XSIBlog

First, stuff you already know.  You need to take a look at your temp folder once in a while.  The folder’s location is placed at a tedious location on Windows, something like C:\Document And Setttings.. then into a hidden folder.  Some people move it to an easier location, but it’s in fact really easy to get to it.

At the command prompt you can symply type  “CD /D  %TEMP%”  The slash D is to allow CD to change drive and directory at the same time.    You could also do “pushd %TEMP%”  to go there, which will then allows you simply type  “popd” to get back to where you were.

I’m more of a GUI type when it comes file management.  To open explorer directly in temp folder, simply go Start->Run and type in “%TEMP%”.  (Many people do not know explorer supports environment variables)   You could also type this in the explorer Address Bar if it’s visible.  What’s tedious about Explorer for file managenent is that it will abort deleting files on any error, so you might need the command prompt anyway to do that ‘del /s’

Sometime your lost disk space simply isn’t in your temp drive, and it’s impossible to remember what was that latest thing we installed, or who left a temporary file where.  I’ve found a few years ago an amazing free tool to find lost space, it is called sequoia

It takes quite a while for Sequoia to scan your disk, but after that it shows you a boxes-in-boxes view of your hard disk, which is a proportionnal view of folders and files.  There is some intelligent grouping logic behind it, it isn’t simply about big boxes for big files and small boxes for small ones.  You’ll have to try it to see how great it is.  Simply right-click on the large files to open explorer and delete them, you’ll never feel more in control of your hard disk usage.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 11:54 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.