WE ALL KNOW the kind of ‘boring but useful’ tasks we should carry out regularly on our computers: backing up, syncing, eradicating junk, and so on. Just as in life, there are lots of things we should do, but don’t—but one of the reasons we put off such PC tasks is not knowing the best program to use. That’s a problem we aim to fix in this feature.
We’ve highlighted 16 tasks you may have attempted in the past, perhaps with mixed results. We start with tools that help you manage your files: removing, renaming, searching for, and converting them. Once that’s done, we move on to security—more specifically, encryption. You’ll learn how to hide files behind passwords, and even inside other files.
Backing up and syncing are covered, followed by tools to keep your computer running smoothly: cleaning memory, analyzing hard drives, and uninstalling programs. We also recommend Wi-Fi programs for optimizing your network, including protecting your signal, before finishing with some handy tricks for your keyboard and mouse.
MANAGE YOUR FILES LIKE AN EXPERT
1 FIND AND REMOVE SPACE-HOGGING FILES
The excellent program TreeSize Free can help you find and delete files you’ve lost track of and have outlived their usefulness. Download the ‘TreeSizeFree-Portable.zip’ file from www.snipca.com/42021, unzip it, then right-click ‘TreeSizeFree.exe’ and choose ‘Run as administrator’ so it can scan folders that would otherwise be locked.
Click ‘Select Directory’, then ‘This PC’ in the File Explorer sidebar, followed by C:. Now click Select Folder, and TreeSize Free will scan your entire drive, and order your folders by size, with the largest first.
Much of what it finds will be Windows system files, so be careful what you remove. Expand the Users folder, and your own folder inside it, then explore the directories within. As you can see from the screenshot 1, we’re working our way through the ‘nik’ user folder and have over 125GB of old files sitting in the Downloads folder 2, many of which can be removed.
This includes four versions of the Raspberry Pi operating system, occupying almost 11GB 3, that we installed several years ago. To delete a file, right-click it, then click Delete in the context menu.
Also, check the ‘Program Files and ‘Program Files (x86)’ folders for particularly large sub-folders containing software you no longer use. Rather than delete these directly through TreeSize Free, though, you can uninstall them via
