How to clean a hard drive in Windows 10 and improve its performance? step by step guide

Have we ever thought that the slowness of our computerwhich has the Windows 10 operating system installed, due to its obsolescence and this results in a slow Internet connection.

This is not necessarily soAlthough it may happen that our computer is slow due to the age of its components, it can also happen that it is slow because we have not cleaned our hard drive for some time.

In this post we will refer to the concepts and steps you should know to efficiently clean a hard drive.

Why is it important to clean our hard drive from junk files?

There are different reasons and advantages why we recommend cleaning your computer. Next, we detail the most important ones:

to make room

Logically, having more space generates the benefit of being able to install programs that, perhaps, we could not add them to our computer if we did not have the necessary space.

And if there is the possibility of installing them, some software needs to work with extensions, which often generate incompatibilities due to not having enough space.

Other advantages that we can name is that with space we do not lose our goal at work when it comes to being able to search for a specific file.

To improve performance

This is useful both for startup and for processes in general.. If we clean our disk we are benefiting RAM memory, since all those files or data that we need most frequently are housed in it.

When we remove junk files, we are also clearing space in RAM memory, which brings as a benefit that it will work better and more efficiently because you can give us better information and faster.

To increase disc life

When we store information it resides anywhere on the disk where it found a place on the disk. When we request information that is stored in that document, the hard drive begins to spin until, thanks to other components, the requested information is found.

If we clean and fragment the disk, what we are doing is excluding the information that does not serve us and ordering all the information that we are going to usewith this we will achieve that the disk, when we want to extract information, turns less times because the information will find it faster. The less the disc works, the longer it will have a useful life..

To avoid logical errors

Many times duplicate files are created in the operating system, when we request the information of any of these files, the system enters into a processing conflict. If we clean those duplicate files we will avoid logical errors in the system.

Another point to keep in mind is that when we decide to uninstall the files that we do not use, our level of human error decreases because the focus of attention will be on the necessary files.

To facilitate access to information

When we work with our computer, without realizing it, we install garbage that does not serve any special function.

If we request information from the hard disk, and it is full, it will take longer to provide us with that information because it will have more work to search among the different files that exist.

Logically, if we delete the garbage, the disk will have less work and in less time it will find the requested file.

What documents can be considered unnecessary?

Within the files we consider junk or that are not necessary for the proper functioning of our computer, we can recommend that you delete the following:

Temporary files

When a program cannot generate or allocate enough memory for the tasks it must perform, it generates a file, which we will call “Temporary files”.

These files, which are often backup copies, usually have the extension “.TMP” or the character “~”. For Microsoft operating systems there is a special folder where they are located and we find it as “/tmp”.

The functions of these files once the program has been closed or the operating system has already performed the correct processes, they are useless, therefore we must remove them.

duplicate documents

When we share our files with other people and many times they make changes to our documents or simply make updates, the previous version no longer serves us and therefore we should delete it and save the last one with the corrections made.

With the pace of work we have or the time we dedicate to studies, many times we overlook deleting duplicate files, generating as a result having the same file in two or more places.

This information takes up space on the disk, which slows down the computer. That is why we recommend you clean each of these records, although you have to be very careful because sometimes they have the same name, but not the same information. This happens very often with images that we download with default names by programs.

Programs you don’t use

It is a very common and recurring theme in each of our computers, we save files or programs in which we will no longer use it because our work or study has ended in relation to that data.

As you know, this data considerably decreases the performance of our computer equipment, for this reason we recommend you to eliminate them in a conscious way, since many times it is very difficult to recover the information that you thought you were not going to use it anymore.

Steps to clean your SSD and improve its performance in Windows 10

To wipe a solid state drive with Windows 10 operating system and To improve performance we will have to perform these steps according to the tool we choose:

With the disk cleaner

When we perform cleaning through software designed to clean our computer’s hard drive, we save a lot of time and work because these programs do all the tasks for us.

For this example we have used the Easy Duplicate Finder program and we can follow these steps:

• In the Google search engine we write “Easy Duplicate Finder”
• We click on the link where this page appears
• we choose “Download for Windows”
• Once it has been installed in software then we will click “Start scan”
• The program will tell us that it may take a few minutes and will ask us if we agree, for which we press “Okay”
• And after a while, it will appear all the temporary and duplicate files that it suggests that we delete
• At this time we click on “To accept” to finish cleaning

with cmd

If we choose to use a Windows CMD command we will have to follow these steps:

• We click on “Start”
• We select “Run”
• When the window appears “Open” we will write the next command
• “c:windowsSYSTEM32cleanmgr.exe/dDrive”
• We press “Get in”

The drive position marker represents the drive or letter of the hard drive that we want to clean.

Uninstalling programs

Windows gives us the possibility to uninstall the programs manually, for this we will carry out the following procedure:

• We’re going to “Start”
• we choose “Menu”
• We wrote “Control Panel”
• We choose the application
• We click on “Programs”
• We select “Uninstall a program”
• We choose the program that we want to uninstall
• We click on “Uninstall or change”
• we choose “Yes”
• We select “Following”
• click on “To accept”

List of the best programs to keep your SSD clean in W10

The advantage we have when we use this kind of cleaners, in addition to doing the work for usis that with the installation we obtain other benefits, for example, antivirus, cookie blockers, permanent maintenance and warnings against browsing risks.

Next, we are going to name you the best softwares to keep your solid state drive clean with Windows 10:

CCleaner

This PC cleaner brings three products to offer us one free, one professional and one Premium level.

Among the functions they offer is to control the applications that use a lot of computer resources and delete cookies tracking files. It offers complete cleaning and power to recover lost files.

Provides the possibility of always having the software updatedare, all you have to do is go to their page and download the latest update.

Download CCleaner Windows

AVG TuneUp

This program was developed not only to clean our computers but also to provide one of the most powerful antivirus that exists on the market.

The free version and a paid version, which provide, among other things, virus protection and a permanent analysis of the PC’s performance, suggesting to delete files that cause the operation to decrease considerably.

Download AVG TuneUp Windows

CleanMaster

It is an application that you can download it for free and it is designed to keep our PC working properly, as it constantly analyzes all the files that can damage the hard drive and also uses an antivirus that increases our privacy.

Download Clean Master Windows

Advanced System Care

Considered by many to be a very good hard drive cleaner because it completely removes and uninstalls all those software and plugins that have been installed when we browse the Internet. Downloading it is completely free and handling is very simple.

Download Advanced System Care Windows

Win Utilities Free

It has two versions, one free and one paid.in which they offer us a large number of applications that we can carry out with this software.

It keeps our computer clean by eliminating all those files that are duplicates or could be a threat to the functioning of our computer. Contains a function in which you can perform a daily maintenance through a single click.

Download Advanced System Care Windows