Making the most of your disk space


This article covers various ways of making your hard disk run more efficiently. In particular, it details ways of saving space and ways of helping to keep your system in tiptop form!

With the complexities of the Windows operating system, it can seem that disk space just ups and disappears! Those of us old enough to remember our massive 20-megabyte hard disks find that today's two-gigabyte disks a bit limiting! Where does all this space go?

Well, a lot can disappear with temporary files — files created whilst we use our applications. Normally, these are removed when the application finishes, but as we all know, it's not every time that a program ends normally! At these times, we can end up with all sorts of rubbish lying around. This can be detrimental to our systems in the following ways:

  • Temporary files take up much needed disk space

  • Applications can crash due to old temporary files lying around.

  • System crashes — if the windows swap file gets corrupted due to unstable temporary files

There are other files that can also clutter up our systems which are safely removable.We shall deal with these latter on in the article. First, temporary files — how to manage and maintain a better system.

Care should be taken when carrying out these procedures. You MUST follow the instructions carefully to avoid problems!

There are a couple of things we can do to make it easier to manage our systems from the threat of temporary files. These are:

  • Create a set place for the system to create temporary files, rather than having them created all over the hard disk.
  • Clear out the set place on a regular basis, especially after a system or application crash

Here's how:

    Creating a Set Place for Temporary Files
    To do this requires the creation of a directory (or folder if you prefer). Add two lines to a file called AUTOEXEC.BAT. Follow these steps to do this. (This can be done for Windows 3.x users too — rather than Windows Explorer — you would use the File Manager)

    1) Launch Windows Explorer

    2) Go to the root directory of your C: drive (so that you see Contents of C:\)

    3) Click on the File menu and select New . . . Folder

    4) When the folder is created call the folder TEMP

    5) . You should now have a folder called TEMP in your root directory (that is C:\TEMP)

That's the creation of the folder. Now we need to change the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. This file controls how your system starts and will contain commands that your system uses in order to find files and to set what are called Environment Variables. Environment variables are values placed in memory when your machine is switched on that any program can use to find out about your system (its' working environment).

The copyright of the article Making the most of your disk space in PC Support is owned by Chris Cruickshank. Permission to republish Making the most of your disk space in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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