Back when you bought your computer a year or two ago you were so amazed at the computer specifications, specifically the amazing amount of disk space that you have, so you could download all your movies, videos, music, tv shows, and games, but now that well of hard drive disk space is starting to run low. For days your computer has been warning that your disk space is low. You’ve tried defragging so you can keep your computer running fresh, yet even Windows Disk Defragmenter won’t run, because you lack the necessary disk space. Is there anything you can do to free up some extra disk space? Every little bit counts, doesn’t it? Luckily for you the solution is contained in the following list.

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If you’ve been having hard drive issues, or want to know why it’s running so slow, you should probably check out 6 Tell-Tale Signs That You Need To Reformat Your Hard Drive.

1. Run Disk Cleanup- Disk Cleanup can be accessed by going to Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Cleanup. Disk Cleanup saves you disk space by deleting unused temporary internet files, compressing old files that aren’t used very often, and emptying your recycle bin for you, thereby saving you anywhere from a couple megabytes to a few gigabytes of hard drive disk space.
2. CrapCleaner- CCleaner is another tool I love to use for cleaning out my hard drive and freeing up disk space. CCleaner is basically a super-charged disk cleanup tool. It takes care of much more than just temporary internet files, it handles system files, windows explorer, internet explorer, firefox, and many other applications files as well, and it comes with a registry cleaner too.
3. Disable System Restore and Hibernation- Disabling System Restore is a good way to save an enormous amount of disk space. (To Access System Restore go to Control Panel -> System -> System Restore Tab) On the Windows recommended setting System Restore was using 8.5GBs of space, that I’ll never use, because I don’t need System Restore. I don’t recommend disabling it if you don’t completely trust yourself in using your computer, or if you’ve had to use it often before, but if you don’t want to get rid of it completely you can simply turn the ‘Disk space to use’ down to only a few percent instead of the default 12%. Hibernation is another disk space hog, you’re only going to really use hibernation if you’re on a laptop anyways. (To Access Hibernation go to Control Panel -> Power Options ->Hibernation Tab) Hibernation, when enabled, takes up disk space equal to the amount of memory in your computer, so if you have 2-3GBs of memory that’s 2-3GBs of disk space wasted.
4. Lower The Maximum Size Of Your Recycle Bin- By default your recycle bin is set to use up to 10% of your hard drive’s disk space, before it will require you to empty it. On just an 80GB hard drive that is 8GBs of disk space that you lose. So go ahead and right click on your Recycle Bin and go to Properties and lower the size used to just a couple %. I use 3%, and that seems to work fine for me.
5. Use Online Storage Options- There are several services for online storage, if you just can’t seem to have enough disk space on your hard drive. Some of these options are free, the more exquisite options are most likely going to require you to pay.
6. Compress Your Files And Folders- If you have large audio and video files, and only really use them for archiving/just to have purposes compress them into a Win-Rar folder and turn the compression onto high. Win-Rar is really good for compressing files and folders. So it’ll give you back some of your valuable disk space. Next time you’re going to use them just use it right out of the Win-Rar folder, you don’t even have to drag it and extract, then compress it again.
7. Leave Your Music On Your iPod- A good trick for saving disk space on your hard drive involves just streaming all of your music from iPod instead of keeping it on your computer and the same exact thing on iPod or MP3 player. iPods are starting to have as much space in their tiny hard drive as we do on our normal hard drives, so why not use that extra disk space?
8. Use Your iPod As An External Hard Drive- This one just came to me while writing the previous tip. You can use your iPod as an external hard drive and keep copies of your files on their so you can save disk space on your computer’s hard drive.
9. Burn Your Files To Dual-Layer DVDs- If you have a Dual-Layer DVD burner, burn your important video files to dual-layer DVDs, each one can save up to 8.5GBs of hard drive space, which is quite a lot for DVDs, or if you have to have the best of the best, buy a blu-ray burner.
10. Uninstall Unused Programs and Games- I’ve saved the best disk space saving tip for last. Uninstall and delete all those games, programs, files, and folders that you don’t use. I could understand saving videos or music for backup, or because you may watch them again, but if you still have WarCraft III on your computer and haven’t touched it in 3 years, uninstall it, if you ever want to play it again I’m sure you can reinstall it in about a minute and be up and running.

These are the best tips that I’ve come across for saving your disk space. If you have a question or a comment, be sure to leave one in the comments section, and if you have any tips that I didn’t and think it should be brought up, don’t forget to tell me.

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