It’s all too simple to run out of space on your hard drive. That’s true whether you’re using a large hard drive that’s quickly filling up with apps, videos, audio, and images, or one of the newest ultrathin laptops with fast but small solid-state drives that can’t handle much to start with. To add on unnecessary junk files that pile up over a period of time eat away a significant amount of storage space on your Windows laptop and by that we mean any brand – for e.g. HP laptops. Thankfully, there are a number of simple solutions to free up hard drive space and avoid the dreaded “out-of-disk-space” notifications. Let’s take a look at a few of them.
How To Clear A Laptop Hard Drive And Clean Laptop Storage
1. Remove Any Files You Don’t Need
The first step is to eliminate the most prevalent space hogs. There are a lot of caches, cookies, temp, and unwanted files on all computers that unnecessarily occupy space. You can always begin with your Recycle Bin because all the files you delete end up here and unless you Empty the Recycle Bin, those unwanted files continue occupying space on your Hard disk.
Microsoft has provided its users with an in-built tool to clear space for you. This tool is known as Windows Disk Cleanup and helps users free up hard drive space. Let’s check the steps on how to clean up HP laptop storage using this tool.
Step 1: Press Windows + S on your keyboard to invoke the search box and type Disk Cleanup.
Step 2: Click on the relevant search result labeled as Disk Cleanup.
Step 3: A small box will appear on your screen where you have to choose the drive and click on the OK button.
Step 4: The tool will take time scanning your drive depending on the number of files on your hard disk and the search results will be displayed in a new window.
Step 5: Select the files you want to remove from the drive-by placing a checkmark in the box next to the name.
Note: You can click on each filename and read the description below to understand what these files contain.
Step 6: Finally, click on the Clean Up System Files button and the unwanted files selected will be removed from the system.
Editor’s Tip. Use Advanced PC Cleanup
Although Microsoft’s inbuilt Disk Cleanup tool does a fantastic job, we recommend using Advanced PC Cleaner, which is an amazing third-party tool that can clear all unwanted files from your PC in a much more efficient and quicker way. With this tool, you can clean junk files, temporary files, recycle bin as well as remove old and redundant files and apps. |
2. Uninstall Unnecessary Applications
Most of us have installed programs that we believed we’d use or that we just wanted to try, but that we don’t. Here is a quick way to get a list of installed apps in your system and remove the ones that you don’t need.
Step 1: Press Windows + S to open the search box and then type Add Or Remove Programs and click on it from the search results.
Step 2: A list of apps installed will appear on the screen listed in alphabetical order.
Step 3: Click on any app that you don’t recognize or no longer use and then click on the Uninstall button beneath it.
Step 4: Follow the steps that arrive on your screen and remove the app. This will help clean the hard drive and free laptop storage by deleting apps that you don’t want.
3. Look For Large Files And Eliminate Them
If you’ve followed the steps above, you’ve significantly reduced your hard disc space use, but now it’s time to dive a little further. Use a disc space analyzer to figure out what’s using up the most space on your hard drive. Disk Analyzer Pro examines your hard drive and displays the amount of space each file consumes graphically. It helps to choose the large blocks to zero in on the files that are using up the most space—and hence should be deleted. It also helps users to sort their files into various categories like video, audio, images, and many more.
4. Identify & Delete Duplicates
Duplicate files are one of the major reasons why your storage clogs up. To scan, identify, and remove these similar and identical files, most probably images, it is evident to use a program that can help you with this mammoth task. Duplicate Files Fixer Pro is an amazing application that locates images that have been duplicated in multiple folders. This app searches for duplicates on internal and external drives and removes all similar and near-identical images.
Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro is a fantastic piece of software that works on all major operating systems, including Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS. This duplicate photo detector software is easy to use and has a user-friendly design. Other capabilities include:
Duplicate Detection
Even if the file names, formats, and sizes are different, Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro examines your computer and detects duplicates.
Identifying Photos That Are Similar
When your mobile phone camera is in Burst Mode, this program detects similar and near-identical photographs that are clicked in succession.
Devices from the Outside
Duplicate Photos Fixer Pro is a program that works on both internal and external hard drives. This allows users to search for identical and duplicate photographs on their Flash Drives, SD cards, pen drives, and external hard discs.
Duplicate Images Are Automatically Marked
This program has an auto-mark feature that may be used to select hundreds of duplicate photographs with a single click. By pressing the Delete Marked button, the auto-marked photographs are virtually instantaneously deleted. The selection of duplicates is made using a sophisticated algorithm that takes into account a variety of parameters such as file size, creation date, and so on.
Comparison Methodology
Users of Duplicate Photo Fixer Pro can choose between scanning modes by changing the filters such as matching levels, time intervals, and GPS.
5. Transfer Important Folders to an External Drive
Expanding your storage space with an external drive is perhaps the simplest way to cut down your PC. You may save your increasing collection of images and movies off of your computer and use your primary drive only to rapidly launch your operating system and applications using a cheap USB hard drive or even a flash memory card.
6. Web-based storage
Cloud storage services provide a large amount of free internet storage space that you can utilize instead of your hard disc. For example, Microsoft’s SkyDrive offers 7GB or 25GB of free storage (depending on when you signed up for the service), while Box, Google Drive, and SugarSync Free all offer 5GB. Dropbox Basic is free up to 2GB. You can also use Right Backup which acts as a cloud storage service accessible on most devices. This way you can access your files on any device, anywhere.
The Final Word On Easy Ways to Clear Space on Your HP Laptop’s Hard Drive
I hope the above methods help you on how to clear a laptop hard drive and free up hard drive space in no time. Once your hard disk is free, you will notice a slight improvement in the performance of your PC as there will be fewer files to access. Other than that, you will be able to store useful and much-needed files on your PC.
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