Everyone has experienced at least once that their programs on the laptop freeze or some issues related to the performance. This is a sign that your device’s hard drive needs cleaning. The device can warn you about its packed storage drive by showing you a message on the screen.
Have you been asking yourself how to free up space on a laptop? If you have one and are unfamiliar with how to do it, here are some tips we gathered for you. Keep reading.
Solutions
If you have never cleaned up your hard drive, you can start now. Here are a couple of solutions that we will mention and explain. Follow these steps to free up space on your device, so you can continue using your laptop without freezing the programs or experiencing slow running.
To clean up space on your laptop, you can remove the apps or programs you don’t use anymore or run the tool to clean the disk. You should also reorganize and clean your desktop, remove huge files, or manage the downloaded files.
Before cleaning your hard drive, you should know that regular cleaning is essential, so your device can work properly. If you rarely clean your hard drive and use the laptop every day, you can expect cleaning to take a lot of time. But if you do it more often, the time needed to free up space on your device will be much shorter than the first time.
Uninstall the apps you don’t use
To free up space on your laptop, you should look for the apps and programs you have on the device but don’t use anymore. Open the Start menu and head to Apps. Find the option Apps and Features and click on it.
You will see a list of all the apps; you can choose to sort them by size. This way, you will see which apps take up the most space. To remove the apps you do not need anymore, select them and click the Uninstall button.
Why should desktops be cleaned?
For those who didn’t know, having too many icons on your desktop can cause your laptop to run slower than it should. This is because the device needs more operating memory to display these icons. You should consider reorganizing your desktop and sorting files into folders; this could result in your laptop being much faster. Also, think about deleting all the files you don’t need or use anymore.
Using tools to clean the disk
Windows has a super good tool that comes in the package. Disk Cleanup Tool is a great solution to remove all the files the operating system doesn’t need for its work. To run this tool, go to the This PC icon and click on the main hard drive, usually the Local Disk C. there, on the tool line, under the section Drive tools, you will notice the option Clean-up. Click on it to get things started. This can take a while, especially if you are doing it for the first time.
Extremely large files
Some files take up too much space, and you cannot do anything about it. But you can check for these files, and if you don’t need them, feel free to remove them.
Head to File Explorer and then to This PC icon. In the Search bar, type the Size word. When the research is done, you will be able to see the files from different categories in size, from empty ones to gigantic ones. Now, check all the files, especially the largest ones, and if you are sure you don’t need them, send them to the trash can.
You should also check the downloaded files because most people don’t remove downloaded photos, videos, or other files because they forget about them. Check the Downloads folder in File Explorer to remove unnecessary content. Make sure to empty the Recycle Bin after sending the files there, so you can be sure that you got rid of the trash once and for all.
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