It’s amazing to think how hard drives have evolved over the years. From room-sized behemoths to pocket-sized marvels of today, the evolution of this storage medium is fascinating.
Remember decades ago, when we were talking in terms of MB and each byte was worth a fortune? Those days are long gone now, filled with history’s recycle bin. Now, the largest consumer HDDs can have up to 16 TB and they are getting cheaper every day!
And as you probably understood, their cost is inversely proportional to the increased capacity of HDDs. In 1956, a MB cost about $10,000. Today, a MB is 0.00003 cents (yes, that’s four zeros after the decimal point.)
However, file sizes are steadily increasing directly proportional to the growth of computer storage space. Nowadays, we have high-resolution photos, lossless audio files, HD and 4K videos, not to mention the countless applications that we can install on our PCs. These days, it’s funny to think that a 1TB drive is now considered too small.
Combine these huge file sizes with the growing popularity of SSD drives and Windows 10 Mobile devices, all of which still have limited storage sizes, and you’ll likely run out of disk space in no time.
Don’t panic when this happens. Before you delete priceless files like your personal photos and videos, here are five Windows 10 tricks you can try to squeeze a little breathing space on your gadget.
1. Use Storage Sense to Delete Unused Files
Storage Sense is a handy feature in Windows 10 that can automatically delete files you don’t need. This data includes temporary files, Recycle Bin data, installation files, and previous versions of Windows. This is the first tool you should try if your hard drive space is running thin.
If you want Windows to automatically perform this action whenever you’re running low on space, toggle Storage Sense to “On.” I’ve turned it off, though, and manually review my files before clearing my drive.
2. Use Disk Cleanup
Disk Cleanup is a classic Windows tool to free up storage space. Similar to Storage Sense, this tool analyzes your drive for files you no longer need. This includes temporary Internet files, downloaded program files, Recycle Bin data, and thumbnails.
3. Use OneDrive’s New Files On-Demand Feature
A new feature in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is OneDrive Files On-Demand. This feature would be perfect for anyone who needs access to their files and folders on the go as everything will be available even if you haven’t synced your device to your computer in a while.
4. Move Apps and Games to External Drive
Of course, the best way to free up space on your main Windows drive is to get an external drive, then move all your documents, downloads, videos, music, and photos to it.
Better yet, you can also move most apps and games to external storage.
Do this for each app or game you want to transfer. This is a great way to free up space but keep in mind that you need to have an external drive connected to open the app.
5. Command Prompt Utilities
For advanced users, here are two Windows command prompts that you can try.
CompactOS
Another advanced Command Prompt you can try is CompactOS. This command will compress specific system files and built-in applications to free up space. Use it sparingly as Windows does this automatically when needed. However, on Windows gadgets with smaller 16GB to 64GB drives, enabling CompactOS can be useful.