If it is true that the new hard drives are getting bigger, it is also true that the photos and videos stored in it become so numerous that, in the long run, they can become problematic for disk space. In addition, many portable PCs are fitted with low-capacity disks (250 or 500 GB) that need to free up space frequently, while newer computers are often equipped with SSDs, which (although very fast) hardly have an available space greater than 256 GB or 512 GB (higher denominations cost a lot at the moment).
If our PC falls into this type of problem (hard disk always full or not very large), let's see together all the ways to increase disk space to prevent general performance from slowing down and to be able to save new files, photos and videos without having to delete nothing or almost.
READ ALSO -> What to do if the computer hard disk is broken or damaged
1) Disk Cleanup built into Windows 10
Without installing any type of program, you can use a tool built into Windows to delete temporary files and other data as well as update installation files.
To use the Disk Cleanup tool just open File Explorer in the Start menu, click in the side bar on the This PC section, right-click on the disk where Windows is present (usually C :) and press Properties ; a new window will open in the General tab, where we have to press the Disk Cleanup button present in the Capacity section (just below the pie chart with the remaining space).
From the window that opens, select the types of files you want to delete: temporary files, log files, files in the recycle bin, and other unimportant files, then press OK.
Before proceeding, however, we can also include system files in the cleanup; By clicking on Clean up system files in the Disk Cleanup window you can delete those Windows Update installation files (in this regard, Clean Windows Update to free up 4 GB of disk space) and other unused Windows files.
From the system file cleaning window it is also possible to press on the tab at the top More options to delete all the recovery points (except the last one created for safety), so as to also recover this space.
2) Remove the heaviest programs
From the Windows uninstaller, which we can find on any version of Windows in the Control Panel -> Uninstall a program, we sort the programs by the space occupied by clicking on the Dimensions column and remove the heavier ones and they are not used.
For example, Java can be removed as well as Adobe Acrobat Reader which can be replaced with a smaller alternative program.
If you are using Windows 10, you can remove heavier programs from PC Settings in the System -> Apps and features section .
From here you can remove both Windows Store applications and normal programs.
3) Check the space occupied on the disk
To find out what disk space is using on your PC and easily find larger files, you can use a program to see how PC disk space is used.
Among those listed, we recommend using WinDirStat which, after scanning the system, will show us a list of all the folders and files sorted according to the space used.
Just click on the most voluminous folders indicated by the program and find out, through the tree of the paths, which files or which folders take up the most space on our hard disk.
Obviously, you don't have to delete Windows system files or even program files to avoid running into problems!
Let's just delete unnecessary personal files or uninstall the programs that generate the largest files.
4) Clean temporary files
While the Windows Disk Cleanup tool is useful for recovering wasted space from files that are no longer important, it still does not delete temporary files used by other programs.
For example, it is unable to delete temporary files created by Firefox or Chrome, whose data cache can even occupy several Gigabytes of disk space.
To clean temporary and obsolete files we can download CCleaner for free, the most popular computer cleaning program.
By running this program regularly we will be able to deeply clean our PC from all temporary and unnecessary files generated by the programs installed on Windows, in addition to speeding up the PC thanks to the tools to control programs in auto-start.
5) Add a new hard drive
The best way to increase disk space on a computer is, without a hitch, to add a new drive to the one that may be present.
The best internal mechanical hard drives (SATA connection) that we can add to our desktop PC are the following:
- WD Blue 1 TB Desktop Hard Disk (42 €)
- Seagate 2 TB Sata III (61 €)
- WD Blue 4 TB Desktop Hard Disk (€ 94)
If we have a laptop instead or we want to save the data of the desktop PC on an external mechanical disk (USB 3.0 connection) here are the best we can buy:
- WD Elements Portable 1 TB (€ 47)
- Toshiba Canvio Basic External HDD 1 TB (€ 47)
- Western Digital Elements 2 TB (65 €)
- Maxtor M3 External HDD 4 TB (94 €)
6) Other methods to increase disk space
If we want to get even more space we can use the compression function of drives, files and folders as explained in the article accompanying the link.
Alternatively we can use the Compact OS function in Windows 10 to recover disk space .
If the problem with space concerns particularly heavy personal files, the use of Cloud services such as Google Drive or OneDrive allows you to save heavy files and always keep them available from any PC, without taking up space on our physical disk.
