5 Helpful Tips and Tricks for Freeing Up Drive Space on Your Work PC

 Like the latest smartphones or tablets, the computing world seems to be expanding in leaps and bounds, with competitors constantly battling to release the next bigger and better product. Since they first burst onto the scene in 1991, computers have undergone a massive transformation, with faster processing speeds, increased accuracy, reliability, and built-in memory that can store a vast collection of digital assets like images, documents, videos and more.

Nowadays, desktop hard drive discs can store up to twenty terabytes. Yet despite the massive transformation, hard drives have undergone in the last several years, that fateful day when that all-to-familiar alert flashes up on screen stating that you are out of available space is never eliminated. If you’ve recently found yourself in this unpleasant situation, you might wonder how to overcome it and free up some much-needed drive space on your work PC.

Luckily, there are various tips and tricks for freeing up a few extra gigabytes of space on your work PC or laptop’s hard drive, yet they are only temporary. If you keep experiencing the same problem, you may want to consider a more permanent solution, like replacing your current hard drive or investing in an additional one. Here are our best tips and tricks for freeing up drive space on your work PC.

Tidy Your Desktop

Whether it’s a download, scanned document, image or another digital asset, many UK workers are guilty of storing everything on their work PC’s desktop rather than tidying it into organised subfolders. Although this might save us a few minutes of precious work time, if left unorganised for long periods, then it can cause detrimental effects on your device.

More notably, having many files cluttering your desktop can cause your PC to run slower than usual because the operating memory must display them all the time. Typically, a healthy PC that runs Windows should only take forty-five seconds or less to boot up, so if you find yourself waiting more than several minutes – you might want to consider tidying your desktop.

To achieve this, ensure that you are ruthless with deleting unneeded files and then move the ones you need into designated files to have a selected folder for each digital asset. As you tidy your desktop, you will free up hard drive space bit by bit since operating memory will no longer be packed, so as a result, your computer will be faster.

Combine PDFs Into One File

We use our work PC to complete various tasks; as such, we are constantly downloading, scanning, uploading, and storing multiple documents and PDFs to send between colleagues and clients. If you’re fortunate enough to have a work PC with a decent memory, you might pay little attention to how the documents and PDFs you work with are stored.

However, all singular documents and PDFs take up memory, which over time, can affect your computer’s operating memory, as mentioned in our last point. Therefore, it is essential that you find a suitable way of storing your digital assets, whether they be scanned images, documents, spreadsheets etc., to avoid slower running speed and other unnecessary problems.

One way you can easily store documents and PDFs is by combining them into one file using helpful online office tools designed to help compress, merge, edit, sign, and share various document formats. With the help of one or more of these tools, multiple PDFs can be merged into a singular document, enabling you to store and review them more efficiently. Not only can converting PDFs into one file make it easier for you to access, share, and keep documentation on your work PC, but it also frees up valuable space on your device’s hard drive.

You can achieve this by signing up for online tools like the ones from Adobe, which can help you combine PDF files, add, or delete files before they’re merged, reorganise pages in your merged PDF and much more. For more information, consider visiting their website, where you can sign-up for a seven-day free trial and see how their online tools could help you make the drive space last longer on your work PC.

Delete Temporary Files

When you visit any website and get that all-to-familiar message asking you to accept or decline the use of cookies, a digital trail of cookies, text files, and images is left behind, which, if you re-visit the web page, makes it much speedier. Generally, this digital paper trail won’t cause any issues, but if your work PC has already warned you that you’re getting close to drive space capacity, it might be time to start deleting them.

Depending on which browser you use, each has a different process for removing temporary files from your PC, so it might be worth conducting a quick Google search to discover how your chosen browser deals with their removal. Once you’ve found the relevant information, you can begin the straightforward process of discarding temporary files, removing cookies, and clearing your cache. We’re sure you’ll see the positive effects immediately.

Sort Through Your Downloads

Whether you use your PC for recreational or professional purposes, you probably have a high download rate, resulting in a long list of downloads you do not need to keep around. Whether you’ve been downloading PDFs, images, videos, music or other digital assets, there is a slim possibility that once you’ve downloaded them, you’ll never open them again.

On the other hand, especially if you’re using your PC for work, some of the content you download may prove to be helpful at a later date or might even be important, so ensure that you are careful when scrolling through your download history and move essential files into a secure folder. Once you’ve sorted through the downloads, you need to keep you can then delete the rest by selecting ‘all’ and then ‘delete’.

Store Digital Assets On The Cloud

No matter how big your PC’s memory might be, there will always come that day when you’ll no longer be able to rely on your PC to store images, downloads, photos etc. Due to this, many information technology professionals urge users to routinely back up their important files to external storage devices, memory sticks, and cloud storage programmes.

Thanks to the age of remote working, utilising popular cloud servers for storing and backing up essential files have become the norm for most modern organisations. The reason that cloud storage has become so popular is that it allows you to save hundreds of files in an off-site location that can only be accessed through a private network connection or the public internet.

As a result of this, storing digital assets using the cloud has boasted a range of benefits for organisations, such as increased security, sharing files with co-workers is much more straightforward, any ongoing tasks will not be affected, multiple users can use the software at once, and much more.

Depending on your PC’s make and model, some manufacturers offer built-in cloud storage when you purchase your devices like Google or Apple. Alternatively, you can buy cloud storage online or use free-to-use websites, which will free up space on your hard drive, and protect you in case it fails, breaks, or gets damaged.