Assuming that many people ocasionally face with problems like „not enough free space on hard disk”, we thought to put together all the efficient methods to free the hard disk. First of all, you must configure the System Restore. This can free up 1-2 GB (usually 0.2 to 1 GB) on the partitions for which this function is activated. Therefore, we recommend to have activated this function only for the partition where the system is operating and to “adjust” accordingly to how many space this function can use. Disk Cleanup is also an important step. We think that most people who read this article know what this is about, but few use this feature. Find that it can free up enough space (up to 4GB) when you activate compression function old files (Compressed Old Files). We recommend you delete „Compressed old files” only on the partition with the operating system.
Move unused files on disk (CD, DVD .. etc). You’ll notice that you keep on your hard disk large files no longer accessible for months. There is no use to keep them there. Tree Size can help you decide where to start, and the burner can be selected by you. Remove unnecessary files (duplicate, temporary ..). If it is about small duplicate files, this operation tends to be meticulous, but it is very useful for files that are over 10MB. Temporary files can be easily eliminated, but you should avoid system files. There are some useful applications: Easy Duplicate Cleaner or Advanced System Care.
Free the hard disk space and you'll obtain a faster computer
You also should archive your documents (txt, pdf, doc, xls, odt, .. and others) that you do not use them often. Doing so, you can save between ~ 20-70% of the space occupied by these documents. If you archive them in a small number of archives, you will not clutter your hard disk with many small files, which increases the seek-time, so slows your system implicitly. Do not create a lot of archive, but cluster the files to have an archive with at least tens of MB. We recommend 7-Zip. Compress videos / movies made with cameras. Why? Because these films are not sufficiently compressed during recording, so using, for example, VirtualDub and Xvid codec, you can reduce by 30-70% the size of these films, depending on the quality you want to have the output file. Pay attention, it is an irreversible process, which can reduce the quality of films.
VirtualDub settings
Other thing that can be done in order to free the hard disk is to resize the photos taken on „too high”quality. If you are used to take photos at 3 + megapixel, then your pictures certainly occupy lot of space (2- 4MB/picture, depends on the camera ability of compression). If you took pictures at low resolution does not mean it’s necessarily better (the quality sensor matters a lot), the differences are visible when we zoom (you can see better, but how often do zoom?) or when we want to see them (they load extremely difficult).
Artistic photos or those very important can be done at higher resolutions, and those “regular” at moderate resolutions (1-3 Megapixel). Resizing pictures in mass can be achieved with Irfan View for example, and we recommend you do so in relation to your monitor resolution. Attention, it is an irreversible process, which reduces image quality. We presented all crossed our mind, you are free to use only those methods that you find useful in your case. If you have any solutions, rush and tell us about them.
