 Hello everybody! Watch this video to find out how to claim that disk from junk files with Windows 11 integrated utilities. When your computer runs out of free disk space, it affects its performance almost inevitably. The less free space your hard disk has, the higher are the chances that some programs will take more time to start, and others will even refuse to open. As a rule, most computers tend to have their windows installed onto a solid-state drive of a moderate capacity. Sooner or later, its free disk space begins to dwindle to dangerous limits. There are lots of third-party tools created to clean your hard disks from unnecessary files, but the integrated utilities can still handle this task pretty well, too, just like the previous versions of this operating system. Windows 11 features a bunch of integrated disk cleaning utilities. And in this video, I'm going to show you how to use them. You can access the first metal of disk cleaning in Windows 11 through the Settings app to open it. Click on Start, Settings, Storage. In the window that opens, look to the right to see the information on the amount of free and used space. Below, you will see the list of things that use your disk space. When you expand a category by clicking on it, for example, temporary files, you will see what exactly is included into this category and how much disk space it occupies. In this category, files can be removed. To view the complete list of all categories, click on Show More Categories. In the Storage Management section below, you can run disk cleanup operations. The Storage Sense feature lets you configure automatically disk cleanup, remove temporary files, and so on. When you open this section, you can schedule when files are deleted from certain folders. At the bottom of the page, you can find the button Run Storage Sense Now. In the previous window, you can also check cleanup recommendations. It contains information about files in your Downloads folder, Recycle Bin folder, Temporary files, large or unused files, unused apps, and files that you have synced to the cloud services. Select the files that need to be removed and click the Cleanup button below. The features listed in Windows 11 Storage Settings are pretty basic but really useful, especially for beginners. In addition, there is a considerable advantage in comparison with third-party disk cleanup software. There is no way that you could harm the operating system, as it is absolutely safe to delete the files suggested for removal. The only possible exception is the contents of your Downloads folder, if you keep something important there. Hello, friends! If you need to recover deleted data, view or restore removed browser history. Hetman Software products will help you. Follow the link in the description, download the necessary program for free, install it and analyze the disk. The utility will show you the data you can recover, so you will be able to view it or get it back. In our channel and blog, you will find solutions to any problem, from installing an operating system or configuring it, to fixing possible bugs and errors or optimizing mobile gadgets. Our specialists will answer any questions you ask in your comments under the videos or articles. Along with the new storage cleaning options, Windows 11 also inherited the integrated disk cleanup utility from its previous versions. This tool will help you clean much more junk files that you would remove with the storage features in the settings. Open the Start menu and search for Disk Cleanup. In the window that opens, select the drive to be cleaned and click OK. In the next window, you will see the list of files that can be removed. Usually they don't take up much space, but if you click on the option below Clean Up System Files, the drive selection window appears again, and another round of scanning begins. At any time, the list of files and the amount of data that can be removed will be bigger. Check the boxes for the times you want to clean and click OK. Wait until the cleanup process is complete. In the tab More options, you will be able to free up more disk space by removing unnecessary programs or system restore points, except for the latest one. And do it by clicking on the Clean Up button next to the corresponding category. The Disk Cleanup feature is similar to StorageSense and it is as safe as that. It never suggests to delete files that are required for normal work of your operating system. Also, you can run this utility in an advanced mode, which allows to run a deeper cleanup and remove even more files. To start this mode, open the Run window and type the following command. If this method doesn't work, run this command from the command prompt as administrator. As you can see, now the file cleanup list is longer. The only disadvantage is that you can't see how much space is taken up by files in every category. Also, such items as device driver packages and delivery optimization files are missing, although they are displayed when you run cleanup in the basic mode. If your hard disk is very low in space, you can try to free up a few gigabytes manually by clearing the folder File Repository where device drivers are stored. Integrated utilities don't remove old or unused drivers from this folder. If the total folder size is more than 2 gigabytes, it seems a good idea to delete some drivers. Here is the pass to the folder. It contains copies of device driver packages that are ready for installation. When the operating system updates device drivers automatically, or when you do it manually, all the versions of drivers are kept in this folder just in case you want to roll back if new drivers cause any issues. That is convenient, but it also takes up your disk space. In theory, you can remove everything from File Repository folder, but in reality, this may cause problems and it's not so safe as you may think. To clean up some drivers without regretting that, you have to understand what things can be removed safely. For status, let's list the drivers that are stored in this folder. Launch the command prompt as administrator and type the following command. This command will create a file on disk C with a list of driver packages. After you check that list, you can remove unnecessary drivers with this command. Where nn is the number of the driver file as listed in the document drivers.txt. When you try to remove a driver, which is currently in use, you will see this message saying that the delete operation has failed. So the best approach is to start your cleanup operation by removing old graphics drivers and old drivers for your peripheral devices. If necessary, you can always check the current driver version in the Device Manager window by clicking properties and then driver. That is all for now. Hopefully, this video was useful. Remember to click the Like button and subscribe to our channel. Push the bell button to receive notifications and never miss new videos. Leave comments to ask questions. Thank you for watching. Good luck.