Create Space on your computer

So many of us now own a computer and are quickly accumulating data on these devices. I spoke a while ago about how we are of an age of “Data Hoarders”, no longer do we have to keep shoe boxes to store our memories, we are storing more and more electronically. 

Well, with all this data accumulating our computers are increasingly becoming slower and the hardware not lasting as long. This is in part due to the amounts of data we retain on our computers. Not necessarily data that you are aware of.  

What happens to that picture or email you deleted or when you went to that website and looked at the blue bird sitting in the birdbath at Mt Lofty Gardens? We delete things and open things all the time on our computers and in doing this the computer is smart enough to create a temporary file just in case you want to go back and have a look at that later. 

Some of you may have experienced a pop up message on your computer “disk space full” or had to upgrade your hard drive to a large size to keep accommodating for the growing data we store. 

Well Microsoft Windows 10 has a built in disk cleanup program to help us try and keep things under control to maximize the functions of our computers. 

To run this on your computer click on the windows icon (bottom left corner of your screen) then start typing ‘disk cleanup’ when it shows at the top of the list then click on the matching name. This will open up a small window with a list of files, etc. You can click ‘OK’ within the window that pops up and this will then scan the auto selected drives on your computer and pop up a window asking if you want to permanently delete these files. Click ‘Delete files’ and your computer will remove that files not required anymore. 

If you want to do a more thorough clean up you can select other drives and options within the list as well. Within the ‘Disk Cleanup’ window click on the ‘Clean up system files’ bottom left of that window. Wait a second and it will pop up a revised window with new files you can select to clean. Once again it will have auto selected the most common ones, but you can select others from the list if you like. Click ‘OK’ then ‘Delete Files’ note that this may take a little longer to scan and complete the task. 

Now some of these files may go to your ‘Recycle Bin’ so it is recommended that you do a final clean of this folder. Normally an icon located on your screen. You can right click on that icon and select ‘Empty Recycle Bin’. We always recommend that you regularly check this as when you delete something from your computer accidentally this is normally where you can retrieve it from. 

If you are still having issues with space on your hard drive then you may want to back-up some of your personal files as well. This is a whole topic on its own the I have discussed before. 

The Windows 10 Disk cleanup tool is there to help us remove those temporary or hidden files the computer creates in the background. It doesn’t remove your personal files. 

As always the friendly team at iseek computing can help you get sorted and make sure your computer in running at its optimum and your backups are sorted.