If your computer has a small disk space, chances are that it will get filled up faster than you expected. This is especially true as you run more installations, create new files and download stuff from the internet. Without a proper strategy to manage your small hard disk space, your computer will always run into storage issues. Fortunately, Windows 10 comes built in with Storage Sense, a cool feature to help you organize your files and ensure you do not always run out of space. By default, storage sense is disabled. You are supposed to enable it and configure it the way you want it to work.
In this presentation, I will quickly go over the following:
- Why use storage sense?
- How to set up Storage sense
Without wasting much time, lets get into the first item there
Why use storage sense?
Storage sense enables you to manage your hard disk space efficiently. It is all too easy to forget doing some periodic storage evaluation and removing files that are redundant on the hard disk. The recycle bin for example might be forgotten and deleted files accumulates there, still eating up space. Temporary installation files might also be forgotten and allowed to eat up disk storage. But with storage space, your computer automatically empties the recycle bin and deletes obsolete files that are just sitting idle on your hard disk.
So put simply. Storage sense makes sure your disk only retain files that are still useful. Otherwise, it automatically deletes files that consume space on the hard disk unnecessarily. Now you can see that this is a piece of useful tool, especially if you are too busy to do what needs to be done.
- How to set up Storage sense
Take the following steps to open Storage sense and configure it.
Step 1: On the Search bar, type and search for Storage settings. Click the app to open it.
Step 2: On the Storage settings page, click Configure storage sense or run it now as seen below.
Step 3: Click the toggle button to switch on Storage sense. Only then can you be allowed to make any further settings.
At this point, storage sense has been activated. We can make further settings to let it work the way we want. Let see how to do that.
Step 4: The next option allows you to set often you want Storage sense to run. As you can see below, it can run everyday, week, month or when your computer is low on disk space. I prefer to run it every week. You choose for yourself here.
The next setting has to do with temporary files. You remember that temporary files can gradually fill up disk space without your notice. So here you can do the following:
Delete temporary files if no apps is using them: That could be useful because most installation temporary files are left to occupy space on the hard disk. Their only use is usually during program installation.
Delete temporary files in recycle bin: Its easy to think that hitting the delete button removes files from the hard disk. It doesnt. Files that are on the recycle bin are still occupying space on your hard disk. So here, you can instruct storage sense to automatically delete them after a day, 14 days, 30 days or 60 days.
Delete files in the downloads folder: This is another location that easily fills up the hard disk with unnecessary files. As you download stuffs from the internet, it goes to the downloads folder. So you can choose when to allow storage sense to delete files in the downloads folder. You can choose to delete them after a day, 14 days, 30 or 60 days.
Conclusion
Once you make these settings, the rest is up to storage sense. It can be a lot useful to set it up and let it watch how files occupy your disk, while you focus on other important computing tasks.
Note: All images are screenshots I did from my Windows 10 Pro PC.
Related