How to Free Up Disk Space on Your Computer

You need to free up disk space on your computer's hard drive to help it run effectively. When you free up disk space, you’re essentially cleaning unused files and fragments of data off of your hard. If you can’t free up enough disk space for your needs, you may even have to replace your hard drive with one that has more capacity.

To free up disk space on your hard drive:

1. Choose Start→Control Panel→System and Security and then click Free Up Disk Space in the Administrative Tools.

   The Disk Cleanup dialog box appears.

2. Choose the drive you want to clean up from the drop-down list and click OK.

   Disk Cleanup calculates how much space you'll be able to free up.

   The Disk Cleanup dialog box tells you that Disk Cleanup calculated how much space can be cleared on your hard drive and displays the suggested files to delete in a list.

   

3. Select additional files in the list to delete by clicking next to them.

   Click the View Files button in the Disk Cleanup dialog box to see more details about the files that Windows proposes to delete, including the file size and when they were created or last accessed.

   

4. Click OK.

   The selected files are deleted.

5. Click the Close button.

   The Control Panel closes.