Free up Disk Space , Recovery Wizard

Free up disk space on your computer, If your computer has low disk space this can be the cause of other problems such as a slowness, system lockups and crashes, plus of course the inability to save files to your hard drive if they are larger than the remaining disk space.

To begin with let’s get windows to give us a hand with its disk space recovery wizard , from my computer right click on the C drive, select properties and drive clean up, if you also select advanced you can also remove all but the most current windows restore point, just make sure your computer does not have any other problems so you won't need the old restore points.

Internet browsers
Depending on how often you browse the internet, your browser is probably retaining lots of files, every time you browse a web page your browser actually downloads what you see, by going to the tools menu, delete all internet files or cache.

Unless you need to browse pages offline if you go to the tools menu and internet options once again this time select the advanced tab, now find the option delete temporary files on exit.

While you’re here its good practice to find the option, Do not save encrypted pages to disk to stop your browser caching secure websites, this will help to stop any other users of your computer finding your secure site details such as banking details.
Installation files
If your computer has an i386 directory your can delete this as it’s basically the windows installation files, if any of these files are required you can simply put in the windows CD and copy them.

Microsoft office versions 2003 onwards as a default leave the installations files installed, by running an reinstall untick the leave installation files box to free up disk space .

Applications
Remove any applications you no longer use. Applications such as ms office will allow you to remove certain parts you may not use such as power point or access.

Search for large files
Perform a search by file size, and depending on the file locations delete any unneeded files or archive onto another location such as a DVD or network hard drive.

Page file
The operating system page file can be a hungry beast using hundreds of megabytes of space. If you’re hard drive is partitioned and you have a c and d drives you can move the page file to the drive with the more space.

To do this go to control panels and system, advanced tab, and simply create the page file on d and remove the one on c, remember to reboot one you have done this.
Email
It does not take too long to build up a healthy mailbox but beyond this it can quite literally get beyond belief. Make sure you keep a tidy mailbox, if you need to keep certain emails just in case it’s better to setup an email archiving program, this will not only keep your email running better but will also make it far easier to find anything.

Disk formats If your computer is using FAT32 why not convert to NTFS it offers better file compression, plus it’s much more secure than FAT32, checkout our how to article.

Other steps Adding more ram to your computer will make it faster but you will also be able to have a smaller page file, freeing up more space.
If you’re feeling brave use an application like partition magic to join partitions. Make sure you backup any needed data before attempting this.

Note Once you have managed to free up disk space be sure to defragment your hard drive, if this has not been run for a long time it will give your computer a whole new lease of life. Checkout our defragmentation page here.

Free up disk space and checkout our pc booster article to make your pc fly!!

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