Keeping your computer clean and secure can be a tedious thing to do, but it doesn’t have to be. If you are the type that regularly performs cleanup and maintenance tasks on your computer, then you should be fine for the most part. But if you are the type that waits until the last minute to “tune up” your PC then you may need the assistance of a third party app to do so. In this article, we will be showing you how to clean and manage your hard disks and other Windows components using a free tool called HDCleaner.
Watch Video: Clean and Manage Your Hard Disks and Other Windows Components with HDCleaner
During the installation of HDCleaner, you will have several settings that you can configure so it’s up to you if you want to leave them all enabled or not. The first one that says create a system restore point might be a good one to leave enabled just in case you have an issue and need to roll back to it.
One HDCleaner is installed, you will then be able to use the various tools to clean and optimize your PC. Here are the main tasks that HDCleaner can perform.
- Clean your system
- Securely shred files
- Wipe free space
- Securely erase drives
- Uninstall software
- Manage startup apps
- Run a system restore
- Check system information
- Check hardware information
- Run disk checks
- Defragment your disk
- Check for duplicate files
- Manage your paging file
- See what is using your disk space
- Recover deleted files
- Encrypt files
- Do bulk renaming of files
- Backup, defrag and search the registry
- Setup monitoring for various events
- Clean up the WinSxS folder
- Gain access to restricted files and folders
- Clone your hard drive
The main Dashboard section shows you the status of your computer regarding its performance and health. You can also find information about your computer here such as what build of Windows you are running your RAM, CPU and hard drive information.
When you go to the Cleaning section, you will be able to run an analysis to see what can be cleaned up on your computer by clicking on the Analyze Now button.
It will then show you how many problems were found and how much space can be freed up by running the cleanup process.
You can click on the Details link next to any of the categories to see what will be cleaned up and you can then uncheck any items that you do not want to have removed.
Once you have made your selections, you can then click on the Clean up the PC button to have the items removed from your computer.
Now we will discuss the other features of the HDCleaner app.
Shredder
This can be used to securely delete files so they cannot be recovered. You can also use this tool to wipe a partition or the entire hard drive. The Wipe Free Space feature is used to securely remove any traces of previously deleted files and does not affect any current files on your drive.
System
Here you can find information about your computer such as what apps are set to start with your computer and also show information about your computer’s hardware. There is an uninstaller tool which can be used to help you remove unwanted software as well as a system restore feature that can be used to create and restore system restore points.
HDD
Here you can view details about your hard drives and have it search for any errors and fix them if possible. There is also a built in disk defragmenter tool.
Storage Space
There are several tools in this section that can be used to manage the space used on your hard drive. The Disk Analysis and Disk Space Analyzer features can be used to find large files of various types stored on your computer to see what is using all your drive space. There is also another disk cleanup tool you can run from here as well as a duplicate file finder.
Tools
There are a few handy miscellaneous tools you will find here such as one that can help you recover deleted files or rename multiple files at the same time. If you need to securely encrypt some files, there is a tool for that as well.
Registry
Normally, you shouldn’t mess with the registry unless absolutely necessary but if you want to do something like make a backup of your registry that can later be restored, you can do so from here. There is also a search and defragment option.
Extras
Here you will find some tools that can be used to clone a hard drive to another disk. If you have some files that you cannot access because of permission settings, you can try the tool here to see if it can help you out. There is even a section that can be used to uninstall programs and updates from your computer.
As you can see, HDCleaner is an effective tool you can use to clean and manage your hard disks and other components. You can download the software from their website here.
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