It’s becoming easier and easier to fill up the space on the hard drive of your computer. People are increasingly using their home computers as media centers, for example, and download movies, television programs, and music. As well, as computer power and performance has increased over the past few years, software programs have gotten bigger, and take up more space on your computer. Finally, we all love to take photos and videos, and to store them someplace, and that someplace is our PC.
Eventually, we all find ourselves running out of hard disk space.
The obvious solution is to purchase additional storage. However, there are ways to squeeze more room out of your existing hard drive. Saving hard disk memory on your PC is important, because your operating system needs on-board memory (besides RAM) to function at its best.
So, before you go out and purchase a new portable disk drive to take some of the strain off of your poor hard disk, what are some ways to perform hard drive cleanup and optimize Windows performance?
First off all, it’s important to know that every time you open a software program or browse the internet, information is stored on your computer. Also, System Restore, a great Windows feature that allows you to backup and recover your computer in case it crashes or gets a virus, also can store (large!) backups on your hard disk.
So, even without downloading movies or vacation photos, it’s possible to fill up your hard drive quite soon after purchase. And, as mentioned, a full hard drive can sometimes lead to a slow computer.
However, there are several ways you can free up space:
- Clean your browsing history
- Remove temporary internet files
- Delete adware and cookies
- Clean up other sensitive internet data
- Permanently erase deleted files
- Erase autosave documents
- Clear windows explorer search terms
Of course, this is easier said than done. It can be difficult to identify the correct folders where these files reside, and even more difficult to determine if you have safely removed everything. While there is a Windows utility that can help, PC TuneUp Maestro integrates Disk Cleanup into its suite of features. This means that it’s possible to conduct registry defrag and hard drive cleanup all at the same time, with the push of a button.
It’s all part of CompuClever’s mission of improving PC performance.