You can free up quite a lot of disk space by trimming files and applications you don’t care about, but that will only take you so far. To free up disk space on your Mac’s hard drive, you need to dig a little deeper, like cleaning up language files you don’t use, removing duplicates, deleting attachments attach and delete temporary files.

Clean trash

When you delete items, like files and photos, they aren’t deleted immediately from your computer. Instead, it stays in the Trash and continues to take up valuable hard drive space. To empty the Trash, go to your desktop, right-click on the Trash and click on Empty Recycle Bin. You will see a pop-up warning asking if you are sure you want to delete your Barrel items permanently. Click Yes to continue.

Disc cleaning

Windows has a built-in cleaning utility (aptly Disk Cleanup) that can help you free up space by getting rid of various files. It including temporary Internet files, memory dump files System, and even preinstalled Windows may still hang from your last move to Windows 10.

You can find Disk Cleanup in the Start menu, under All apps> Windows Administrative Tools> Disk Cleanup. Select the drive you want to clean and press OK, then wait while Disk Cleanup calculates how much space you can free up if you want to delete system files, such as the Windows.old folder (which contains your previous Windows settings and possibly lots of GB), click Clean up system files.

Delete downloaded and temporary files

You can delete temporary files without running Disk Cleanup, along with the files you downloaded that you no longer need. Go to Settings> System and click Storage on the left panel. Next, click This PC at the top and then click Temporary files from the list. Check the box for the Temporary files and Downloads folder (and Empty the trash while you’re at it) and then click the Empty recycle bin button.

you are there) and then click the Remove files button.

Store files in the cloud – and only in the cloud

If you take advantage of cloud storage via OneDrive or another service, you can probably store and store two files. Well, you don’t need to do this – all cloud storage services let you choose which folders are downloaded and saved to your computer (as well as in the cloud).

store-files-in-the-cloud.png

Right-click the OneDrive icon in the system tray and choose Settings. On the Account tab, next to Choose folders to sync to this device, click Choose folders. Select the folders you want to sync (read: save directly) to your device and uncheck any folders you don’t want to sync with your device. When you have finished selecting or deselecting the folders, press OK. Folders you don’t choose to sync with your device are deleted from your hard drive, freeing up space. You will still be able to access the files in these folders from the OneDrive page in any Web browser; They will not be saved on your hard drive.

Uninstall apps and games that you never use

Uninstalling apps that you don’t use, such as apps that came pre-installed with your computer or that you manually installed but used only once, can help recover some additional space.

Also, the games you have installed from the Microsoft Store or other sources eat up a lot of storage space, so you should remove what you don’t play anymore.

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Click Apps.
  3. Click on Apps & features.
  4. Select the app or game and click the Uninstall button
    1. A quick tip: Use the Sort by drop-down menu and choose Size to list apps and games by size, making it easier for you to find items you should consider.
  5. Click the Uninstall button again to confirm.

Once you’ve completed the steps, you can repeat the same instructions to remove many games and apps that you may have installed on your device.

Disable Hibernation on Windows 10

Hibernation is a feature that saves content in memory to your hard drive that allows you to turn off your device completely without losing your current session.

While Hibernation is a useful feature, it requires a few gigabytes of space to save RAM content to the hiberfil.sys file on the hard drive.

If you want to optimize your computer’s available memory, you can disable this feature to free up space.

  1. Open Start.
  2. Search for Command Prompt, right-click the result, and select Run as administrator.
  3. Type the following command to disable Hibernation and press Enter: powercfg /hibernate off.

The only problem with disabling this feature is that you will lose the ability to use Hibernation, but this is a good option when you are on a low storage level, and you need space right away.

Delete system files

  1. Open File Explorer.
  2. On “ This PC ” right-click on the primary system drive and choose Properties.
  3. Click the Disk Cleanup button.
  4. Click the Cleanup system files button.
  5. Select the files you want to delete to free up space, including:
    • Windows Clean up Update.
    • Windows upgrade log files.
    • Downloaded program files.
    • Temporary Internet Files.
    • The system generated Windows Error Reporting.
    • Distribution Optimization File.
    • Trash can.
    • Temporary records.
    • Temporary Windows Installation Files.
    • Windows presets.

    Note: The available options you can choose may differ. For example, if Windows 10 removed the previous version, you won’t find an option “Previous Windows installation (s)”.

  6. Click OK.
  7. Click Delete Files.

Once you’ve completed the steps, depending on the space the files are using, you’ll have more space to store valuable files.