How can i find old unused files?

Question

I want to locate all the old documents and files on my computer.

Later on, I will want to manually decide weather or not I wish to delete them.

I am NOT looking for a program to clean temporary files of any kind!

I AM looking for a way to get a list of REAL (useful) files such as doc avi pp? that are just sitting in my hard disk, say more that 3 years, doing nothing but wasting my SPACE.

I used to work with an app called "FindUnusedFiles" but in some machines it gets stuck when trying to read files with non-English characters such as Hebrew. In those cases, the program became useless to me because I only got the first few results.

Another issue is that anti-virus scanners are said to modify the date of the scanned files.

Does anyone know a FREE program that lists old, unmodified long-un-accessed files?

Perhaps one that could move them to a new folder I call “Old Unused Files”?

Alternatively I would be grateful for a configuration method in the Windows search window because if I get such a desired list of files then I can select all, cut and paste in a folder.

Another welcome alternative is a textual batch file script I can use (as of now I do not now how to refer to the creation/modification/access time of a file in a command line) that lists and even moves the files older that X days (X being a number I add as %1 parameter)

Thank you all!

Answer 1

Your approach is different then mine.

I use Windows Explorer

All of my doc files are in the My Documents folder.  I just sort by date by clicking at the top of the date modified column.  I then select the older files and put them into a folder by year.

All my PowerPoint are in a PowerPoint folder, all my videos in my My Videos folder.  

I clean up once a year, last week in December, all my office stuff, when I am slow.  But this one thing takes me about 10 minutes.

Answer 2

You sure need a lot. LOL

If you were my client, I'd ask you to bring your PC to me. We'd sit together and search for what you want to keep.

You should get a tech savvy friend to help you distinguish between the normal Windows files and directories and the data you created.

In the future, you need to create a system to store your data where you will always be able to find it. In Windows, keeping all your files in in folders under My Documents is the smartest way to do it, that way you have one centralized place to keep your files and back up. Its simple.

Most people keep things on their desktop or on the root of C:. So, you can manually search there.

One technique I use is to go into the command line and search for files by their extension. Usually its Outlook Personal Folders with the PST extension.

Start

Run

Type CMD <ENTER>

Type "cd\"

Type "dir *.pst /s > pst.txt"

This searches the entire C: drive including subdirectories for any file with the extension of PST. It writes the results of the search into the "pst.txt" file. This will be found on the root of C: (C:\pst.txt) I either print it out or just open it in notepad and go to the various places where the files are found to copy them to a centralized location for backup or transfer.

This works for any file extension (*.JPG for pictures etc.) It won't find hidden files. But then who has hidden documents?

E-mail me if you have any specific questions. I'll do my best to help.

I'm including a link to a backup script article on Lifehacker that will delete files older than a specific date. Maybe you can modify it to do what you need if you don't like to search the way I suggested.

http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-l...

Good luck.