How to remove temporary files on your PC

SafeBytes Software

In this day and age, computers have become, quite simply, a huge part of everyday life. We work with computers, we entertain ourselves with computers, we organize aspects of our life with computers, and some of us even take care of daily necessities such as groceries with computers. While there are many, many things that make up what one would call a “good computer”, such as

ProcessorGPU RAMScreen resolution OS (Operating System)

There is something that even the most computer illiterate person can understand: Storage Space. Without enough storage space on our computer, it would be impossible to actually save any of the tasks that we perform on the computer in question.

As the years go by, computer storage is becoming more and more advanced and more and more spacious. A 2 Terabyte (1 terabyte is equivalent to 1000 Gigabytes) hard drive can go for less than 65 dollars.

This means that most computer users have enjoyed more space in their hard drive than they could ever conceivably need for quite some time.

However, these disks still use the same basic concept that was developed in 1956, using magnetic disks that spin very rapidly. These hard drives have become more efficient and spacious as time has gone by. This does not mean, however, that they don’t have any shortcomings.

HDDs can malfunction in any number of ways, including sustaining a shock (such as when you accidentally drop your laptop). With these problems in mind, a new breed of hard drive has been developed: The SSD.

These drives (SSD meaning Solid State Drive) utilize no moving parts, instead opting to use microchips to store data (think of a pen drive and expand it and you’ll have a pretty good idea).

Solid State Drives offer way more resistance to physical shock, a significantly lower access time, lower latency and they run silently, but they have one big drawback compared to HDDs: the cost per unit of storage is a lot higher. A 500 Gigabyte Solid State Drive can cost as much as 200 Dollars.

With that in mind, if you have a computer which uses an SSD, your space is always at a premium, so any and all extraneous data should be taken care of with as much speed as possible.

Now, you might be asking yourself exactly what “extraneous data” means. For the average user, it is not common knowledge that when using your computer certain amounts of data are saved to your hard drive, in the form or temporary files, remnants of deleted data and even unwanted programs installed without your express permission.

These clutter files can come from, among other things:

Program installations and program usageInternet BrowsingOS installationsProgram InstallationsHard drive fragmentation (this is not quite as big a hit in performance for an SSD as it is for an HDD)Malware infections

In the rest of this article, we will go over how to get rid of all the clutter affecting your hard drive and eating up your precious space, which is indeed more of a commodity if you have a solid state drive.

If you are using a Windows PC, there is a very handy way of removing several of the things that might be eating up space on your computer: The Disk Clean-up Utility.

With this utility you can easily get rid of Temporary files such as

Temporary internet files (this will only delete Internet Explorer and Edge files, other browsers have a different process we will cover later)Downloaded program filesTemporary filesWindows Defender filesSetup log filesWindows Upgrade log filesSystem error reports and dump filesTemporary windows installation filesEven the contents of the recycle bin

All in one fell swoop (check the names that are bolded in Google in order to find out more about them and whether or not you wish to delete them).

In order to access this utility, simply:

Click on the Windows Icon in the task barType in “disk clean-up” and click on the utilityCheck the boxes that next to the names of the files you wish to delete.Click on OKClick on “delete files” on the second prompt, once you are sure that you indeed wish to delete all of those files.

After this, simply sit back and wait while the program finishes working.

One quick aside before moving on: the Temporary Windows Installation Files will only be there if you have upgraded from one version of Windows to another, and are there in case you are not entirely happy with the new Operating System and wish to downgrade back to the previous version.

These files will most likely be the biggest ones, occupying on average about 20 Gigabytes of storage space (unless of course you have failed to empty the Recycle Bin in quite a long time). Once you are absolutely and completely sure that you are happy with the new Operating System you have installed, you can go ahead and delete all of these files.

This will free up a lot of space on the hard drive, however, as we said before, if you are using a browser that is not Internet Explorer, this will not eliminate the temporary files of said browsers.

In order to do this in Google Chrome simply:

Click on the Menu icon in the top rightClick on “more tools” then “clear browsing data”Select the checkboxes for the type of file you wish to deleteUse the top menu to select the amount of data that you wish to delete (select “from the beginning of time” to delete everything)Click on the “delete browsing data”

To do the same on Mozilla Firefox (temporary files are called “Cache” here), simply:

Click on the Menu buttonSelect “Options”On the side menu select the “Advanced” tabSelect the “Network” tab on the menu Click on the button that says “clear now”, which is displayed next to the amount of data the cache is currently using.