5 Main things Clogging up Your Hard Drive

In my job as a frontline IT person the one thing that I hear over and over again is that people’s computers are working slow. I totally get this. There is nothing more annoying that wanted to work on your computer and having to wait for 10 minutes for the thing to boot up. Of course WHEN the thing boots up and you have to wait for another 10 minutes looking at the spiny wheel of boredom waiting for the program to load your document. There is very little as aggravating when working as this process. The typical reaction to these types of issues is to toss your computer out of the window in frustration (seems dramatic) or to take it to your local IT guy and have him figure it out (less dramatic). If you’re experiencing a similar issue I would highly recommend against launching your computer out of your window, frustrated as you may be, because there are three fairly simple solutions as to what may be going on in your computer.

 

1) Check (and delete) your trash – I talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but one of the major culprits for computer slowdowns is a lack of memory on the hard drive, and what takes up the most memory when it doesn’t have to is your recycle bin. My only advice here is to check your recycle bin and if it’s got more than 10 items, delete them all. I remember having a slow down issue a couple of years ago and I checked every other setting on my computer and couldn’t make it work. out of desperation, I checked my recycle bin and was able to get rid of 29 GB of data!

 

2) TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER – I can’t emphasize this enough. For both Mac and PC updates are pushed out over the internet. Unfortunately, unless you actually turn off your computer and allow the updates to load properly. For Macs if you don’t do your updates your computer stops working properly, so after a while, people get so fed up that they just do it and find that their computers work great. After many years Windows has finally started catching up to Mac’s game. Windows 10 requires regular updates and those updates need to be uploaded. if you do not turn off your computer on a regular basis than the updates will not be installed properly and your computer will not function to the best of its abilities.

 

3) Music and Video – Music and video take up the most amount of your hard drive’s space than anything else on your computer. For the most part, there is no reason to keep either on your computer, most music and video services (like iTunes) will keep your media on the cloud so you don’t need to “have it” on your computer.

 

4) Too many programs open at once – I do see every once and a while a computer that has about 10-16 spreadsheets, Internet browser windows or PDF’s open at one particular time. Having too many programs open at once means that the computer has to work harder to make sure that those programs are able to all work when you need them. This requires more memory and coordination. Think of it this way, let’s say someone asks you to run a race, but then hands you a stack of dishes, 57 documents, a 20-pound barbell, and a baby. You’re not going to run that fast either. If you’re finding your computer slow, shut some things down to what you absolutely need (not what you think you need) and then see if your machine runs faster.

 

5) Throw some things on the cloud – I’ve talked before about the benefits of cloud systems (hyperlink) but I should reiterate that when you save things to the cloud it does take the strain off your hard drive. This, in turn, will ensure that your computer will run faster. You can set up your computer to save your documents directly to a cloud account or you could work off a program that does that for you (like Evernote).

 

Back in the day, when you had too many files, you would have to walk around the boxes and you would eventually run out of space in your storage room for them. Now, you can save stuff on your computer, but it’s deceptive because it’s not taking up physical space, but what you need to remember is that just because it’s digital, doesn’t mean it doesn’t take up any space.

 

Do you think your computer runs slow? Do you think that there is a reason I haven’t outlined here?