Microsoft Weekly

Clean up your Windows system disk

By Ed Bott

Longtime Windows users are probably accustomed to calling on the good ol' Disk Cleanup utility (Cleanmgr.exe) for routine maintenance, like emptying the Recycle Bin and removing old files from the Temp folder. It also helps remove the big chunks of data that are created during Windows upgrades--like the Windows.old folder, which contains a saved copy of your previous Windows version.

In Windows 10, that old-fashioned utility is still available, but I recommend that you use the modern tools in Settings | System | Storage instead. The main view shows a neatly categorized view of your system drive, with the biggest space gobblers at the top of the list. Double-click any category to see more details about its contents, along with task-specific tools for deleting files you no longer need.

You'll find some of the most useful options under the Temporary Files heading, including a box you can select to clean up Windows Update distribution files after they've been successfully installed. The System & Reserved heading shows how much space is in use by files that are required for Windows to run. For the most part, you can look but not touch here.

On systems with more than one storage volume, click View Storage Usage On Other Drives to display a bar graph for every available drive; click any drive letter to manage that drive's contents.

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