[SOLVED] Deleting Downloads Folder for Disk Clean-up

[Zachary A.]

My harddrive's been running out of space ever since the Downloads folder been all stored up. I decided to perform a disk clean up on my C drive that only got 5gb left (whilst my e drive still has well above 200gb) and found out that the majority of the storage is taken up by my downloads folder.

I share my laptop with my sister who uses it for school stuff and also me, and the files in the downloads folder is full of pdfs, images, powerpint/word documents, for school etc.. I was wondering if deleting the downloads folder deletes all the things said above. If that's the case, why do windows put this feature on the disk cleanup in the first place? Isn't it dangerous for people who have their files kept on the downloads folder and not knowing the basics of computer have their files deleted? My question is, is it safe to delete the downloads folder without these happening as its taking 10+gb of my harddrive

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

The contents of the Downloads folder are meant to be only temporary.
On a daily basis you delete files you no longer need in there, or any that are needed you copy them to an external storage device before deleting. If you fail to do this on a daily basis then obviously that folder is going to become bloated. It should not not be treated as a permanent storage folder.

Educate your sister to clean up after downloading stuff.