Disk space full? You can delete these files in Windows to save space!

There are a lot of files that you don’t need in Windows on your computer that take up a lot of space. From temporary storage files to junk files to Windows update files. But the problem is that it can be difficult to know which files are safe to remove. Let’s walk you through some of the Windows files and folders that you can safely remove. Let us help you save a lot of hard disk space on your computer in a safe way.

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Disk Cleanup

Before we tell you which files and folders you can safely remove in Windows, you should know that manually deleting them is not the safest and fastest way. There is a tool built into Windows specifically designed for this purpose. We are talking about the Windows Disk Cleanup tool from Microsoft. Let’s take a look at this tool and what it can do.

At first you can access the tool by opening the Start menu and typing Disk Cleanup, open the tool.

Then a list of disks that you want to clean of junk files will appear. Choose the system disk.

The tool will search the disk for junk files that can be removed from the disk, but it will not search within the system files. To clean up system files, click on the Clean up system files option, which requires administrator permission.

You will be asked again to select the disk you want to search in. Choose the system disk again. The tool will search the disk again and will not exclude system files from the search.

A window will appear with junk files that can be deleted, including files inside the system. Select what you want to delete and press OK.

On my PC and as shown in the photo above. These files take up more than 30 GB of disk space.

You can also go to Settings > System > Storage to try the new Storage Cleanup tool in Windows 10 and 11. Click Temporary files in the list of files, then you will see a list similar to what Disk Cleanup contains.

Files that Disk Cleanup helps you delete

This is not a complete guide to Disk Cleanup, so we won’t discuss all of the options it offers. We will give you a number of options that the tool allows you to delete and what they represent (be sure to choose the Clean up system files option to see them all):

Previous Windows Update Files : This erases old versions of Windows update files. They can be safely deleted in most cases, but you should keep them if you want to go back to your previous version of Windows in case you run into problems with new updates.
Windows Update Logs: Likewise, these are the data files that Windows keeps to help you find and install problems with new updates. You can clear it if you have no errors with your new copy of Windows after the update.
Language pack files: If you previously downloaded another language or keyboard layout that you are not using, you can easily scan it.
Recycle Bin: While you can empty the Recycle Bin through its window, you can also do it easily here. Make sure there is nothing inside that you need to restore.
Temporary files: As the name suggests, temporary files are not used after they are finished, so you can clear them without worry.

The tool shows you many other junk files that are draining a large part of your hard drive. The Windows Disk Cleanup utility greatly helps to recover a large amount of hard disk space and is worth using periodically.

Now let’s take a bigger look at these files:

Files you can delete from Windows

First: Hibernate files

File location: C:\hiberfil.sys

For those who don’t know what hibernation is. When you select hibernation, the system saves all your open applications to the drive and then shuts down the computer. After activating sleep mode, even if you remove the battery from the laptop or remove your desktop computer from power for a week and turn it on later, the computer will open all applications as you were running them as in sleep mode.

Storing this data takes up disk space. The size of the hibernation file is likely to be more than a gigabyte.

If you are not using hibernation and want to disable it, you can easily do so via the CMD command prompt. Press Win + X on your keyboard, then choose Command Prompt, Powershell (Windows 10) or Terminal (Windows 11) with administrator privileges from the menu that appears. Type the following command to disable hibernation:

powercfg.exe /hibernate off

After disabling hibernation, Windows will delete hiberfil.sys on its own when you do so; Feel free to delete it if the system does not delete it.

Second: Temporary files folder مجلد

File location: C:\Windows\Temp

Windows temporary files are no longer important after they are used. The files and folders inside contain information that Windows used at a certain time but no longer needed.

You can visit this folder and delete its contents manually. Just select everything inside and hit the Delete button. Windows might give you an error about some items just ignore them and delete everything else.

Third: Trash

File location: You can open it from the desktop

When you delete a file from your computer, the system sends it to the Recycle Bin. Deleted files are kept in the Recycle Bin until you delete them from it or restore them.

Open the trash. Select the files you don’t want and press the “Delete” option to permanently delete them, or choose “Restore” to restore the files to their original location if you want to restore them again. There are two options, the first to permanently delete all files and the second to restore them all with one click.

You can modify the way the Recycle Bin works, click Recycle Bin Properties. You can change the maximum size of the files in the Recycle Bin, or even choose to permanently delete the files directly instead of moving them to the Recycle Bin when they are deleted as in the image above.

Fourth: Old Windows copy files

File location: C:\Windows.old

When you upgrade your system version, the system keeps a copy of your previous system files called Windows.old. This folder basically contains all the application and system files of the previous version of Windows. You can use these files to roll back to the previous version of the system if you need to.

The system automatically removes this folder soon after the update, but you can remove it yourself if you need space. Unfortunately you cannot delete this file manually. You will have to go back to the Disk Cleanup tool and delete it via it.

After removing these files, it is not possible to restore the previous version of the system, so after updating the system, we advise you not to delete this folder until after making sure that the new version works fine without problems.

In the end

Windows system contains a lot of unnecessary files and folders. Indeed, your computer periodically cleans itself, so you won’t have to remove the contents of these folders yourself unless your disk space is really low and Windows is late to clean it up.

We recommend that you run the Disk Cleanup tool periodically once or twice per month. If you still need more space, try uninstalling some unnecessary Windows programs.

Disk Cleanup

In the end

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