Clean up your PC’s hard drive

Delete Temporary Files

Your computer makes use of temporary files to store information for a short period of time. These files should be deleted by the originating application when they’re no longer needed, but sometimes they hang around and take up space. Temporary files can be deleted to regain lost hard drive space, and usually end with the .tmp extension. Windows XP usually keeps temporary files in C:\Documents and Settings\your_username\Local Settings\Temp.

Delete Temporary Internet Files

Internet Explorer speeds up the act of web browsing by storing temporary copies of the sites you visit. These are called Temporary Internet Files, and can be eliminated by going to Tools → Internet Options → General and pressing the Delete Files button located underneath Temporary Internet Files.

Internet Explorer makes it possible to limit the amount of space consumed by your Temporary Internet Files. Return to Tools → Internet Options → General and click the Settings button underneath Temporary Internet Files. A new window will appear and allow you to adjust the amount of space used to store your Temporary Internet Files.

Uninstall unecessary software

Do you have a plethora of software installed on your PC? Even if your system isn’t chock-full of junk programs, you probably have a few that you can spare. Think of the programs that you use daily to accomplish your most frequent tasks, then head to Start → Control Panel → Add/Remove Programs and see if there’s anything in that list that you can live without. If you find anything that can afford to take a hike, there’s a handy little Uninstall button next to each program in the list.

Clean up your e-mail

If you use Outlook Express to read e-mail, you can compact your messages to reduce disk space usage and decrease the chances of e-mail loss from file corruption. By compacting your OE e-mails, you’ll also improve the performance of Outlook Express by updating its master index of messages. An Outlook Express basic repair kit gives you complete instructions for compacting messages in Outlook Express. From the article:

• In Outlook Express, click Work Offline on the File menu so that no new messages will be arriving.
• In the Folder List, click on Outlook Express so that no e-mail or news folder is open.
• Close the Folder List by clicking the X in the upper right-hand corner of the list panel. Alternatively you can click Layout on the View menu, and then clear the Folder List check box.
• On the File menu, point to Folder, and then click Compact All Folders. Do not use your computer until the process is complete, which might take several minutes.

As the article says, be sure to work offline and not interrupt the compacting process. Doing so could cause you to lose data.

While you’re waiting for Outlook Express to compact your e-mail messages, you might consider switching to a web-based e-mail service. Services like GMail and Yahoo! Mail offer powerful web-based e-mail management with astronomical storage space for your messages. With these services, you can literally store thousands of e-mail messages and not give up one byte of space on your own personal hard drive. Plus, your e-mail is accessible from any computer and any location when you use a web-based service.

Find large files with DiskView

You may have a good amount of personal files laying around if you’ve been using the same computer for a long time. If many of these files are dormant, you can back them up to an external storage medium to save space. External storage mediums include:

• CDs & DVDs
• External hard drives
• Tapes
• Network file servers

DiskView is a Disk Space Usage Manager - a program that can help you find out what files are taking up the most amount of space. DiskView is a Windows program that visually displays storage space consumption using a color-coded graph, and even reports on your hard drive’s health. DiskView $39 for personal use, but there’s also a trial version available.

Using DiskView, locate old files and move them to some external storage medium. We don’t suggest simply deleting old files, since you never know when you’ll be looking for something down the road. It’s also good practice to back up your files in at least two separate locations (also different mediums). Hard drives, servers, CDs and DVDs all have a limited lifespan. CDs and DVDs in particular only last for a short time. You don’t want to lose your personal files to a disk that’s seen its last day.

[tags]storage,hard drive,pc,Windows XP[/tags]