How Do I Free Up Disk Space on My Computer? A Complete Guide

From years of professional experience in this field, after 13 years managing storage infrastructure for organizations ranging from small businesses to enterprises with petabytes of data, I’ve learned that disk space problems follow predictable patterns. Most users have gigabytes of unnecessary files they don’t realize exist. Last week, I helped my neighbor free up 127GB on a “completely full” 256GB laptop in under 30 minutes—turns out Windows Update kept every update file since 2019. This guide provides my systematic approach to freeing disk space safely and permanently, from quick wins to comprehensive cleanup strategies.