The internet is full of software packages that can handle 'hard disk cleaning'. One example of this software is the computer cleaner style software utility, some of which have free downloadable demos. Also remember that there is much more that these utilities are able to do, for example some can clean up free drive space, scan hard disks for porn or adult files, detect the presence of illegal or unlicensed software, and find out how to recover disk space.

Applications specifically designed to clean up a computer drives are usually one of several types. The most popular seem to be free or commercial disk cleanup tools including CCCleaner, a freeware program that are used to get rid of non-critical files and give back usable space in the process. There are 'PC privacy' tools that clean out URL history and delete traces of things you have typed while searching in Internet Explorer, software such as Privacy Eraser. Also common is the porn detector software, which detects the exact source of pornography style images and movies and a range of other inappropriate files and assists the user in deletion of these items. The last category of cleaner software comprising disk 'washing' software which can overwrite with 1s and 0s, random data from anywhere on the disk so it is completely gone.

Of course there are good reasons at hand why clearing out old files, especially large ones, is a good habit to get into. The speed of your system when reading files from the hard drive or other storage system is a result to some degree, of how many files are on the computer drive. This occurs because with more stored files, the FAT (file allocation) tables grow and the system has to do more work when files load. And as a result of saving files and deleting them, files are no longer contiguous and this will reduce the access rate of hard drive data. Data security is also a factor, when you have a large number of your personal data files, there is the possibility (no matter how remote) that any other computer user of your PC will find them. I think we all agree that cleaning out unneeded files will give back resources to the system which can be put to better use.