🌑

Linhost.info

Home VM

Clean-up The Temporary Folder In Windows 7 With CCleaner

The Temporary folder in your windows machine is not something that comes to mind very often. While the Temporary folder is used by various programs to create temporary files if left unchecked the folder could grow to occupy a considerable amount of space.

The Temporary folder size is only limited by the amount of available disk space.

To remove or flush the Temporary folder you can make use of two options:

  1. Disk Cleanup - tool built in to Windows.
  2. CCleaner - Freeware and optimization and cleaning tools

WHERE IS THE TEMPORARY FOLDER ?

For this tutorial I am using Windows 7 and the Temporary folder for my user is located at C:/Users/username/AppData/Local/Temp. You can use a free Windows tool called TreeSize Free to find out the exact size of of the Temporary folder. In my case the Temporary folder has grown to occupy a total of 25.6GB. Click on image to enlarge Click on image to enlarge Before starting the cleaning process I thought it would be a good idea to know that my C drive has a total of 397 GB of free space.

LET’S CLEAN THE TEMP FOLDER

My first tool of choice is a free third party tool called CCleaner which among the many things it can do is clean all temporary files found around your Windows installation. You can download CCleaner at the following address free of charge http://piriform.com/ccleaner/download. After the download is complete, install, and start the application. Click on image to enlarge By default the application assumes you want to use the Cleaner which removes temp files, what you need to do is click on the Analyze button located at the bottom of the window. Any discovery will be reported back along with the total size of the files used by the temporary files. Click on image to enlarge If you wish to proceed and erase the files click on the Run Cleaner button. Click on image to enlarge You will be asked for permission before erasing the Temporary files. Click on image to enlarge Depending on the size of the files to be erased, CCleaner may take anywhere from a few seconds to minutes. After the application is done close it and check your drive to see how much space you have gained. Click on image to enlarge

CONCLUSION

Previously, the available disk space was 397GB after running CCleaner the number increased to 423GB. While it takes time for the Temporary folder to grow, it would not hurt to clean it every few months. While hard drives in the Terabytes of storage are now common, SSD’s are still expensive and come in smaller sizes so wasting space in temporary files is out of question.

Software: CCleaner Software: TreeSize Free

, — Nov 3, 2010