10 Tips to Declutter Your PC

The folders should be named to reflect what programs you install, what websites you visit, and what files you download. In order to cover most software categories, your Start menu should at least have these folders: games, internet, multimedia, office, and utilities. Because there are so many types of online content, browser bookmarks will most probably have the highest number of folders. Among these should be: articles, blogs, entertainment (games, comedy, etc.), forums, news, shopping, tools, and videos. Finally, your files folders should include items such as documents, software, songs. and videos.

Every once in a while, it is good practice

to monitor how much space is left on your hard drive, in order to avoid having bad surprises like not having enough space for that big, multi-gigabyte download. Treesize Free quickly scans your hard drive and shows you which folders occupy the most space, allowing you to delete some if needed.

If you have files that you very rarely use (no more than a couple of times a year), but want to keep on your hard drive, you would be better off trading their ease of access for some disk space that you could use more often. With a file archiver such as 7-Zip, you can compress those files into a container file that will take up less space. The file can even be password protected if you wish.

You should backup your data at least once a month: just in case something happens to your hard drive (failure, flood, theft, etc.). I'm not necessarily talking about ghosting your operating system here, just making backups of your important data. Save that data in two places if possible: the risk is very low for your two backup devices to malfunction at the same time. What I do is put my backups on DVD-R discs and a USB flash drive (for added portability), and use password-protected archives for personal or sensitive data.

It can be so easy to overload the desktop with shortcuts, installers, and pictures, for example. It can even get to the point where you can't see your wallpaper very well. A quick way to clear your desktop is to delete unneeded items, move remaining

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