My storage is full. Can you free up some space?

Yes — and it’s worth doing, because a nearly-full drive doesn’t just stop you saving things. It makes the whole machine slow, prevents updates installing, and on some systems causes genuine instability.

As a rule of thumb, leave at least 10–15% free. Below that, things start misbehaving in ways that look like unrelated faults.

Where the space actually goes

Almost never where people assume. The usual culprits, roughly in order:

Photos and video. Modern phone cameras produce enormous files, and video is the single biggest consumer on most machines.

Old backups. Phone backups especially. People discover several years of iPhone backups they never knew existed, quietly occupying tens of gigabytes.

Downloads. Years of installers, attachments and duplicates.

Temporary and update files. Windows keeps a full copy of your previous version after a major update. It’s there so you can roll back, and it’s often many gigabytes.

Duplicates. The same photos imported three times from three devices.

Cloud files set to “always keep on this device”. A common one — OneDrive or Dropbox holding a full local copy of everything when it doesn’t need to.

Safe to clear yourself

• Empty the recycle bin or trash. Deleted files still occupy space until you do. People are genuinely surprised by this one.
• Clear the Downloads folder — after a look through.
• Uninstall programs you don’t use via the proper uninstaller, not by deleting folders.
• Run the built-in clean-up. Windows has Storage Sense and Disk Cleanup; macOS has Storage Management. Both are safe and both show you where the space has gone, which is often the useful part.

Be careful with

“Cleaner” programs that promise to speed up your PC. Most do little, some cause damage, and a few are the problem rather than the fix. We spend a fair amount of time undoing them.

Deleting things you don’t recognise. If it’s in a system folder, leave it.

Removing cloud files to save space. Deleting from a synced folder can delete from the cloud too — and from every other device. Use the “free up space” option instead, which keeps the file online but removes the local copy.

When it’s a bigger drive you need

If you’ve cleared what you can and you’re still short, no amount of housekeeping will fix it — you need more space.

Many laptops can take a larger SSD, and if yours still has a mechanical drive you get two benefits at once: more room, and a machine that feels years newer. From £84.

The catch, and it’s worth knowing before you plan around it: on many thin laptops and on all Apple silicon Macs, storage is soldered to the board and cannot be upgraded at all. There the answer is an external drive, or moving things to cloud storage. We’ll tell you honestly which situation you’re in.

What we do

We find out where the space has actually gone — usually not where you’d guess — clear what’s safe to clear, set things up so it doesn’t creep back, and tell you whether you genuinely need a larger drive or just a tidy-up.

If there are photos involved, we’ll also make sure they’re backed up before anything is removed. That is the mistake we most often get called in to undo.

Workshop on Station Road, or ring 01753 884700.