As we all know that there are some backup files creating when installing a Windows hotfix or service pack update. Hence, a restore job will be easy when necessary. After studying, we found that it becomes a true fact that these backup files will only take up hard disk space, and a cleanup of the old backup files with windows update will free up more available hard disk space so as to effectively maintain it. If you have never heard about this, please do not miss this article for more professional advice.

For all computer users, at some point or other, they will find that the hard disk is becoming smaller and smaller even thought they have not installed any program on the computer. One main reason is the junk files on the hard disk. To clean up the disk garbage, it is very easy for us to use the Disk Cleanup utility provided by Microsoft by simply going thorough: My Computer -> right click the drive to be cleaned up -> Priorities -> press Disk Cleanup within the General tab, after that, please select the file types you want to delete within the popping-up windows. Hence, you can easily get rid of some unwanted junk files from your computer. But please note that, there is another type of junk files existing in the hard disk, which takes more hard disk space and normally can not be cleaned up by Disk Cleanup utility. That is windows update files.

So to more effectively maintain hard disks and free available space, it is necessary for you to delete these windows update files from the computer. Since these files are stored in hidden folders, first you have to make them visible: open My Computer, and then Tools to select Folder Options, and then go to View at the top, tick Show hidden files and folders within the tab “Hidden files and folders”; and then please go to C:\WINDOWS, here you can see some files named begin or end with “$”, for example, “$NtUninstallKB943460$”. These are windows update files. However, if days or weeks pass and your computer is running perfectly without any problem, then it is time to delete those backed up old files from your hard drive.

But that is not enough to just delete the backed up files on the hard disk for there must be some leftover entries left in the registry, so it is still needed to check the registry to delete some associated entries. Normally, it is possible for you to delete the entries beginning with K8 within the tab HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall, which will not affect the proper running of the windows.

After the steps to clean up the windows update files above, you will regain more available free space. Then you can store what you like on the hard disk without worrying about the limited reserved space.

But here, it is necessary to mention that in order to maintain the hard disks, a cleanup of the hard disk junk files is far from being enough. When storing files or programs on the computer, there will be some disk or file fragments occurring, which hardens the workload of the hard disk head, making it move too much to access the file to be read or wrote. Thus shortens the lifespan of the hard disks. So a simple disk defragmentation is needed to maintain the hard disks in order to store the same files at a same place and easier to get access to.

In a word, to maintain hard disks, it is necessary for you to not only delete the system junk files, but also regularly defragment the hard disks. If you do not know how to quickly defragment your computer, try Advanced Defrag here. It will help you easily and quickly defragment any drive.