Data Backup Digest

No matter how much storage space you have on your computer, it can sometimes feel like it’s never enough. All those games, photos and videos will easily add up and you could soon find yourself edging closer to the hard drive’s limit. It is possible to expand your storage, perhaps with an external drive, but this doesn’t have to be the first port of call. That’s an expense and after reading this article you may find it an unneeded one. This article will offer tips on how to make the most of your available storage space.

Spring clean

Unless you keep on top of your data, chances are that your hard drive is bogged down with a lot of data that you don’t need or access anymore. Put time aside to comb through all your documents and consider whether you need to keep all of them. If you just dump pictures from your camera on your computer, go through and delete the ones you don’t want. Do the same thing with games you don’t play anymore – if you still have the disc or digital download account (like Steam) then you will be able to reinstall them in the future if needs be.

Additionally, be sure to inspect your browser’s download folder. It’s likely that this is going to be bogged down with a lot of files that you needed once, but no more.

Delete temporary files

Using a program like CCleaner, you can quickly and easily clean up temporary and junk files that are being stored up by a number of programs on your computer. Your internet browser, for example, might have a hugely sized cache, full of files that aren’t necessary to be stored.

Although Windows does have a disk clean-up utility, CCleaner is a bit more proficient in its reach.

Compress files

There might be some data on your computer that, although you don’t access very often, you still want to keep. Short of buying an archive drive specifically for data of this sort, you could compress the files in order to free up space. A simple method of compressing is to put the files in a ZIP folder.

Some types of files, like JPEGs, are already highly compressed. As such, putting them all in a ZIP won’t change the total space used by much.

You should also avoid compressing encrypted files, because when they are uncompressed they will in turn become unencrypted.

System restore

Windows has a built in system restore tool. If you take a look at it, you might find it has too much designated drive space. You can reduce the amount of space it uses, but this in turn decreases the number of restore points on offer to you. However, if you have another (and probably more proficient) backup plan in place, then this probably doesn’t matter to you – in fact, if you’re confident then you could turn off the system restore utility altogether (but only do this if you’re certain you know what you’re doing).