Software for serious cleaning of clutter on SSD Root Drive

Hello ladies & gentlemen. I am looking for some suggestions of a program or two I can buy to help me seriously clean out my SDD Root Hard Drive. I manually deleted over 8 gigs over the last 3 days. But I feel like there is a lot more clutter.

What I currently use is CCleaner & Advanced System Care. I guess what I'm asking, is there anything that is more on a professional grade? A power scrubber that small businesses would use? I want to clear out unneeded registry files, left over install files, left over stuff from programs I have uninstalled, just ...my technical term is "crap" left on the operating system hard drive.

I am using Windows 7 Ultimate x64. Thank you.

Hello RB Mate just how large is your SSD? I am not quite sure what is meant by left over install files though and CC usually is all you need - there is a reg scan feature but if you go there be very careful and always make a backup of anything before you fix issues.

The pro version of CC is not really needed and I think 8Gb is not that much to be honest - I recently cleared 35GB out of a fix I was doing and regularly find 10 - 20 GB of clutter.

Also make sure you keep an eye on the cookies or you will be forever re entering passwords. (Click on the cog wheel > pick cookies form the left hand list > send the ones you want to keep to the right by clicking on them and then the little arrow to the right) When all are picked go back to the brush and run cleaner.

RussianBear said:

But I feel

Click to expand...

"Feeling" is generally not the basis for a sound decision.

Unless you have an antique processor, the registry errors and crap are highly unlikely to cause any measurable slowdown or problems---in fact less likely than the chances of causing problems by obsessively cleaning an installation.

If you can't help the way you "feel", you may still feel the same way after cleaning with product A---which will lead you to product B, product C, etc, endlessly.

I'd use CCleaner or Disc Cleanup (built into Windows) to occasionally do a general cleaning and avoid messing with the registry entirely.

ICit2lol said:

Hello RB Mate just how large is your SSD? I am not quite sure what is meant by left over install files though and CC usually is all you need - there is a reg scan feature but if you go there be very careful and always make a backup of anything before you fix issues.

The pro version of CC is not really needed and I think 8Gb is not that much to be honest - I recently cleared 35GB out of a fix I was doing and regularly find 10 - 20 GB of clutter.

Also make sure you keep an eye on the cookies or you will be forever re entering passwords. (Click on the cog wheel > pick cookies form the left hand list > send the ones you want to keep to the right by clicking on them and then the little arrow to the right) When all are picked go back to the brush and run cleaner.

Click to expand...

Really, you don't know what is meant by left over install files? Umm it's files that are left over from installations of previous software, games, stuff left over when you uninstall the programs. Maybe you have a special computer that doesn't leave any junk all over the hard drive.

8 gigs is nothing. That's why I was asking what I can use as a power scrubber. I am afraid to delete stuff manually. Too many files can be something that windows needs to work.

I hardly do any registry work, but when I do, I make backups. I try to clean up cookies on a regular basis.

ignatzatsonic said:

RussianBear said:

But I feel

Click to expand...

"Feeling" is generally not the basis for a sound decision.

Unless you have an antique processor, the registry errors and crap are highly unlikely to cause any measurable slowdown or problems---in fact less likely than the chances of causing problems by obsessively cleaning an installation.

If you can't help the way you "feel", you may still feel the same way after cleaning with product A---which will lead you to product B, product C, etc, endlessly.

I'd use CCleaner or Disc Cleanup (built into Windows) to occasionally do a general cleaning and avoid messing with the registry entirely.

Click to expand...

I'm sorry, I guess as a human I sometimes have a feeling that my hard drive has more free space just waiting to be cleaned out. You are Dr. Phil? "If I can't help the way I feel?. Or do you just not like new members who ask straight forward questions?
I do not believe my root hard drive only has 13 gigs of free space, especially since I only have 1 game installed, which is from 2009, and takes up 2.3gigs of room. Some word processing software, video editing and photo editing software take up another 17.3 Gigs. My Windows install with all the updates is 23 gigs. Take another 10 gigs for miscellaneous software. Where did the other 54.4 gigs go?


I guess I was wrong to write my thoughts about my hard drive problem. I see it has really upset you ignatzatsonic.

Welcome to Seven Forums RussianBear. I think you may be a bit too defensive. They are trying to help you. Why don't we try to see what's taking up room on your drives if you believe you are short almost 55 gigs. I personally like Space Sniffer , but others like WinDirStat . Either will help you see what is taking up space on your drive.

You can also run an extended version of disk cleanup and see if that clears some space (not 55 Gigs certainly)

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/76383-disk-cleanup-extended.html

A Guy

RussianBear said:

I do not believe my root hard drive only has 13 gigs of free space, especially since I only have 1 game installed, which is from 2009, and takes up 2.3gigs of room. Some word processing software, video editing and photo editing software take up another 17.3 Gigs. My Windows install with all the updates is 23 gigs. Take another 10 gigs for miscellaneous software. Where did the other 54.4 gigs go?

Click to expand...

You'll need to post more info - like a screenshot of disk management - to get good advice. 54.4 gb missing is probably an issue that won't be solved by automatic disk cleanup tools. One thing you could try first is to download a free "tree size" tool.
Just google that.
Using it will quickly point to big chunks of data.
Stuff left over after uninstalls doesn't add up to much at all.

Hiyya RB well mate I just did a quick Google of your machine and it comes up with some fairly impressive possible specs and it has a dual HHD capability so what size HHD are you using?

It would be interesting to see how the HDD is partitioned up too - just out of curiosity as the minimum sized HDD that machine comes with s 500GB or so th Asus site would suggest.

Now take a deep breath LOL!! we have all been there mate and like Guy says we are here to help - well they are a lot I am only a small fry LOL!!

Try this and send us a screen shot
Best Free Partition Manager Freeware and free partition magic for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows XP 32 bit & 64 bit. MiniTool Free Partition Manager Software Home Edition.

Yep RB I should have mentioned this before it might help out I use it on all my and the fix machines.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/11728-optimize-windows-7-a.html?filter[2]=Performance Maintenance

I didn't want to be defensive, but when I am told that nobody is concerned with my feelings about my Hard Drive size, and that nobody has ever heard of left over install and uninstall files, I kind of get the feeling like they want me to get defensive.

I use WinDirStat. I don't see really how it helps me, I know how much room is taken up on my 120 gig SDD Root hard drive. I do not have it partitioned.



I followed the directions to do the extended windows cleanup, it gave me the window where I chose what to clean up, I hit go, and then after a minute or two it just disappeared. I'm not sure if it actually did anything or not.

WinDirStat shows your C as 102 gb.
Your Users directory is way big. Drill down into that to see what's taking that space.
There is no fully automated software for disk cleanup, so you'll have to see what's taking up the space by looking at it.
Example: "small" FRAPS recording from a game can take 20 gb.
You don't want cleanup software deleting that, so it doesn't even look for it.
Popping that User directory open will likely find what's taking space.
And you should find out why C: is reporting only 102 gb.
Use disk management for that. I can't tell you offhand how to get there, but somebody will.

Well RB your Users like Victor says is quite large and I suppose my suggestion re the Partition Wizard app wouldn't be much help if like yo say the drive is not partitioned?

I usually prepare the drive especially SSD's before the install using WHS's tutorial -that make sure that it is aligned see - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/113967-ssd-alignment.html

Another little app that will show all is Ultrasearch for example if you want to see all executables type in *,exe in the box and it will list all .exe files.
UltraSearch - Freeware for Ultra-Fast File Search