I will now put forward grounds for why cleaning up unused files, particularly those that are just taking up space on your hard drive, can only do your PC good. The speed of your system when opening and saving files, is governed by factors such as the number of files stored there. This is because you find that the file allocation system bloats and the system has to do more work each and every time a file is loaded. Remember also that files become fragmented (broken up into smaller pieces) and this negatively affects data read rates. 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 other persons using your system might misuse your personal information. And purging any private or undesirable files will make resources available again and this might stave off having to buy a bigger hard drive.

Applications have advanced enormously in complexity in recent times. Just in the last few years there have been great developments in software technology, particularly among tools that clean hard disks. A number of free disk cleanup apps can be found that can simplify the cleanup process immensely. This is not the only function that these software tools can do, some have other functions, ie. they can get rid of old data from free space, detect and remove pornography, detect the presence of illegal or unlicensed software, and show where your disk space is being taken up.