Maximize Your Cloud Storage with These 5 Tools and Tricks

The same thing happens every time you go on vacation: your photo collection grows and grows and grows, with dozens of photos added every day. The easiest way to back up your photos is to store them in the cloud; you can store them in Apple’s iCloud, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, or a third-party online storage provider.

This is only a temporary solution, however, because after the vacation you should review the photos on your home computer, sort out duplicates and bad ones, and edit the rest if necessary. If you only have a limited amount of data available in your free storage, you will need to transfer the files you saved online to your computer from time to time and archive them there.

Further reading: Google Drive Storage Still Full After Deleting Files? Here’s Why

When moving and deleting files in the cloud, you can use the sync folder that these cloud storage services create in Windows. The sync folder is located on the local hard drive of your computer and is integrated as a separate directory in Explorer.

Any actions you perform on files are also automatically performed in the cloud storage. So if you delete a file in your local sync folder, it is also deleted in the cloud. The local version goes to the Windows Recycle Bin, and the cloud copy goes to the cloud storage Recycle Bin.

Select and delete files that are no longer needed

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

Mark Hachman / IDG

The safest way to select and delete unnecessary files is to call them up and browse them one by one. However, this is simply illusory when there are often several thousand files in the cloud, so you need to proceed systematically, for example, sorting files by date. To do this, open the cloud storage and click on the column header, which, depending on the cloud service, may be labeled “Date recorded” or simply “Date”.

Place the oldest files at the top and mark from top to bottom which files you want to keep, which files you can delete, and which files should only be backed up locally.

In the same way, you can also filter out files that take up the most space, such as recorded videos.

Another space hog is the shares of other cloud users that are synced to your account. In this way, files from other online storage are added to your storage limit. If you stop using these shares, your available free storage space suddenly increases.

OneDrive: Back up everything in the cloud to your PC

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Foundry

Foundry

If you use Microsoft OneDrive, you can back up all of your existing online content on your computer with just a few clicks. To do this, open the OneDrive app and right-click the cloud icon at the bottom of your taskbar. In the next window, click the gear icon, then “Settings.”

Go to “Sync & Backup”, scroll down and click the “Advanced Settings” link. Scroll down again and click the “Download All Files” button. After confirming the warning message with “Continue”, OneDrive will copy all the contents of your local hard drive to the directory you selected.

Further reading: 9 Essential Microsoft OneDrive Tips: Make the Most of Windows Cloud Storage

Then you can delete the original files in OneDrive. To do this, open the OneDrive sync folder on your computer in Explorer, select the files and folders, and move them to the trash. This action is now automatically repeated in the cloud storage.

You can also automate this task and regularly delete files on both your local computer and in the cloud on a schedule. However, be aware of the risks involved: if you haven’t previously backed up your files to the cloud somewhere else, any files you still need will also be gone this way — that’s how syncing works!

Deleting Cloud Files Using Windows Task Scheduler

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Foundry

Foundry

It doesn’t matter whether your files are stored on OneDrive, Google Drive, or somewhere else in the cloud — you can use Windows Task Scheduler to automatically delete files in the cloud.

The prerequisite is that the cloud service creates a sync folder via an app in Windows Explorer. Otherwise, a tool like Raidrive can help — it integrates many services as drive letters.

To schedule tasks, you first need a batch file with the delete command. Open the Windows editor and enter the command

del /q /s D:\OneDrive\Photos* 

Replace D:\OneDrive\Photos with the path to your sync folder in your cloud storage. Save this file with any name you like, for example remove cloud.batin any folder, such as C:\Temp, with the .bat extension.

To invoke the task scheduler, type task Or taskschd in the search box on the taskbar and click on the result that appears. Select “Task Scheduler (Local)” on the left and click on Action > Create Task.

Provide a name for the task and activate the option “Run regardless of whether the user is logged in or not”. Accept all other settings in this window.

However, do not click “OK” now, but go to the “Trigger” tab. Here, click “New”, leave the default setting “On a schedule” and select in “Settings” how often the removal action should be performed.

Then, in the “Start” field, define the task start time, confirm with the “OK” button and go to the “Actions” tab in the previous “Create task” window.

Click “New”, accept the default “Run program” setting and enter C:\Windows\SysWOW64\cmd.exe under “Program/Script” and – if you used our example – the command “Add arguments (optional)”

/c „C:\Temp\clouddelet.bat“

After clicking “OK”, the task scheduler asks again if everything is OK. Answer the question with “Yes” and close the window with “OK”. The new task now appears in the “Task Scheduling Library” and is automatically executed according to the schedule.

Synchronization with Free File Sync

Free file sync

Free file sync

Free file sync

You can also use the open source software FreeFileSync to automatically move files of specific types from one folder to another on a schedule.

However, the name of this process in the software is not entirely correct. This is because the files are not actually moved, but copied: The source files are therefore preserved. This also applies if you select “Versioning” in the “Synchronization Settings”.

So if you choose FreeFileSync to transfer photos from the cloud to your local hard drive, you’ll also need a program that lets you delete the original files later.

Clean up your cloud storage with free Eraser

IDG

IDG

IDG

Alternatively, you can automatically delete folders with Eraser. The program is actually designed to permanently delete empty areas of your hard drive so that the data can no longer be restored. However, thanks to the task scheduler in the app, it is also suitable for regular deletion processes in cloud storage.

After launching the program, first go to “Settings”. Change the default erase method settings: Set the simple and fast “First/Last 16KB erase” as the “Default file erase method”. Then apply the settings by clicking “Save Settings”.

Click on the down arrow next to “Erase Schedule” at the top of the toolbar, then click on “New Task.” Give the task a name of your choice and check “Recurring” below. Click on “Add Data” and change the setting next to “Target type” to “Files in Folder” in the next window.

Now click “Browse” next to the input field under “Settings” and find the cloud folder that you want to clean regularly — Raidrive with Disk can help here too. In Eraser, uncheck the box next to “Delete folder if empty” so that the folder structure remains intact. Close the window with “OK” and go to the “Schedule” tab.

Set the time and specify how often and on which days Eraser should perform the removal process. After clicking “OK”, the setup is complete and the program is ready to use. Eraser enters the Windows startup folder itself to automatically activate when the operating system boots.