![]() ![]() This is one of the oldest utilities that Windows has to offer and it can be of great use when you want to clean your hard drive of temp files, offline web-pages and other useless data. If you are interested in defragmentation software, you can check out our list of the best ones available, or you can take a look at some hard drive and SSD optimization tips. Defragmenting your HDD can help with this problem and allow it to run better. The information on your drive tends to clump together after a while, and if you’re not careful, then you might end up with huge chunks of data that are harder to read by the hard drive. This trusty tool will allow users to defragment their drives and make them run faster and smoother. In earlier versions of Windows, this was the Disk Defragmenter tool, which was renamed in Windows 8. Using this method also has a dissadvantage, as in most cases, the program will leave some residue behind, call it the “program’s ghost”, which has to be deleted by other means. From here, they can easily uninstall old software. Located in the Control Panel, this option shows users which software is installed on their computers, how much it occupies and when it was installed. You should be familiar with this option by now, as it allows users to uninstall most programs installed on their computers. Here are a few of the tools that you can use to clean your computer: Programs and Features If you don’t have anything better, then why not give them a try, as they can prove quite useful. However, more often than we’d like, these tools are forgotten or simply discarded. Oh, and in the meantime, you can grab an SD card or low-profile flash drive and just leave it plugged into your laptop for extra onboard storage-some are so small that you'll hardly notice they're there.Although Windows isn’t particularly good at maintaining a clean working environment, the designers were kind enough to implement tools that will help users declutter their computers and keep them tidy. ![]() It'll cost more up front, but you'll save money in the long run. If your laptop storage isn't upgradeable, you'll need to make sure your next laptop upgrade includes all the storage you think you'll need down the line. You may need to look up what kind of M.2 drive your laptop requires, but once you do, you can swap it in yourself with a small screwdriver kit. If your laptop's storage is upgradeable, you can easily buy a bigger drive online-either a 2.5-inch SSD or an M.2 drive, whichever your laptop supports. ![]() So once you start encountering that “Disk full” warning, know that you'll probably want a bigger drive in the somewhat near future. You can repeat this process every few months, but eventually, it's going to become tiresome-or you're going to run out of stuff you're willing to delete. Temporary files will return, your cloud storage will fill up, and you'll keep collecting music, movies, and other files. Ultimately, most of these solutions are temporary. If you choose the external drive option, just remember that you should also back up those files to the cloud if they're truly important to you-external drives can and will fail just like regular hard drives, and if that's your only copy of the data, you still need it backed up somewhere. Just remember that if you use a service like Dropbox, it may sync those files to your computer automatically, so you'll have to go into the program's settings and unselect those files so they're stored in the cloud only. Windows can automatically move unused files to OneDrive using the aforementioned Storage Sense feature, but again, I prefer to have manual control. You don't need to waste precious storage on your laptop keeping these kinds of things around-put them on an external drive or upload them to a cloud storage service like Dropbox or OneDrive. For example, I have gigabytes of work and tax documents that I rarely need to access but want to keep for a few years, and my wife has some projects from her grad school days she wants access to if she needs them. ![]() If you find files you aren't ready to get rid of yet, you might be able to move them somewhere else for safe keeping. Offload Files to External or Cloud Storage ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |