How To Free Up Storage In Windows?

If you are running a Windows-powered system, you must have a lot of essential applicatons installed. With a lot of things going on, we usually forget keeping a close watch on the storage space.

Probably, you have tons of unwanted files (or junk files) occupying unnecessary disk space. In either case, there might be some residual files or large files that you probably do not need.

Whatever be the case, most of the systems have something or the other which can be deleted to free up the storage space.

So, in this article, we shall be focusing on the easiest (and useful) ways to help you delete junk files from your computer.

Best Ways To Free Up Disk Space On Windows

1. Utilize A Cleaner Tool

If you do not want the hassle to clean multiple things individually (or investigate the disk usage), you can install a software utility that helps you clean junk files to free up space.

You might find a lot of cleaning tools for Windows – but not every tool does the job you expect. So, we recommend you one of the best out there:

Note: You can explore more cleaning tools as well – but most of them involve a premium upgrade option and restrict you to certain features on the free version.

BleachBit

BleachBit is a no-nonsense open-source (and ad-free) cleaning tool that is available for both Windows and Linux. It lets you select the type of files you want to scan/delete.

In addition to the selective scanning, you can also preview the files (and see how much space can be recovered) before deleting the files.

Not just limited to the extensive scanning and cleaning, it also lets you shred files/folders so that the files/folders cannot be recovered. In any case, if you have recently deleted something and do not want it to be recovered, you can utilize the “Wipe Free Space” option to overwrite the free space in a single click.

You do not have to pay anything or upgrade, it is totally free and an open source solution. If you like it, I would recommend you to donate something to the developers.

You can get started by downloading it from its official site.

2. Use The In-Built Disk Cleanup Tool

It is totally alright if you do not want to install any 3rd party tools on your system. In that case, you can just click on the search bar (or press Windows key + S) and type in “Disk Cleanup” to launch the tool.

Upon launch, it will ask you to select the drive that you want to clean (fret not, it will not wipe it). Simply, press OK and it will scan the drive and list out the size of temporary files, recycle bin, and other files.

You can then easily choose what to delete or what not to – to free up storage space. The temporary/cookies/recycle bin files are the common selections to delete. But, it depends on what else you want to delete.

3. Analyze The Disk Usage

If you have taken care of all the junk/unwanted files but still short on storage space. You can head on to the Settings and proceed to the Storage option.

Here, you will find your storage space sorted into various categories. You can click on them individually to explore and delete them if necessary.

Fret not, you can also scroll down and click on “View storage usage on other drives” to analyze other drives and clean them up.

It is also worth noting that you should have the “Storage Sense” option enabled as shown in the image above to automatically free up space by deleting temporary files and recycle bin files. Normally, you have it active by default – but still, something to look out for.

If you want, you can also explore some 3rd party disk space analyzer from one of our older articles.

4. Uninstall Unwanted Programs

If you are worried about freeing up your disk space, you must have already done this. But, in case, you forgot uninstalling programs that you no longer use, it is worth checking out.

You just have to search for “Apps & Features” from the search bar or navigate through the System Settings. Once you are there, just have to look carefully for the apps that are taking up a significant amount of space – uninstall it if you do not need it.

Wrapping Up

It is not a tough task to free up space on Windows, you just have to keep a few things in check so that you do not have a lot of junk files (or unnecessary files) taking up storage space.

In addition to all the techniques I mentioned above, you just need your presence of mind to organize files/folders in a better way to prevent eating up the precious storage space.

If you find this article helpful, make sure to help others by sharing it along. If you have a suggestion or a question, feel free to let us know in the comments down below.

Ankush Das
Categories: General
Tags: Storage, Windows