Hard drives are just getting larger and larger these days, yet somehow they still tend to fill up a lot faster than we want them to. This is even more true if you are using a solid-state drive (SSD), which offers less hard drive space than the traditional mechanical hard drives. No one likes to be scrolling through their computer and then like seeing your ex with another person, your computer has stopped you in your tracks. That annoying pop-up that tells you that space is running low on your computer appears. If you are looking to get more space on your hard drive, these tricks might be able to help you free up some space for important files and programs by removing that extra junk that you don’t really need.
Empty your trash – First things first, your trash doesn’t automatically empty when you delete a file from your computer. This may seem like a no-brainer to some people, but sometimes you just forget to empty that overflowing dump of files. While this might clear up a little bit of space, it probably won’t give you enough space to solve your problem. That’s why this is just the first step.
Dump your download folder – No matter what operating system you are using you are bound to have that download folder that might hold memories from years ago. While memories are good, some should really be left in the past. You don’t need that old resume or those terrible selfies you somehow thought looked great at one point. It’s time to kick these files to the curb. You might be surprised by the amount of space you can free up by cleaning this up.
Eliminate one-time files – If you are looking to free up football field sized space on your hard drive, you might want to check out those one-time files. While a good majority of these files end up in the download folder, they can be anywhere on your hard drive. One big offender is the media library on your computer. You can have music from the early 2000’s hiding in those dark corners.
Clean up your cloud storage – Cloud storage is great if you lose your phone or accidentally deleted a file that you needed. But it can also eat up a lot of space on your computer if you don’t do the fall clean up for it. Things that are backed up by mobile devices and synced from the cloud take up a lot of space. This might be a challenge at times though, so you should start by deleting the files from your cloud storage. Once they are removed from there they will also be removed from your hard drive.
Archive onto an external hard drive – Once you have combed through these files you have probably found that burglar that robbed you of your disc storage. There might be some things on your computer that don’t necessarily need to be taking up space on your internal hard drive. Moving these files and applications to an external hard drive can give you a lot of extra wiggle room.
Computers are flexible now. They back up things from Word files to your mobile device. This means that there are a lot of things eating away at your available data. Do what you can to put that hard drive on one serious diet.
Resources:
http://www.howtogeek.com/125923/7-ways-to-free-up-hard-disk-space-on-windows/
http://time.com/3680964/computer-out-space/