It is shockingly easy to fill up even the largest hard drives. In a matter of months, what was once terabytes of free space has been reduced to a hundred or so gigabytes. While your computer might still run comfortably when it is bursting at the seams, you’ll probably feel better having more free space on your computer.
There are a few things you can do to get some of your used hard drive space back.
Uninstall Unused Programs and Features
The longer your computer’s been without a reformat, the more likely it is that you have a few programs sitting around, eating up precious space without actually being used. Finding what you have installed is as simple as clicking your Start Button, clicking on Control Panel, and selecting the Programs and Features icon.
From there you’ll see everything that’s been installed on your computer. Look through the list and if you see anything that you don’t use anymore, just click on it, then click the uninstall button above the list. A good rule of thumb is if you have to ask if you use it, you probably don’t. If you’re still worried, just keep in mind that anything you delete can be reinstalled – and before then, you have more space to work with on your hard drive.
Use Disk Cleanup
Microsoft figured that you’d fill up your hard drive space at some point, so they included a handy-dandy program that will allow you to delete files you don’t really need. From your Start search bar, type in “Disk Cleanup” and select the option that comes up. Once it starts, it’ll spend some time scanning your hard drive from everything that is safe to delete. Once that’s finished, the program will give you a list of files that you can delete to free up some space. Select the ones you want to get rid of and click either “Clean System Files” or “Ok” to get more space.
If you’re not sure whether it should be deleted or not, select one of the options and click “View Files” to get a look at what you’re deleting.
Start Anew and Reformat Your Hard Drive
What used to be an entirely taxing event is now fairly simple. Reformatting your hard drive is a great way to start clean. Back-up all the non-programs files that you need, then pop-in your Windows 7 disk and choose the reformat option. Make sure to actually select “Format Hard Drive” and not just “Reinstall Windows 7.” Choosing the latter will get you a fresh installation, but will back-up most of your programs and old Windows 7 files, which will likely end up with you having even less space than ever before.
These three tricks should go a long way towards making sure that any hard drive being used is being used well. You don’t need to do these every day – once every few years will do nicely. Keep up the maintenance and you’ll have more hard drive space for longer.
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