Spring cleaning for your computer (part 3)

This post is part 3 of a 5 part series. It addresses deleting unneeded items and organizing your hard drive files, for Windows and Macs.

Part 1 covers physical cleaning.
Part 2 covers uninstalling applications or stopping unneeded ones from auto loading at boot time.

Computers collect temporary files in a variety of locations. One might expect that the operating system would automatically delete these files once they have served their purposes. Neither Windows nor OS X cleans up after itself as much as user might like. The Windows Recycle Bin and OS X’s Trash folder can consume significant amounts of hard drive space.

Windows

Windows comes with Disk Cleanup a built-in application for cleaning up these files. It is located in the same place on XP, Vista and Windows 7. Launch the tool by clicking the Start button and navigating to Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup.

The initial Disk Cleanup dialog, Select Drive asks which hard drive to clean up. Clicking the OK button starts the program’s analysis phase. It catalogs potential file cleanups in a variety of drive locations. When this phase is complete, you are presented with a dialog and a selection of check boxes to choose what to delete.

Some of the choices are checked by default. These are things like Downloaded Program Files or Temporary Internet Files. One unchecked choice may be Office Setup Files. It is NOT a good idea to delete these files. If you delete them, you may be asked to insert your Office setup CD or DVD on the next update. Make your choices and click the OK button. The cleanup operation starts. When it is done, the dialog will disappear.

CCleanup is a free, far more comprehensive Windows cleanup utility.

It is a good idea to defragment the hard drives when Disk Cleanup is done. Cleanup frees up space but leaves your hard drive’s file system sub-optimized. Defragging a hard drive reorganizes the files to make it more efficient for disk reads and writes.

Launch the tool by clicking the Start button and navigating to Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter. Then select the hard drive and click the OK button. XP and Windows 7 have an Analyze button and a Defragment button. Vista has only a Defragment now… button.

XP differs from Vista and Windows 7. The latter two Windows versions defragment hard drives automatically on a schedule that was created when the operating system was installed. XP requires the user to manually execute Disk Defragmenter.

XP users can create an automated defragmentation schedule by using the built-in Scheduled Tasks application. Launch the tool by clicking the Start button and navigating to Accessories > System Tools > Scheduled Tasks.

It is best not to use your computer during this operation. Defragmentation can take several hours on large, fragmented drives. So it may be a good idea to run this overnight when you do not need to use the computer.

Macs

OS X is better than Windows about cleaning up. It regularly, automatically deletes temporary files and defragments hard drives.

But at times, it too needs manual, user intervention. You need to manually empty the Trash when your hard drive is filling up.

OmniDiskSweeper is a free Mac utility like the above-mentioned CCleanup.

Onyx is a more comprehensive, free Mac utility, featuring maintenance, optimization, and personalization.