How to free up disk space in Windows

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(Pocket-lint) – If you’re running out of storage space on your Windows computer, there are a few ways to tidy up to free up some space.

Of course, you can always buy an extra drive to add space, but if that’s not an option, there are other things you can do.

Start with Disk Cleanup

Windows has a built-in tool called Disk Cleanup. You can use this tool to delete your downloaded files, temporary crash reports, temporary internet files, etc.

To use Disk Cleanup, follow these steps:

1. Open the Start menu by clicking the Start button or the Windows key on your keyboard.
2. Type Disk Cleanup to search for the tool.
3. Select the drive you want to clean and click ok.
4. Select the files you want to delete and click OK.
5. Repeat the process and select “clean up system files” at the bottom of the page.
6. Select the other files to delete and click OK

System File Cleanup removes Windows update files, Microsoft Defender files, upgrade logs, and more.

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Empty your trash

If you’ve deleted files from your computer in an effort to free up space, you may have overlooked the Recycle Bin.

When you delete files in Windows, they are not deleted entirely but placed in your Recycle Bin. This is ideal if you need to recover files that you accidentally deleted, but files in your recycle bin are still taking up space on your machine. The Recycle Bin may be full of large files that continue to clutter up your computer, even though you thought you got rid of them.

To empty your Trash, right click on it and click “Empty Trash”.

If you want to be a bit more careful, right-click on the trash and click open. You will then be able to see all the files you have previously deleted and verify that you are happy before deleting them permanently.

Change your recycle bin settings

Once you have emptied the Trash, it may be useful to change the Trash settings. By default, Windows reserves a certain amount of space for files in the Recycle Bin. When you reach the maximum space, Windows starts deleting old files from the Recycle Bin.

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It is possible to adjust the amount of space the Trash is able to hold and thus prevent it from cluttering up your disk in the future.

For that, proceed as following

1. Find the recycle bin on your desktop
2. Right-click on the Recycle Bin and click Properties.
3. Select a maximum size for the recycle bin (if it’s smaller, it will store less data before it’s completely deleted).
4. Or click “Do not move files to Trash. Delete files immediately after deletion”.
5. Click OK

Obviously, this move may mean that you have no way to recover the files when you delete them. So be careful with these settings.

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Delete unused apps

If you’ve been using your Windows machine for a while, chances are you’ve installed a lot of programs, some of which you probably don’t need anymore. You may find apps that you don’t use regularly, haven’t used in a long time, or are taking up so much space that they need to go away.

To free up space on your Windows computer, you can uninstall apps and programs. For that, proceed as following :

1. Open the Start menu by clicking the Start button or the Windows key on your keyboard.
2. Tap Add or Remove Programs
3. Click to open the app
4. You can filter them by size or by installation date to know which ones to delete.
5. Click the three dots on anything you don’t need.
6. Click Uninstall and follow the on-screen instructions.
7. Repeat the process for anything you don’t need.

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Move files to an external drive

An alternative to deleting the files is to move them to another disk. It might be a little obvious, but you can use an external SSD to back up files and delete them from your Windows machine.

This requires an additional purchase, but it’s worth backing up the files anyway, and storing may be better than deleting.

For most drives of this type, you just need to connect the drive to your PC using a USB cable, then move the files you want to keep from your Windows machine to the external drive.

1. Plug the drive into your PC
2. Open File Explorer
3. Find the files you want to move
4. Click CTRL+X to cut the files.
5. Open the external drive in Windows Explorer
6. Press CTRL+V to paste the files to the external drive.

Another solution is to drag files from one drive to another, with the two locations open in different instances of the file manager.

Written by Adrian Willings.