Hard Drive Cleanup

Wonder why your computer is getting so slow? One very common reason is your hard drive getting full because of the temporary files it's been saving. The very first and easy thing you can try is to clean up your hard drives. Windows keeps the temporary files within your hard drives, mainly to minimize the access time on the next use. However, these files get added up, and you'd notice your computer gets slower by time. A good practice is to perform a disk cleanup every once in a while to empty out those temporary storages. This normally improves your pc's performance. The temporary files can be just some text files or images. Yes, images! whenever you visit a website, almost everything you see on the page is downloaded to your local hard drive, stored into the temporary storage as "temporary internet files". You might notice the next time you revisit the same page, the loading speed is somehow faster. This is because Windows reuses the temporary files which it found unchanged comparing to the page content. (no wonder why you've been told to refresh the page?) Now these files can be large! since a file can be one big file that you downloaded off the internet. Then you've used it and thought you have deleted it... but in many cases, a copy of it is still there, as a temporary file. Follow the instructions below to perform a disk cleanup for your hard drives, especially the one that has Windows systems files (normally "C" drive).

Use this trick at your own risks

1. Launch the Disk Cleanup utility by either:
   - "Start" >> "Programs" >> "Accessories" >> "System Tools" >> "Disk Cleanup", or:
   - "Start" >> "Run", enter "cleanmgr" then press Enter.
2. Select the disk you want to clean up from the drop-down box (i.e. "Local Disk C") and click "OK":
   
   
   
   
3. Windows will calculate the space on your selected hard drive. This might take a few minutes depending on the size of your hard drive:
   
   
   
   
4. Once Windows is done with the calculation, Disk Cleanup Utility displays. Here you can select which storages you want to clean up (under "Files to delete"). It doesn't hurt if you select them all when you really need free spaces on your hard drive. Notice the usage size on some of these storages might be huge:
   
   
   
   
5. Click "OK" after your selections, then click "Yes" on the prompt.
6. Disk Cleanup Utility starts to clean up your hard drive. This might take a while depending on the current usage level on the storage. During the cleanup process, your computer might be very slow, so give it some time. After cleanup your hard disks, perform a disk defragmentation would really help your pc run faster.