Free Tools For Your Disk Cleanup

Last modified 24-Sep-09

Cleaning a hard disk can be accomplished in several ways; the first option is to select files manually, and there is the automatic way. If you manually clean the drive, this involves stepping through all drive areas and determining which items can be erased safely, and deleting them as necessary. This is less risky than running a cleanup program but this way can be tedious if many files exist. You can also make use of software tools that detect info like the date files were last accessed, and then automatically create a table of files and folders which are then cleaned off the disk automatically.

Many software products are available on the internet to help with drive cleaning, and these come in several varieties. The most common of these are the general cleanup tools like Microsoft's Disk Cleanup utility, that delete any useless files and folders and give back usable space in the process. There are 'PC privacy' tools that remove signs of internet browsing and clean up lists of URLs typed found in your browser, software such as Privacy Eraser. Now there is also porn detection software which can be used to discover the location of porno files and a range of other inappropriate files and can manage the cleanup of any files that are not wanted. The last category of cleaning software is the data erasing program which, by writing random garbage over existing data, completely erases it from anywhere on the disk with no risk of being recovered.

There is an ever growing selection of cleanup utilities of many kinds that will handle the drive cleanup task from different angles. A good range of free disk cleanup tools are now available that can automate the cleaning tasks for you. However there are more things that software can do, many can also clean up free drive space, perform automated porn removal, find programs that are not properly licensed, and find out how to recover disk space.