Face it. Your computer is almost certainly overloaded with junk files that are either duplicates or simply unneeded. According to other Web sites, you simply need to get software like WinZip and begin compressing everything. That is stupid. Why would someone simply compress the junk rather than actually removing it? Here at LockerGnome, we think that doing things the right way the first time produces a better result.

Seek and destroy

There are basically two common sense approaches to removing the bulk of junk files from a computer. The first is to examine which sectors of your directories are holding the biggest files. For Windows users, I happen to be fond of the software known as WinDirStat. Open source and simple to use, WinDirStat will allow you a clear visual idea of which files and directories are taking up the largest amounts of space on your hard drive. For Linux users, I’m a big fan of Baobab.

In either case, I’ve found that you can use either application to navigate through your files and folders to see which items are taking up the most space and perhaps, spot long since dead directories that can be disposed of. Using these applications by themselves can save you time and space rather quickly. It sure beats compressing them with WinZip!

Finding those duplicates

Another issue that can stack up against you after enough time are duplicate files. Generally speaking, none of these are a problem in the sense of being too big. Instead, these files might create issues with your system running smoothly or maybe there are files that can be removed to fix other problems not related to the system’s performance. For Windows PCs, I like Auslogics Duplicate File Finder. The application has a nice UI and provides you with some advanced sorting/organizing options in addition to merely dealing with duplicate files.

For Linux users, try using FSlint. Designed to deal with duplicate files, broken symlinks, and empty directories, FSlint is must have software in my opinion. It does a nice job of keeping things clean.