How to Clean up computer disk?

If organization is the key to happiness, most of us are living in a state of dismay, chaos and pure depression. After all, for the sheer number of hours you spend on your computer, how comfortable are you with the state of your hard-drive? Are you one of those few people who have everything organized properly? If not, rest assured that you are most certainly not alone, but fortunately you don’t have to wade through all fifteen of the “New Folders” of “My Stuff” that you’ve been throwing files and media into any more. Cleaning your hard-drive is simple.

1. Get Your Email in Order

Got a mess of mail? If you have a single email address that you use for work and play, you’re lucky. For the rest of us, using a consolidated email program like Windows Live Mail lets you bring all of your email accounts into one place where you can read, sort and reply to messages from a single inbox. Obviously there are a host of free, dynamic email services out there, but we feature Windows Live Mail here because it's a good example of what features a modern email system should offer.

The Live Mail format lets you check mail from anywhere, but it also lets you integrate data, documents, schedules, contacts and calendars with native Windows programs.  These include Word, Excel and Outlook - not to mention online storage facilities built into the Windows Live system (see below).  To set up Windows Live Mail, simply follow the instructions on the download page.  You can easily move all of your current mail to another service without losing anything, and doing so is often considered an essential first step - especially for anyone with an older email interface that provides only limited features and no dynamic connection to your PC.

2. Divide Work and Play

Windows lets you create as many folders as you like and you can sort them according to the basic use of the files each contains. Start with two folders – one for work and one for play. Keep all of your important work related documents in one folder while the birthday lists and project ideas for the guest bathroom go in the other.

Now that you’re sorting things out, why not go one more step and set up folders within these two main categories? You can set up folders by year, by project, by month, by client or by assignment. Moving the files into the folders is as simple as cutting and pasting them or dragging and dropping the highlighted files from one place to another. Once everything is in its place, you’ll be able to find files almost instantly and can continue the organization system easily.

3. Manage Your Downloads

When you download something from the internet, it will be downloaded to a specific location. If you’re using more than one browser, you have downloaded files going to different places on your computer. You can find out where the downloads are going by looking in the Settings or Options menu of your browsers. If your browsers are downloading to different folders, you do have the option of setting up each browser to download to a particular location instead to consolidate the downloads moving forward.

For now, visit the folders where the downloads are heading and clean out the old installers that you’re no longer using. Look for .exe or .msi file types. These old installers fill up your folder and no longer serve a function. Delete them. Do this periodically as the download folders are constantly in use.

4. Consolidate Media

Easily one of the messiest areas on a computer is your collection of media files. These movies, pictures, videos and music files take up considerable amounts of space and often are scattered across your hard drive in different folders. Consolidate all of your media using programs like iTunes and Google Picassa.

In iTunes or a similar program, you can store all of your media in a single application where all of the files can be accessed easily. The files are stored much like a database making them easy to sort through and use when applicable. There are even user-friendly features like the iTunes “Automaticaly Add to iTunes” folder that lets you drag and drop songs for iTunes to organize for you. Google Picassa lets you organize pictures in this same way.

5. Take Your Stuff Online

If you’re saving all of your work on a hard drive, you’re risking a serious loss. Backing up your data should be part of your organizational efforts using a removable hard drive. Another option is to remove all of the files or at least make copies of files to be stored online.

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Online storage solutions called cloud drives let you store data online so it can be accessed from anywhere while being kept safe from hard drive crashes and corruption. Storing data online through options like Microsoft's SkyDrive, Dropbox.com or Amazon's Cloud Space also lets you keep your hard drive tidy and clean.  The key thing to think about here is accessibility: be sure that you have access to a copy of any critical files you might need, should your internet service get disconnected.  Lots of services now offer dynamic sync that keeps your info both locally (on your computer) and online. For a rundown of the top cloud storage services, see our listing, complete with point-by-point comparisons of pricing and what features they offer.

6. Stay Consistent

Once the initial work is done, it should be simple to continue with the organizational efforts. Save files in their new, correct, folder. Move media into iTunes to be sorted and let your new consolidated email program keep your emails centralized and organized. The goal of organization is to simplify your life. Making a small investment of time in getting your hard drive cleaned up can pay off in a big way down the road as you spend less time searching and more time getting things done.