Training on emptying additional data on the hard drive in Windows 11
Although these days many people consider a lot of internal memory for their system, but still you may see that your system memory is full after a while and you don't know exactly where the problem is. In this article, we will teach you how to free up the hard disk in Windows 11 so that you no longer face a lack of storage space.
Note: Before we start the tutorial, a There are a number of things you can do right from the start. First, browse the drives yourself and delete images, movies, games, etc. that you know you don't need. Second, if you have an external hard drive, send the information to it to free up a large part of your hard drive space. If your problem is that drive C (Windows drive) is filling up, you can transfer as much information as possible from it to other drives.
In Windows 11, there is a new feature called Cleanup recommendations. That will help you understand what data in your system should be deleted to make free space for your laptop and computer. Among these things, you can mention apps and games that you haven't used for a long time or files that have been synchronized with OneDrive and are again in the system.
Because with the help of this new feature To free up your hard drive space in Windows 11, follow the steps below.
- Open Settings.
- Click on System.
- Click Storage.
- Under Storage Management, click Click the Cleanup recommendations option.
- Click the Temporary Files option.
- Select the files you want to delete.
- Click on Clean up option.
- Click on Large or unused files option.
- Click on Clean up option.
- Click on Files option Click synced to the cloud.
- Now sync files
Note: If you delete synced files, they will still be accessible in your OneDrive. . So don't worry.
- Click on the Unused apps option.
- Click on the suggested apps that you think will not cause any problems for your system if they are deleted and tick them.
- Click on Clean up option.
When this You have done the work, all the contents of the selection will be deleted from the system and the extra space inside the hard drive will be available to you. Find and delete essentials very quickly and easily. Follow the steps below to enable, set up and use Storage Sense.
- Open Settings.
- Click on System.
- Click on the Storage option on the right side of the screen.
- Under the Storage section Management, enable Storage Sense feature.
Note: When you enable Storage Sense, it automatically deletes data and files selected based on your configuration. But Storage Sense is activated automatically when the system needs space to install a new application.
- After activation, click on Storage Sense option.
- Under the Cleanup of temporary files section, the option Keep Windows running smoothly by automatically cleaning up temporary system and app files so that the system has permission to access unnecessary files and can clean them.
- Also activate the Automatic User content cleanup option.
- Under the Configure cleanup schedules section, select the Run Storage Sense drop-down menu to The related options will be displayed.
- Now select the time you want from "every day", "every week", "every month" and "when the hard disk memory is low". do. Make sure that the last item is suggested by the system itself.
- Open the Recycle Bin drop-down menu and specify how the deleted files are completely removed from the system. be deleted.
- Open the drop-down menu related to Downloads and specify how the system deletes the downloaded files.
Note:Always try to create a backup file of your data in the folders you choose to delete files from. Therefore, always set the minimum auto-delete time to 1 day to allow them to be backed up.
- Under Locally available cloud content, open the drop-down menu and specify how long. The contents of OneDrive that are synchronized with the system will remain available only in online mode.
- You can click on Run Storage Sense now.
- At this stage, you can select Delete previous if available. also delete versions of Windows, which means deleting previous versions of Windows.
After you complete these steps, when you click Run, Storage Sense will automatically And immediately deletes the extra information. Otherwise, the system will do it itself when you need space.
You can also manually remove extra files from your system. For this, you need to go to the Storage section of the main settings of Windows, or simply look at your drives and take the time to see and delete any extra files. But for the first method, follow the path below.
- Enter the settings.
- Click on the System section.
- On the Storage option in the panel. Click on the right side.
- Click on the Temporary files option.
- Select the extra items you don't want in the system and all of them
Note: The items you see in this section may be different in your Windows. For example, if you want to delete Download, you should know that everything you have downloaded so far and not removed from the Downloads folder will be deleted. Therefore, be sure to make a backup of them or transfer the related information to another drive if you need them. In general, the options available on this page to delete are as follows, just click on the Remove files option to delete all the ones that are checked.
- Downloads
- Windows Update Cleanup
- Recycle Bin
- Delivery Optimization Files
- Thumbnails
- Microsoft Defender Antivirus
- Temporary Internet Files
- Temporary files
- Windows error reports and feedback diagnostics
- DirectX Shader Cache
- Previous Windows installation(s) li>
- Temporary Windows installation files
When this step is finished, The selected files will be permanently deleted from your system.
If you prefer the old ways, the good news is that Disk Cleanup is still part of Windows 11 and not separated from it, so you can use this feature. Also clean the extra Windows files. Of course, several types of files can be deleted in this section, which we will discuss further.
Deleting temporary files
- Open the start menu. .
- Enter the term Disk Cleanup in the search section and click on the result.
- Open the drop-down menu in the Drives section and click on the C drive or the same drive where Windows is installed. .
- Click on OK.
- Click on Cleanup system files.
- Once again, from the drop-down menu of the drive section, set the desired drive to C.
- Click on OK.
- Select all the content you want to clean up from your system.
These options generally include the following:
- Windows Update Cleanup
- Microsoft Defender Antivirus
- Downloaded Program Files
- Temporary Internet Files
- Windows error reports and feedback diagnostics
- DirectX Shader Cache
- Delivery Optimization Fil es
- Device driver packages
- Language Resource Files
- Previous Windows installation(s)
- Recycle Bin
- Temporary files
- Thumbnails
Usually in all systems these options should be available.
- Click OK and then Delete Files to delete the selected files from the system.
Delete Shadow Copies and System Restore
You can also delete old files through Disk Cleanup. For example, the previous version of Windows. To do this, follow the path below.
- Start menu Open it.
- Enter the phrase Disk Cleanup in the search section and click on the result.
- Open the drop-down menu of the Drives section and select the C drive or the same drive where Windows is installed. Click.
- Click OK.
- Click Clean up system files.
- Click on More Options.
- Under System Restore and Shadow Copies, click on Clean up.
- Click on the Delete option.
By doing this, the extra space on your hard drive will be freed from information that you did not need and related to old installation files.
In Windows 11, you can also go to the settings section and then installed applications to see Which application or game is taking up the most space on your hard drive? With this, you have an overview of the apps and services in your system and you know which one you should go to in the next step.
- Open the settings.
- On Click Apps.
- Click Installed Apps.
Note: In Windows 11 version 21H2, this page is named Apps & features Has changed. So if you don't see the previous name, you should click on this option.
From Sort by Set the display mode to Size, which will display the files from the largest to the smallest, so that you can quickly understand which file occupies the largest volume in your system.
- Each item you want to remove has a three-dot icon next to it, click on it and then select the Uninstall option.
- Click on the Uninstall option again.
- If Windows will then display a specific instruction, follow the instructions until the uninstallation process is finished.
Once you have done this, follow the same path for another app or game. Go through to delete them from the system if you don't need them.
Note: In this section, you can select apps and games that allow they give, Move to another drive. Of course, if the problem is only a specific drive. Do all the steps above, but when you click on the three dots, instead of selecting the Uninstall option, see if the Move option is active or not. If it is, choose another drive to save and click on Move.
Note: Remember that this drive can even be an external hard drive, but in order to use an app or game, the hard drive must always be connected to your system. Otherwise, you will not be able to run it.
If the space of your C drive on which Windows 11 is installed is full, you can first empty it with the mentioned methods and then with the help of the method Below, stop letting this drive fill up every time. In Windows 11, it is possible to set the location for saving and installing new files on another drive because this location is selected as the default Windows installation location.
- Open the settings.
- Click on the System section.
- Click on the Storage section on the right panel.
- Under the Storage management section, click on the Advanced storage option.
- Click on the Where new content is saved option.
- From the drop-down menu, select the desired drive to save the new files.
- Click on the Apply option.
- Also You can also click on the New apps will be saved to section so that if you install a new app, that app will be saved on another drive by default. However, when installing an app manually, you will be asked where you want to install it.
- Click on the Apply option.
After This process is finished, from now on your C drive space will be filled much later than before.
You can also use a very small and simple application to free up a large part of your internal hard drive space in Windows 11. That is, use Geek Uninstaller. This application allows you to delete not only the installation files but also the files related to an app or game installed in the Windows registry. In other words, practically no information will remain in the system except for the installation file of an app or game.
- It is enough to download the Geek Uninstaller application by clicking on it and run it. >
Note: This application does not need to be installed, but note that if you pin it to the taskbar, you should no longer Change the location of the main file, otherwise the application will not run.
- Apps Those that are in orange color indicate those categories that have been recently installed on the system.
- Right click on any app or game you want and select Uninstall from the options. ul>
- Note that sometimes apps or games cannot be removed. Through this application and the Force Removal section, which is one of the options in the right-click menu, you can easily delete it from the system.
With these methods, you can free up the occupied hard disk space in Windows 11. Simply empty and use it. Note that there are other ways to free up the hard drive in Windows 11, but all of them delete data from the system in the amount of several hundred megabytes, which naturally are not supposed to be that useful or, for example, their risk is high.
Source: Windows Central