Clean Up Your PC
Before buying more, ensure you’re not wasting the storage you have.
Freeing up space on your PC has never been easier, thanks to Windows 10’s new Storage Sense feature, which is designed to render third-party apps such as CCleaner redundant. Your first job, therefore, is to employ its services to free up additional space on your drive. Navigate to “Settings > System > Storage,” and click the “Configure Storage Sense or run it now” link. Flick the Storage Sense switch on and choose when to run the disk-cleaning tool – by default, it runs when you get low on disk space, but if you want to take a more pre-emptive approach, you can run it monthly, weekly, or even daily.
Scroll down, and you can configure more options – for example, removing temporary files, emptying files from the Recycle Bin after a set period, and periodically cleaning out the “Downloads” folder. You can also configure OneDrive’s on-demand feature so that downloaded content reverts to online-only if unopened for 1, 14, 30, or 60 days. Desperate for more space? Click “Clean now” to perform a onetime clean-up.
Files on demand
If you’re a Microsoft OneDrive user, chances are you’re already taking advantage of a relatively recent feature known as “on-demand.” Instead of keeping everything physically stored on your computer, a series of shortcuts is created instead, pointing to the online files. These take up a fraction of the space, while ensuring your files are always accessible (so long as you’re connected to the Internet). Simply open a file in the normal way, and it’s downloaded to your computer, kept there indefinitely, or – if configured as outlined above – until the file hasn’t been touched for a set period, at which point it reverts to being online-only to free up space on your PC until you next open it.
To verify the feature is on, right-click the OneDrive icon and choose “Settings > Settings tab,” then check “Save space and download files as you use them.”
Track down duplicates
It’s amazing how easily we generate copies of files – or near-duplicates, in the case of digital photos, with multiple attempts to get the perfect shot all somehow being left on your hard drive at the end of the process. In the past, we’ve looked to Duplicate Cleaner Free ( www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/ duplicatecleaner.html) and AntiDupl ( https://ermig1979.github.io/AntiDupl/ english) to cover these bases for free. The Pro version of Duplicate Cleaner – US$29.95 – can also hunt out similar files, but before investing, why not give AntiTwin ( www.joerg-rosenthal.com/ en/antitwin) a go?
Despite not having been updated since 2010, this no-frills tool works perfectly in Win 10 and can cover all your bases, as the step-by-step guide opposite reveals. Your selections are clearly marked before you commit to anything, and when you click to delete, you’re given the option of moving files to a folder on the same drive for transferring elsewhere, sending them to the Recycle Bin, or deleting them directly.
Look, too, for the option to replace the file with a symbolic link to the file you’ve kept – this means a program referencing the file you’ve deleted will be redirected to the remaining file instead, ensuring it continues to work correctly.