Decluttering your computer is a good feeling
Use software that will free up space by analyzing the drive
There’s a great feeling in decluttering your living space and getting rid of accumulated junk. However, your computer is probably another place which could use some tidying up by getting rid of useless files and programs which take up valuable space and may slow down the whole device.
Running out of storage space on your computer has actually become more common in modern computers.
An older computer usually had a hard disk drive with a storage capacity of one terabyte, which is 1,000 billion bytes of data.
The solid-state drive on a modern computer often has about half of that capacity with about 512 gigabytes. This can become a serious problem if you’re trying to transfer data from an old computer to a new one.
You have basically two choices for freeing up storage space on a computer. One is the direct route of wandering around the computer’s drive and manually selecting and deleting files or uninstalling programs.
Unfortunately, this is incredibly time consuming and you may delete something that you might need in the future.
A better route is to use software that will free up space by analyzing the drive and initially getting rid of files and programs that you definitely don’t need, such as old Windows updates, temporary files that are still hanging around, and forgotten downloads.
Windows 10 and 11 come with a built-in tool called Storage Sense which will delete unnecessary files and continue to do so on a schedule or whenever the drive has reached a critically low level of free space, which could cause Windows to crash and shut down.
Click on the Start button, then Settings, System, and Storage. When you first open Storage, Windows will scan your computer and show you how much space various types of files are occupying.
The bad news is that the options for using Storage Sense in Window 10 are not as varied as in Windows 11.
In Win 10, Storage Sense will only delete temporary files and empty the recycle bin. If you click on one of the file types in the list, the folder containing the files will be displayed and you’ll have to manually select and delete files.
In Windows 11, Storage Sense will get rid of the usual unwanted files, but also give you cleanup suggestions by showing you particular files which are taking up massive amounts of storage space. Luckily, Microsoft has a help page for using Storage Sense in either version of Windows (tinyurl.com/3th2bjb8).
There are also two free programs which can help free up space. One is CCleaner (ccleaner.com/) which has been around for years and will scan your computer for unwanted files. Use the Custom Clean tool to scan for files you can safely delete. I would avoid buying the Pro version or using some of the other tools, such as one which will control which programs run when the computer starts up or another that will list and uninstall programs, unless you are fairly computer literate.
Another free program will be of interest to anyone who is familiar with the mess created by duplicate photos or other files hidden away in various folders.
Auslogics free Duplicate File Finder is very good at searching folders and finding duplicate documents, photos, or other types of files in the folders.
It’s available for download by going to the Auslogics website (auslogics.com/en/) and looking for the Duplicate File Finder button.
However, set the program to only search a particular folder, such as Pictures or Documents, and not the whole drive. You do not want to inadvertently delete system files or other vital operating system files.
The program will display all the duplicates arranged by location along with a thumbnail image of each file or picture. You can choose which photos to delete and which to keep. Be sure to read the full review of the program and the instructions and warnings at the Softwarehow website (tinyurl.com/3323h4y9).Decluttering your computer could be as satisfying as tidying your whole house.
Links in this column can be found at my website at rayser.ca/online/.