It’s amazing the way hard disk capacities have shot up in recent years. My rather-elderly laptop has a hard disk capacity of 80 GB (gigabytes) which seemed pretty good when I bought it. A desktop PC, bought in 2007, had a seemingly-enormous 320 GB, and my current PC, bought a year ago, boasts 1 TB (a terabyte, or 1024 gigabytes). With almost any PC you buy these days, you receive a huge hard drive but these can quickly be filled with games, digital photographs, or downloaded movies.Of course, you don’t want to do that – free space on your hard disk is good! And, by the same token, a lack of free space is definitely bad. Windows has to do all sorts of complicated things behind the scenes, many of which entail finding some space to store data, and if there’s little space available, your PC will tend to slow to a crawl.
On old PCs and laptops, 40 GB certainly isn’t unusual. That’s not a problem in itself, of course: as long as your hard disk has enough space to store all you need, and has enough free space remaining for Windows to work properly, everything is fine. Unfortunately, these days, it’s all too easy to fill up a disk of that capacity. Start storing digital media files like photos, videos and audio files, and you’ll work your way through your remaining few gigabytes in next to no time.
So what can you do to free-up some space and get Windows running at a decent lick again? Here are a few suggestions:
• Empty the Recycle Bin regularly to avoid keeping unwanted, space-wasting files.
• Uninstall any programs you never use. Have a look through the Start menu and you’ll probably find all sorts of old programs you’ve installed over the years and forgotten about!
• Move your digital media files to a different disk. For a few tens of pounds, you can buy an external hard drive that plugs into a USB socket on your PC and gives you several hundred gigabytes of space.
• Prevent Internet Explorer from storing large amounts of website information. Press the Alt key to display Internet Explorer’s menu bar, choose Tools > Internet Options, and then click Settings in the ‘Browsing history’ section. In the Disk space to use box, type a low figure such as 10 MB.
• Reduce the space used by System Restore. Assuming you’re using Windows XP, right-click the My Computer icon on your Start menu or desktop, choose Properties, and select the System Restore tab in the window that appears. Drag the slider all the way back to Min, then click OK.
These tips won't solve all your problems but you will keep a clean system and have your PC running at its best.
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