It’s easy to forget that your laptop has limited space until you find yourself getting endless warnings about low memory. Obviously you can’t just go around deleting things you need, so try out these less drastic alternatives before doing hard drive shredding.
Spring clean
The first thing to do is to clear space taken up by things you genuinely don’t need. However hard you try to avoid it, most computers will gradually fill up with useless ‘temporary’ files. CCleaner is a free and easy-to-use program that will sort through the darkest corners of your Windows PC’s hard drive and clean out these files. Depending on how long it’s been building up, this can save you an awful lot of space. Don’t worry, it won’t delete anything that you’ve created. It’ll only target unnecessary files that you won’t miss, such as your internet history.
Safe storage
For old documents, photographs and other files that you want to keep but don’t need constant access to, the best thing to do would be to buy an external hard drive and copy over everything you don’t need to carry around. You can then safely delete the originals from your laptop. About the size of a paperback, an external hard drive will keep your files safe at home or in the office while your laptop is elsewhere. Keeping a copy of your files is a good idea anyway, as it’ll ensure that even if your laptop is lost, stolen or damaged, your important documents and irreplaceable photos will be safe while you’re browsing for a more reliable model among the latest laptops at Littlewoods. Go for a hard drive with at least two or three terabytes, as you’ll always be glad of a little extra space.
Preventative measures
Once you’ve cleared up some free space, look at how you can stop yourself from filling it right back up again. One way would be to start storing your work in the Cloud. This sounds complicated but all it really means is that your files are stored on the internet, rather than on your computer. There are several services you can use for this, but the easiest to use is probably Google Drive. You’ll get a very generous amount of space for free, with the option of upgrading to more if you’re going to be storing a lot of large files. It also comes with a built-in Office suite, including powerful equivalents of familiar programs like Word, Powerpoint and Excel. This has advantages besides saving space – you can access your documents on any device, from your home PC to your mobile phone, so you’ll never be without the information that you need. You can also easily share documents with other people without having to go through the fiddly process of attaching them to an e-mail. Take the time to try out these handy tips, and stop your laptop’s space imposing limits on your life.