{"id":27089,"date":"2012-07-19T17:37:23","date_gmt":"2012-07-19T15:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/?p=27089"},"modified":"2025-07-02T01:47:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T08:47:14","slug":"whats-taking-up-my-hard-drive-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/whats-taking-up-my-hard-drive-space\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s taking up my hard drive space?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Keeping your Windows PC clean doesn\u2019t have to be a pain, but it is necessary. There are lots of reasons why your hard drive might be full, and there are two free apps<\/strong> I use to help me find space, delete unnecessary files and clean up my hard drive.<\/p>\n

For finding out what\u2019s taking up all that space on my hard drive, I use Space Sniffer<\/strong><\/a>. For general cleaning, I use the excellent CCleaner<\/strong><\/a>.
\n<\/p>\n

Find out what is taking up space on your hard drive<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The great thing about Space Sniffer<\/a> is you don\u2019t need to install it, just unpack the ZIP file, and double click the EXE.
\nChoose the hard drive you want to inspect, and the app will start investigating. For big drives, it may take a few minutes. I really like Space Sniffer\u2019s display – you can easily see where the most space is being used, as the biggest rectangles represent the most space.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nDouble clicking a space allows you to investigate what\u2019s inside individual folders, where as right-clicking will open that folder in Finder.
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

I always find lost folders with Space Sniffer that I can delete, and often games that I no longer need to have installed, saving lots of hard drive space.<\/p>\n

Spring clean your PC<\/strong><\/h3>\n

CCleaner, either the install version<\/a>, or the portable<\/a>, is an essential PC tool. This neat and app will delete files built up by using Windows and various applications like Internet Explorer and others.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nYou have to be careful and check the list of what Ccleaner is going to clean – I don\u2019t want to delete my browser history, for example. Make sure you uncheck any boxes you don\u2019t want to delete. Then simply click ‘Run Cleaner’, and see how much space you have found.<\/p>\n

With Space Sniffer and Ccleaner, you\u2019ll quickly and easily find more space on a full hard drive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Keeping your Windows PC clean doesn\u2019t have to be a pain, but it is necessary. There are lots of reasons why your hard drive might be full, and there are two free apps I use to help me find space, delete unnecessary files and clean up my hard drive. For finding out what\u2019s taking up … Continue reading “What’s taking up my hard drive space?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-27089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2019"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27089"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333722,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27089\/revisions\/333722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27089"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=27089"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=27089"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=27089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}