14 DAY TRIAL // It appears that Windows 8 will come with an overhauled Disk Cleanup utility, or at least this is what can be inferred from the recently leaked Windows 8 Build 7850.
Build 6.1.7850 6.1.7850.0.winmain_win8m1.100922-1508 made its way in the wild this week and is available for download from various illegal sources including torrent trackers.
This is a Milestone 1 release of Windows 8 dating back to September 2010, but it still features some changes, although not at the same scale as M2 or M3, which is currently under development.
A screenshot from Windows 8 M1 Build 7850 reveals a redesigned Disk Cleanup tool, a dramatic evolution compared to the same tool in Windows 7 (I’ve included both screenshots in this article.)
Windows 8’s Disk Cleanup appears capable to detect user files (music, movies, pictures) and the space they occupy on the disk, and offers customers the possibility to delete temporary files and to uninstall programs.
While the change is certainly welcomed, I need to emphasize that the Disk Cleanup revamping in Windows 8 needs to be about more than just a restyling of the design.
Personally, I want to see Disk Cleanup in Windows 8 get a major boost in terms of performance. One of the main reasons why I haven’t really turned to this feature in Windows 7 more often is related to its very slow progress speed, be it in the scanning phase or when it moved to delete files.
In addition to speed, Disk Cleanup can also do with an efficiency increase. The last time I used a third-party tool to clean temporary Internet Explorer files, Windows 7’s Disk Cleaner only detected under 100 MB of items.
The third-party utility I used (CCleaner) identified and then helped me remove over 20 GB of files. I can’t think of a reason why Disk Cleaner was incapable of doing the same.
