Do you wonder how much space is wasted on your Windows machine by old temp files and files that you have no need for? Do you really need all of your internet temp files going back 2 years? How about all those annoying thumbs.db files? I found a application that will clean your hard drive of a huge amount of files and recover your precious space.

That program is called Hard Drive Power Wash. Let's check it out.

I started by downloading the free version of Hard Drive Power Wash from here. Using this application, I can schedule the clean up so it can be totally automated. You know set it and forget it.

Once you get this 2.05 MB file you will need to install it. Then you will see a screen that looks like this.

You can either run or analyze everything or hit the menu on the left for your options:

Let's start running the Analyze process by hitting the analyze button at the bottom of the user interface. That will get the ball rolling. The program advises not to just start the Run process willy nilly because you should see what it is going to delete before it actually does it. It will look for and annihilate the following file types (per their website)

*._tm / *.1st / *.bak / *.nav / *.log / *.$$$ / *.old / *.prv / *.??~ / *.gid / *.tmp / *.syd / *.~* / *.~mp / *~.* / *.bk! / *.bk$ / *.bk4 / *.bk5 / *.bk6 / *.bk7 / *.bk8 / *.bk9 / *.bkp / *.$a / *.$db / *.&&& / *.--- / *._dd / *._mp / *.chk / *.xlk / *.db$ / *.diz / *.dmp / *.err / *.ftg / *.fts / *.ilk / *.ncb / *.pch / *.sik / *.temp / chklist.* / mscreate.dir / pspbrwse.jbf / Thumbs.db

The process took some time to run and you will see its progress as it goes like so:

It continued to run for about another 7 minutes and then spat back this report at me:

Wow, I was surprised and impressed in the same breathe. It found a crap-load of files that after clicking through, seemed to be nothing that I needed. Look through each tab and scroll through the files before giving it the OK to kill them. They are all selected by default. You have buttons to select all or none at the bottom of your screen.

You will get your confirmation box alerting you that these files will really be deleted.

Hit Yes and watch as it deletes them. It runs through each segment like log files, images etc. and deletes each file. My internet files took almost 10 minutes to delete on their own. Can you imagine how much crap was in there? When its done you will see a the first screen again now populated with your results. I got rid of a whopping 636 Megabytes!

I am super happy and off to schedule it from the program's settings:

Do you have a favorite program that will clean a hard drive like Hard Drive Power Wash? We would love to hear about it in the comments!