How to clean up the clutter on your rig
Maybe you're a pack rat like some of us here at Maximum PC, downloading and keeping files unsorted in a folder for months before getting to them. But when drive space is running low and outright buying a new drive to store even more files is out of the question (or just silly), it's time to clean house and figure out what needs to be pitched. The question is, where do you even start? And while it's easy to go through personal folders and toss out old data, what about the crud from programs that don't clean up after themselves?
We'll help you figure out where to start and how to (safely) clean up your PC's clutter.
The First Wave
On Windows, there are two popular tools that you can use to do a good job of scrubbing for files that are no longer necessary, and they're both free. The first is the venerable CCleaner. The second is Windows' built-in Disk Cleanup tool.
Using CCleaner is easy: Download, install, and launch the program. Next, click the "Cleaner" tab on the left, then click "Run Cleaner." When the cleanup is done, CCleaner will report how much space it recovered and from what applications. By default, when cleaning up web browser data, CCleaner will not mess with your history, important cookies, saved passwords, and autocomplete entries, so you don't have to worry about losing them.
CCleaner in action.
To use Disk Cleanup:
Open up File Explorer and go to "Computer."
Right-click a drive you want to clean, and select "Properties."
Where the drive space is detailed, click the "Disk Cleanup" button; this will launch the Disk Cleanup utility.
By default, the list contains temporary files from applications, files generated from File Explorer itself, and the drive's Recycling Bin contents. You can get a more thorough list, which has system level files, by clicking the "Clean up System Files" button.
One nifty category of files this exposes are old Windows update files that are no longer needed, or have been superseded by a newer version.
The "More Options" tab takes you to the "Programs and Features" utility, and a way to delete all but the most recent System Restore point and Shadow Copy.
The files that Disk Cleanup removes are those that are in the temporary directory and Windows files that can be removed, like log files and update files that are no longer needed.
The Second Wave
While CCleaner and Disk Cleanup provide a nice, easy way of mass-deleting files that are known to be of no use, what about files that aren't covered? Where do you start looking? One tool that's really handy for finding out what files and even directories are taking up space is WinDirStat. This tool will analyze your drives and creates a graphical representation of their contents.
An output of WinDirStat. Each of these blocks represents a file. Groups of blocks are folders.
You can also use a duplicate file finder app to weed out unnecessary files. While basic ones only perform file name and checksum comparisons, more advanced versions can check for similarity, such as if you have two image files that are the same, but maybe one has different dimensions.
One free tool that you can use to search for exact and similar duplicate files is Anti-Twin.
The feature that makes it stand out among other duplicate file finders is that it comes with a content-compare option. This isn't limited to images, either. For example, you can use it to compare MP3 files by their ID3 tags, by lowering the "Match min" threshold a bit.
Odds and Ends
Here are some tips to help you free up disk space.
Reduce the Size of the Page File
By default, Windows allocates the page file (where chunks of memory are stored if RAM gets too full) on the C: drive and takes up about 1–1.5 times the amount of RAM in your system. Here's how to make changes to the size of your page file.
1. Go to Control Panel > System and Security > System
2. On the left pane, click "Advanced system settings"
3. Click the "Settings..." button in the Performance section.
4. In the "Advanced" tab, click the "Change..." button in the "Virtual memory" section.
5. Make sure "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" isn't ticked.
6. Select the drive that holds the page file you want to change(usually it's just the C: drive), and tick the "Custom size" radio button.
7. Set the initial and maximum size to 1024.
8. Do this for your other drives or select "No paging file," if needed.
9. Press "Set," then "OK" to save.
10. Restart your computer for the changes to take effect.
Do not completely disable the page file. Some programs will not work correctly or will complain.
Turn Off Hibernate
Hibernate is only really useful for two things:
You're on a laptop and you don't want to lose your system state even if the battery runs dry in standby mode.
You want to take advantage of Windows 8's Fast Boot feature
Otherwise, Windows keeps a file for hibernating that can be as large as the amount of RAM you have in the system. Thankfully, Microsoft provides a tool that can enable or disable hibernate on their support page: http://ift.tt/1KoCmFi
Move Space Hogs Elsewhere (Without Affecting Anything)
While this doesn't free up overall disk space, it's helpful if you need to relocate a large chunk of files from one drive to another drive without affecting anything. An example: your C:\ drive is running out of space and you find that your games on Steam are the culprit. However, you don't want to uninstall then reinstall them because that'll take forever.
Running with this example, here's what you can do:
1. Make sure Steam is closed.
2. Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam
3. Move the "steamapps" folder to where you want to store it.
4. Open Command Prompt as an Administrator
a. Go to Start > All Programs > Accessories. Find Command Prompt and right click it. Select "Run as administrator"
b. Open Start and pull up search. Type in "cmd" and it should be displayed in the results. You can either right-click it and select "Run as administrator," or if it's highlighted, press CTRL + Enter.
5. Type cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam" (the path must be in quotes)
6. Type mklink /J steamapps [your path to steamapps]
a. So, if I moved steamapps to D:\Games\steamapps, the command would be:
mklink /J steamapps D:\Games\steamapps
To generalize the above:
1. Move the folder that you want to relocate.
2. Open a command prompt as an administrator
3. Navigate to where the folder was by using cd [path]
4. Then type the command mklink /J [name of folder] [new path of folder]
What about Linux?
Linux has a CCleaner-like tool called BleachBit (http://ift.tt/u6eVGP). It works similarly to CCleaner in that it looks for temporary and other files that may be of no use generated by programs like web browsers. However, when you run the program, you'll have to manually select the categories of files you want cleaned up. But after that, one button press takes care of the cleanup for you.
BleachBit in action.
Linux also has an app similar to WinDirStat called KDirStat. Much like WinDirStat, you select which parts of the drive you want to scan and a graphical representation of the file's sizes will be displayed.
If you're having trouble with the download and/or install of either app from the links we provided, check your distribution's package manager.
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