{"id":286,"date":"2021-04-22T15:16:32","date_gmt":"2021-04-22T15:16:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dejadesktop.com\/blog\/?p=286"},"modified":"2026-04-15T14:35:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T14:35:36","slug":"5-best-ways-to-clean-your-pc-trash-in-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dejadesktop.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/22\/5-best-ways-to-clean-your-pc-trash-in-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Best Ways to Clean Your PC Trash in 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Here\u2019s how to eliminate digital litter and keep your PC running swimmingly and speedily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>PCs collect the digital equivalent of clutter over time, that is, the files from unwanted sites and applications, left downloads, and many such stuff. These can slow down your PC, so conducting a regular cleanup can make your pc run hassle-free. Here\u2019s an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.crunchytricks.com\/2018\/04\/winutilities-review.html\">important link<\/a> from where we got you the best five ways to clean up your PC trash in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">1. Perform a hard drive cleanup<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Windows has an in-built tool for ridding the hard drive of unnecessary and unwanted files, so it\u2019s worth using it more often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Select and right-click the drive you want to clean under \u2018This PC\u2019 and click on Properties. When the dialogue box opens, select the \u2018Disk Clean-up\u2019 button on the \u2018General\u2019 tab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Windows will conduct a quick check on the drive and then display a list of file types to clean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can keep the default selection of file types as it is, but just selecting everything won\u2019t cause any issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Select OK to delete the selected files, which will not move to the Recycle Bin. A final box will ask you if you\u2019re sure about deleting it permanently<strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">2. Empty the Recycle bin<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;Checking your Recycle Bin is an excellent way to get back your files that you\u2019ve deleted in a hurry and by accident, but a bin that\u2019s dotted with n-number of files is a waste of space and file memory. Although, modern hard drives are large enough for this not to be a grave problem for most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet, emptying the<a href=\"https:\/\/learn.compactappliance.com\/recycling-tips\/\"> Recycle <\/a>Bin from time to time will make it simpler for you to find files you do want to undelete. Emptying the recycle bin is just a matter of right-clicking it\u2019s a desktop icon and clicking on \u2018Empty Recycle Bin\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can also reduce the size of the Recycle Bin so that it empties itself automatically more often when it gets full. Right-click and select the Desktop icon, click on Properties and edit the Custom size value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;Until you empty the trash from the recycle bin and delete those files, they\u2019re still saved in your system. The Disk Cleanup utility should perform this task for you, but regularly emptying the trash yourself is the best practice to avoid clumping up the works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">3. Check your hard drive for errors<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Windows automatically checks your hard drive for errors whenever it restarts after a crash, but it\u2019s worth doing this yourself once every few days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In \u2018This PC,\u2019 right-click on a drive and click on Properties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Select the \u2018Tools\u2019 tab, click on \u2018Check\u2019 under the \u2018Error checking\u2019 tab, then select \u2018Start\u2019 on the dialogue box that is displayed. This check would take a couple of minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One possible cause of a PC slowdown is an error in the way your hard drive stores and accesses data. And the notable thing is, Windows has an in-built utility that helps scan and sometimes fix hard drive issues such as lost clusters, directory errors, or bad sectors. Right-click on your local disk, select \u2018Properties, go to the \u2018Tools\u2019 tab, and you\u2019ll see an option to \u2018Check\u2019 the disk for errors. The scan may take some time to complete. If there are fixable errors on your hard drive, this can be an easy way to do a minor performance enhancement on your computer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">4. Defrag your hard drive<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;Disk fragmentation happens because of the way hard drives store data. Files are divided into smaller bits and stored wherever there\u2019s an empty space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As new files are created and old ones get deleted, free space becomes dispersed over the drive, and the chunks of data that make up files become dispersed as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This \u2018fragmentation\u2019 makes files slower to read and write, which in turn slows down your computer, but Windows has an in-built defragmentation tool to rectify it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Your PC should be defragmenting automatically periodically, but you can do it whenever you want. Search \u2018Defragment\u2019 using Cortana search and click on Defragment and optimize drives. Choose one of the drives listed, then click Optimise to start the procedure. This can consume some time, so it\u2019s best left running for a longer time or overnight. Or, if you leave your pc switched on when you\u2019re not using it, you can set a schedule for defragmentation to run automatically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">5. Flush your browser<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>All browsers create temporary files as you browse the web. While the in-built cleanup tool will discard some, however, won\u2019t remove them all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;Most important is clear browser cache, history and temporary internet files. These are a few more things that can slow down your web browsing. Unless you have a particular requirement to keep track of your browser history, do regularly brush and clear it out. You have to do the same for cached versions of websites and temporary Internet files, both of which take up real space on your hard drive. In Chrome, go to the main Chrome menu and select \u2018Clear Browsing Data\u2019 to see all of your options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These were the best five ways in 2020 by which you can discard digital clutter and clean up your PC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PCs collect the digital equivalent of clutter over time, that is, the files from unwanted sites and applications, left downloads, and many such stuff. These can slow down your PC, so conducting a regular cleanup can make your pc run hassle-free. Here\u2019s an important link from where we got you the best five ways to clean up your PC trash in 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejadesktop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejadesktop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejadesktop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejadesktop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejadesktop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dejadesktop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":895,"href":"https:\/\/dejadesktop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions\/895"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejadesktop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejadesktop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejadesktop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejadesktop.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}