The Benefits & Dangers of a Disk Cleanup on a Computer Hard Drive

Using a disk cleanup on your computer or laptop is necessary at certain times for anyone who owns one. The benefits of disk cleanup definitely outweigh the disadvantages and can result in your computer or laptop responding and running more quickly. You can find free disk cleanup software online or you can purchase it from computer supply stores.

Using disk-cleanup software will give you more room on your computer, thus increasing its speed. The software will help you delete unnecessary data that is slowing or bogging down your computer system.

One of the benefits of using disk cleanup software on your computer is that you can feel free to donate it to one of many charities. Shelters for the homeless or abused need computers to help the inhabitants find jobs in order to get their lives back on the right track. Other places, such as schools, day care centres, vocational facilities are pleased to receive old or outdated computers for the students and faculty to work on. You can declare the donation on your taxes.

It does not take someone who is a genius at computers to figure out how to retrieve your Social Security number, credit card numbers and other private information off a discarded computer. Even if you feel you are giving the computer to someone you can trust, you never know who will have access to the computer in your friend’s home or after he gives it away. Using a disk cleanup is a benefit that will ensure that your private information no longer exists on the computer.

The only danger of using disk-cleanup software to erase the information on your computer is that it destroys all the information. Therefore, you must make sure you save any wanted files to a floppy disk or other portable media, such as a USB flash drive, before you using the disk cleanup software.