If you find that a hard disk partition is getting
low on free space, you should delete any unneeded files and programs.
Windows 7 comes with a Disk Cleanup utility that enables you to remove
certain types of files quickly and easily. Before discussing this
utility, let’s look at a few methods you can use to perform a spring
cleaning on your hard disk by hand:
Uninstall programs you don’t use—
If you have an Internet connection, you know it’s easier than ever to
download new software for a trial run. Unfortunately, that also means
it’s easier than ever to have unused programs cluttering your hard
disk. Use the Control Panel’s Add or Remove Programs icon to uninstall
these and other rejected applications.
Delete downloaded program archives—
Speaking of program downloads, your hard disk is also probably littered
with ZIP files or other downloaded archives. For those programs you
use, you should consider moving the archive files to a removable medium
for storage. For programs you don’t use, you should delete the archive
files.
Archive documents you don’t need very often—
Our hard drives are stuffed with ancient documents that we use only
rarely, if at all: old projects, business records from days gone by,
photos and videos from occasions held long ago, and so on. You probably
don’t want to delete any of this, but you can free up hard disk space
by archiving those old documents to removable media such as recordable
CD or DVD disks, or a flash drive.
Delete application backup files— Applications often create backup copies of existing files and name the backups using either the .bak or .old extension. Use Windows Explorer’s Search utility to locate these files and delete them.
After
you’ve performed these tasks, you should next run the Disk Cleanup
utility, which can automatically remove some of the preceding file
categories, as well as several other types of files, including
downloaded programs, Internet Explorer cache files, the hibernation
files, Recycle Bin deletions, temporary files, file system thumbnails,
and offline files. Here’s how it works:
1. | Select
Start, Computer, right-click the drive you want to clean up, and then
click Properties. The drive’s property sheet appears.
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2. | Click
Disk Cleanup. Disk Cleanup scans the drive to see which files can be
deleted, and then displays a window similar to the one in Figure 1.
Tip
Windows 7 offers a faster route to the Disk Cleanup window. Select Start, type cleanmgr /ddrive, where
drive is the letter of the drive you want to work with (for example, cleanmgr /dc), and then press Enter.
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3. | Click Clean Up System Files. Disk Cleanup displays an expanded list of file types.
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4. | In
the Files to Delete list, activate the check box beside each category
of file you want to remove. If you’re not sure what an item represents,
select it and read the text in the Description box. Note, too, that for
most of these items you can click View Files to see what you’ll be
deleting.
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5. | Click OK. Disk Cleanup asks whether you’re sure that you want to delete the files.
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6. | Click Yes. Disk Cleanup deletes the selected files.
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It’s
possible to save your Disk Cleanup settings and run them again at any
time. This is handy if, for example, you want to delete all your
downloaded program files and temporary Internet files at shutdown.
Select Start, type the following command, and then press Enter:
Note that the number 1 in the command is arbitrary: You can enter any number between 0 and 65535.
This launches Disk Cleanup with an expanded set of file types to
delete. Make your choices and click OK. What this does is save your
settings to the Registry; it doesn’t delete the files. To delete the
files, select Start, type the following command, and then press Enter:
You can also create a shortcut for this command, add it to a batch file, or schedule it with the Task Scheduler.
