Ever wonder why you have so little space on your hard drive? It could be because you have gigantic files that are taking up all the space (which you can identify using these tools), or it could be because so many programs are downloading update installers and creating huge file caches that do not get removed.
If want to get rid of these, and after you’ve cleaned your drive with CCLeaner, try totally free program KCleaner.
KCleaner wants to be, quote “the most efficient hard disk cleaner, tracking every useless byte”. I can’t really say if it achieves this lofty ideal, but it appears to make a good go of it, which I say after it removed more than 1 gig of unneeded files from my hard drive right after I cleaned it with CCleaner.
First off: what does it clean?
The screenshot below shows the settings screen, where you can check/uncheck what KCleaner cleans. These are mostly common software that most people will have installed (Apple Installer Cache, Windows Installer Duplicates, etc.) and that can take up a surprising amount of space. There is no mystery here, which is why I like this program.
As you can see (from the first screenshot on top of this post), it is mostly small files that it removes (the largest in my test was 56megs or so). But these can collectively add up. Note that the 1.1 Gigs that it cleared up in my screenshot were found after I had just cleaned my hard drive with CCleaner.
The verdict:
If you have space issues on your hard drive and don’t know where all the space went, try KCleaner. Although I am a big devotee of CCleaner, which I trust more that most hard drive cleaners, but if you want more of a ‘scrub’ try KCleaner as well.
One thing to note: make sure you run this program in administrative mode. The version I tested (1.2.3.42) acts strange when you don’t; churns and churns like its cleaning up files, but in the end does not do much of anything and the files are still there. When you use adminstrative mode it will work as intended.
Click here to download portable version (direct download link). For more info, check out the program page on Softpedia. Note that the portable version and the Kcleaner-lite version from the Softpedia page are crapware free, but that the Kcleaner.exe found on the developer web page comes laden with crapware (a.k.a offers and toolbars). Although you can opt out of these, they are rather tenacious and play with wording so as not to make it clear how to do so.
