Is Clearing Temporary Files Necessary?
The presence of several temporary files is a common cause that slows down your computer by blocking a reasonable part of your hard disk drive. If you scrutinize your hard drive, you will find more than a few files with a tilde (~) prefix or .TMP suffix, like ~abc.dat or abc.tmp. Such files are called temporary (or temp) files, and you can almost always safely delete them.
The initial step to delete temporary file is to defragment your hard drive on a regular basis. Defragmenting will trace the scattered pieces of these temp files, bring them together, and put them on your hard drive in arranged, contiguous bunch.
In order to defragment your drive, follow this step-by-step procedure:
· Click Start, Programs (in case of WinXP/Vista, it’s All Programs), and then Accessories.
· Under Accessories, select System Tools.
· After that, choose Disk Defragmenter.
· Click OK after selecting the drive.
Depending on your hard drive’s dimension and the number of files on it, defragmentation of your drive can get completed from 30 minutes to 2 hours.
Another substitute to delete temporary file is to periodically wipe out any temp file that has been saved on your hard drive. For this, the temp files should be located at first. The easiest method to do that is to utilize Windows’ built-in Find utility. Click Start, Find, and then choose Files Or Folders. Next, type *.tmp; ~*.* in the Named: field on the tab labeled Name & Location.
By using of this syntax, the operating system will recognize that you are looking for files that begin with a tilde (~) and files that end with .TMP. After a few minutes, a record of the files will be displayed. In the display, you can click the Size column heading to sort the list by file size. This will assist you to view large temp files in particular, if any. Remember that it is not an abnormal thing to find 2MB, 3MB or even larger temp files. It is always wise to delete any temporary file as even a small temp file will take up space on your hard disk drive and make your system work slower.
You can also use Disk Cleanup to erase temporary file. It is a built-in Windows utility that is used to delete such files speedily. To use it, open the Start menu. Next, click in succession All Programs (click Programs in case of Windows 98), Accessories, System Tools and finally, Disk Cleanup. After you have chosen the drive that you want to clean, click OK. Once your hard drive is scanned, Disk Cleanup will demonstrate how much room it can make available by erasing particular types of files. If you are uncertain what the files do, select the entry and read the explanation that appears in the box beneath the entry. To delete chosen files, click OK. However, Disk Cleanup will not erase all temporary files on your computer and sadly you can’t instruct it to go back and carry out a better job. Nevertheless, you can find and delete most of the remaining temporary files manually.