Before cleaning a hard drive you should consider the available options; the first simply involves manually reviewing files and folders for deletion, or secondly you can use an automated tool to do the job. The manual method involves going through the directories within the drive and deciding which of the items can be erased safely, and deleting them in a per-case manner. This is less risky than running a cleanup program but it can take some time. Automated cleaning software products that use information such as the file accessed date, and internally build a collection of files and folders for removal.

Performance gains can be achieved by taking a little time to clean up your computer's drive. Most computers can have their performance appreciably improved with a small count of files that are to be stored and backed up on the computer in question. Space freed up during cleaning will of course increase load times for files that remain. And when doing a defrag the outcome is improved when the hard drive is not cluttered with many useless files. And with your private files cleared out it is then unlikely that they can be misused by other computer users.