to try more complete features, you can use a utility defragging “Vopt” or defragging system cleanup “Diskeeper”. But the most important to overcome the damage to your hard drive is how we use these devices and perform regular maintenance; hard disk performance is not so rapid decline.

[Smith6612]

Now a days, considering people have DSL, cable or Fiber Optic Internet available to them, I will typically clear a person's browser cache as well as limit the cache to no more than 8MB of disk space (that's all you really need). The temp files, yes Windows is a monster when it comes down to it. Normally it should delete unused temp files after4 months but I've seen many cases where I've come across temp files from 2004 or older stashed away. Going into the Temp folders found in Documents and Settings/*user account*/Local Settings and deleting all of the temp files out of the temp folder, including those marked as Read Only manually really helps.

Also, especially with the case of Vista, System Restore can be a bugger when it comes down to disk space. Of course, System Restore can be both a helpful and annoying thing, but I always find that if my system is working in great order, to use Disk Cleanup to delete all of the restore points except for the most recent restore point. It frees up a nice 100GB of disk space on my main drive

Defragmentation in Vista and Windows 7 these days tends to be performed automatically, IF and only IF you leave your PC on all the time and Windows can wake itself to perform the tasks if it is set to go into Sleep mode. But the most useful tool I find for defragmenting drives is Defraggler made by Piriform (www.defraggler.com) . Rather than waiting 8 or so hours to defrag both of my 1TB RAID 0 arrays using Vista's tool, Defraggler does a great job and does it quickly. Of course, defragmenting your drive won't help if you've got little RAM, a slow CPU, or of course a very slow hard drive (I've seen many slow drives, and they SUCK).

Lastly, and this is one thing I have a beef with people on, people stashing installers on their PCs and not deleting them/using them. I've seen countless PCs where people install software and don't delete the installer. I've cleaned up numerous machines where their downloads folder/desktop is taking up 25GB of space on a 40GB drive because the person didn't delete the installer (slowing down the PC and making defragmentation impossible). Also, empty the recycle bin

[adamparkzer]

neteater,

Don't you think you should cite your sources, especially if you're hotlinking images off of them?

http://www.comptalks.com/tips-to-cleanup-your-harddisk/

[dealgolf]

Thank Neteater for good tips for me.

[boris333]

One tip I think people forget is to keep their files organized. I know I've seen people with multiple copies of a lot of their files on a disk because they forget where they put things. Since keeping multiple copies of something on the same disk is near worthless as a backup strategy, it's best to stay organized.

[Smith6612]

One tip I think people forget is to keep their files organized. I know I've seen people with multiple copies of a lot of their files on a disk because they forget where they put things. Since keeping multiple copies of something on the same disk is near worthless as a backup strategy, it's best to stay organized.

Excessive amounts of shortcuts too?

[raymondk]

Thanks for all the helpful tips.

[ah-blabla]

Not using windows is also a good tip, it uses much more hd space than is required. Compare Vista with 1 dvd(?) or multiple cds which gives you not much more than an os with Ubuntu where 1 cd gives you a fully functional system with office software etc. And Ubuntu also uses a filesystem not requiring defragmenting. My installation requires a total of 5Gb out of 8Gb on the root (os and software) partition, with roughly the same on my personal data partition. (Note, my photography is kept on a number of external backup hds and not stored on the computer). Using a few external hds (each being a copy/backup of the other) brings both organisational benefits as well as data safety.

Oh, and by the way, the best cleanup strategy is a good old "sudo rm -rf /"

[dante45]

Thx mate! Good tips!! ;)

[felabria]

The fastest is http://www.ccleaner.com/
Everything is automatic it also cleans up Java, FlashPlayer, etc caches.
and it also has GUTMANM. It's a secure delete method. And it has a faster Uninstall Application that doesn't to wait for all uninstall information to be gathered
and the best is: ITS FREEWARE!!!!