Best ways to free Hard Disk Space on Windows?

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DSC04796No matter how big your Hard Disk is, one day will definitely come when it’ll be completely full. And that day you’ll be dying to get some free space. There’s an option of buying another Hard Disk but many people can’t due to their own personal or financial reasons.

So I’m listing some effective ways by which you can free up some space for your important files or softwares by removing unwanted and unimportant files.

  • Disk Cleanup:

    First step of cleaning space is “Disk Cleanup”. Windows provide us a built-in tool to delete the temporary files and unimportant data from the hard disk. You can access this tool by using any of the way below:
    – Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Cleanup
    Disk Cleanup or
    – Got to “My Computer”, then right click on the Hard Drive you want free space from and click on “Properties”. You’ll see a window showing General properties by default. Click on “Disk Cleanup” button.
    Disk Clean up 2 Now as you have accessed the Disk Cleanup tool, you’ll see the “Disk Cleanup” window scanning the hard drive. You can select the type of files you want to delete under “Files to delete:” option. Now click on “OK” and the cleaning process will start.
    cleanup too 1 If the amount of space you gained is not enough for you, you can also clean up System Files. For that, click on “Clean up system files” button. A new tab will open showing two options to cleanup space. First is “Programs and Features” and second is “System Restore and Shadow Copies”. Click on “Clean up” button under second option of System Restore. This will remove all but the most recent restore point.
    Disk Cleanup More options

  • Disk Defragmentation:

    “Disk Defragmentation” is something which makes your computer fast more efficient. It reduces the amount of fragmentation in file systems. You can access this tool from Start>All Programs>Accessories> System Tools>Disk Defragmentation. Now select the hard drive you want to defragment and click on “Defragment disk”. Defragmentation will start.Disk Defragmentation

  • Delete Temporary Files:

    Using “Disk Cleanup” is good to remove unnecessary files, but it does not delete the temporary files of other programs. A browser’s caches can consume large space of your hard disk, which Disc Cleaner can’t delete.  So for such operations, use “CCleaner”.
    You can download CCleaner from here. Install and launch the tool and then click on “Run Cleaner”. The CCleaner will clean all the temporary and junk files including the temporary files of any third party application.
    CCleaner

  • Uninstall useless and space occupying Software and Applications:

    It will be really effective to remove the useless applications. Some programs consume less space and some consume more. You can see a list of programs and applications of your computer and their size details too from “Program and Features” tool. You can find this tool in Control Panel.
    Program and FeatureBut this list is not always accurate. Some programs may not show the exact size they actually use and in some cases, no size information at all. So in such case, it’s better to use third party software. I’m talking about a hard disk analysis programs, which scans all your hard disk and show you exactly that which folders and files using the more space. Those type of files too which Programs and Features can’t show.
    There are many hard disk analysis tools available on the internet like SpaceSniffer, DiskSavvy, WinDirStat, TreeSize Free, Disktective etc. But in this guide I’ll be showing you about the tool I use i.e. “WiniDirstat”.
    You can download WinDirStat from its official website. Install and launch the tool and then scan the hard drive. After complete scanning, you’ll see list of different files and folders with their exact details including the size. Now you can delete all the useless data and programs which you don’t use. Keep in mind that you don’t delete any important file.
    WinDirStat

  • Delete Duplicate Data:

    There’s a possibility that you might have some duplicate files and folders in your hard disk. You can find such duplicate files by using any duplicate file finder tool. There are many tools available on the internet but once again I’ll showing you about the tool I use i.e. “dupeGuru”.
    You can download dupeGuru from Hardcoded Software. This tool is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit windows users.  Install and launch the application and then scan the hard drive. After complete scanning, you’ll see a list of all duplicate files. Now you can delete those files keeping only one of the two duplicate file.dupeGuru

  • Leave Less Drive Space for System Restore:

    System Restore keeps the previous copies of files and restore points from which your computer restore from. But this feature may not be that important for you. If so, then you can reduce the amount of drive space usable for system restore.
    Unlike Windows Vista where you’ll need to use a command line which is quite difficult, Windows 7 provides a very easy way of managing the drive space for system restore.For Windows 7 users:Right click on “My Computer” and select “Properties”. Now a System Panel will appear where you’ll have to click on “System Protection” on the left side.System and Restore

    A “System Properties” window will appear with “System Protection” tab by default. Now click on the hard drive you want to manage disk space of and then click on the “Configure” button.System Properties Configuration
    Now you’ll see another window where you can manage “Restore Settings” and “Disk Space Usage”. You can “Turn off the system protection” or change to “Only restore previous versions of files”. Using the slider in font off “Max Usage:” you can reduce the drive space usable for system restore. You’ll also see a “Delete” button which is to delete all restore points, but we’ve already done it “Disk Cleanup”.Configuration Window
    For Windows Vista users: You need to open Command Prompt in administrator mode. Click on “Start” and type “cmd” in search bar. Open the Command Prompt “cmd” listed in search results. Right click on Command Prompt and select Run as Administrator. Your Command Prompt may already be running as Administrator by default.
    Now Type: vssadmin list shadowstorage
     You’ll get all the information about how much space system restore is using. Now to change the disk space for system restore,
    Type: vssadmin Resize ShadowStorage /For=C: /On=C: /Maxsize=2GB
     In the above command, you can change the “For” and “On” drives and “Maxsize” accordingly.

I hope these ways will definitely help you to gain some free space on your hard disk. In case of any problem, comments are open.

How To Delete 100s Of Comments At Once In WordPress

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I was trying to design my new website Whistling Pens with Bizco theme of Themify. Apart from installing the theme, I also imported sample content in it and God it had 1200 pending comments in it. Now it would have been disastrous to delete these 1200 comments as by default you will only see 20 comments in the comments section. Lets see how can we delete 100s of comments at the same time:

Step 1:

Go to WordPress admin area and then go to Comments section from the left sidebar. In here, on the top right corner choose Screen Option.

Wordpress-screen-option

Step 2:

If you click on the Screen Option, it will provide several options to choose or configure the fields that would be displayed on this page. Change the number of comments to (say) 200.

Wordpress-Screen-Option-2Step 3:

Now to delete these comment check the top box (in the header, just above the first comment) to select all 200 comments. Select ‘Move to trash‘ to temporarily delete them. Once done, go to trash and select “empty trash“.  And then repeat this step. Emptying the trash can be important if your server cannot take load of several comments deletion at the same time.

Enjoy :)

How To Free Up Space By Deleting Previous Windows Installation

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bleach bit logo clean driveWhen I first installed Windows 8, the first thing I wondered was how to shutdown Windows 8. Anyways, that was a quite easy. While exploring Windows 8, I found that my C Drive is pretty much full. I have a 100 GB space allotted for C drive and I did not expect it to be full. As you know, a full C drive leads to a slower computing experience, it was my foremast task to clean up the C Drive.

As I see later, my C Drive was full thanks to previous Windows installations. I had previously upgraded Windows 7 to Windows 8 Consumer preview and thus it was taking lots of space (almost 50 GB, can you believe it?). Lets see how you can clean up your C Drive to free up some space on your computer.

Step 1:

Search for Disk Space in Metro. To do that use the Windows key (the one with Windows sign on it) and start typing disk space. Click on Settings from right column to redefine your search. And then choose Free up disk space by deleting unnecessary files to open the disk clean up tool.

Windows Settings

Step 2:

In the disk clean up tool, you won’t see the option to delete the files from previous Windows versions. To see this option, click on the Clean up system files.

Windows 8 clean Up

Step 3:

Choose the drive where you install Windows. Usually its C drive.

Windows 8 clean Up

Step 4:

It will take some time to scan your system for removable files. Just wait here for some times.

Windows 8 clean Up

Step 5:

Now it will show you the option of deleting previous Windows installations and temporary Windows installation files. The previous Windows installation will delete all your documents, pictures, music etc that might be present there. So make sure that you have backed up all the things. In case you are not sure, you can check Windows.old folder in C drive to see what it is going to delete.

 Windows 8 clean Up

That’s it. Click on OK to delete the previous installation of Windows. You will have much more free space now on your C drive for a smoother Windows 8 experience.

Delete A Comment On Facebook Page Using Android Mobile Phone [Quick Tip]

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Being a Facebook page admin often puts you in delicate situation with unruly, rowdy and impolite fans on the page. You are forced to delete an unwarranted comment left on a post on your Facebook page. This is really easy when you are accessing Facebook through a web browser on your computer but you might be left wondering how to delete a comment on Facebook when you are accessing it on your mobile phone.

Lets take a look at this quick tip that lets you delete a Facebook comment from your mobile. This works on an Android phone (and I hope other touch phones as well).

Here is how to delete a comment on Facebook from mobile:

All you need to do is to go to the comment, move to its right side and then slide your fingers across it, from left to right or right to left. You will see an option popping up for delete. Click on it and the comment will be deleted from the page.

Delete-Facebook-Comment-Mobile

Remember that unlike the web version, this does not provide you several other options such as banning the user, hiding the comment or undoing your action. Though you can do it once you get access to the web version.

How to remove a directory including all the subdirectories and files in Unix [Quick Tip]

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Problem:

Imagine a scenario where you want to delete a directory (lets say dir_name) which contains lots of subdirectories (folders) and files. You may encounter the following errors if you try rm or rmdir:

rm: cannot remove `dir_name': Is a directory

rmdir: failed to remove `dir_name': Directory not empty

cannot remove directory `dir_name’. Directory not empty

Solution:

To avoid this problem use the following command:

rm -rf dir_name

It will delete all the content of dir_name including the subdirectories.

How to solve: Cannot move file to trash, do you want to delete immediately?

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Problem Scenario:

I have a NTFS drive which is automounted every-time I start Ubuntu 11.04. I created this automount using fstab (Click Here to know how to automount windows partition in Ubuntu?). The problem is when I try to delete a file/directory (using delete button) it gives the following error:

Cannot move file to trash, do you want to delete immediately?

And if I select Yes, it permanently deletes the file/directory without moving it to trash (Permanently deleting i.e. Shift+Delete is not a good idea as you can accidentaly delete a wrong file).

Reason:

You might have noticed a folder .trash-1000 into your NTFS partition, External Drives etc when you are in . This folder is responsible for keeping the deleted files in trash so that you can recover them from trash. In other words, this .trash folder lets you move the files into trash. (The Windows counterpart of .trash is $RECYCLE.BIN which you can see in your Windows partitions/USB drives when you are in Linux). The 1000 in the folder name tells the owner of the trash folder which in this case is user with uid=1000 (This user, with uid=1000, is the first user you create while installing Linux and it has admin privileges i.e. super user rights).

Now. when I check my auto-mounted NTFS partition (/dev/sda5) I found no .trash folder in their. Why? Probably because there is something wrong with the ownership of the partition. This is the content of my fstab file:

sudo less /etc/fstab 
#adding ntfs partition for auto mouNt /dev/sda5 
UUID=01CB76F7C2628FB0 /home/takshak/mount/WindowsDrive ntfs defaults 0 0

Solution:

What I did is I edited the fstab file in /etc folder and added the uid=1000 with the NTFS partition in somewhat following manner:

sudo gedit /etc/fstab 
#adding ntfs partition for auto mouNt /dev/sda5 
UUID=01CB76F7C2628FB0 /home/takshak/mount/WindowsDrive ntfs defaults,uid=1000 0 0

And then I unmounted and mounted it back by using this command:

sudo umount /dev/sda5 && sudo mount -a

Possible Error:

The unmount and mount command may result in the following error:

uumount: /home/takshak/mount/WindowsDrive: device is busy.
        (In some cases useful info about processes that use
         the device is found by lsof(8) or fuser(1))

To solve it, check if the drive is in use (In my case it was being used by Torrent client). Close all the programs which are using the drive.

Further Solution:

It might happen that just adding uid=1000 will not work. What next then? Well you can try adding the group id ‘gid‘ along with uid. Generally gid=1000 works in most of the cases but even if that doesn’t work then find out your gid:

cat /etc/group | grep plugdev Output:plugdev:x:46:takshak

So here my gid is 46 (takshak is my username). Add it to the fstab file in similar fashion:

UUID=01CB76F7C2628FB0 /home/takshak/mount/WindowsDrive ntfs defaults,uid=1000,gid=46 0 0

Hope it has solved your problem. Question, suggestion and feedback are welcomed. Don’t forget to like/vote the post as a token of appreciation. Enjoy :)

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