A friend of mine just told me that he lost all contents of his Downloads folder, because he used Disk Cleanup Utility to cleanup the disk. This shocks me quite a lot. After some digging, I found that it seems the latest Windows 10 October 2018 Update added this item into the list. Considering a lot of people got into trouble because of this, I wonder if I can remove it from Disk Cleanup Utility list altogether, which I succeeded. Here are steps:
- Backup your system registry, just in case
- Open Registry Editor (open Start Menu, type regedit and enter), then go to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\VolumeCaches
- Delete DownloadsFolder subkey
Now “Downloads” option should disappear in Disk Cleanup Utility.
Looking at values in this subkey, it seems that Disk Cleanup Utility tries to clean %USERPROFILE%\Downloads folder. This seems really odd to me, because you do need to select a drive before performing check and cleanup (in default %USERPROFILE% always locates at C drive). In my computer, I moved Downloads folder to D drive, so %USERPROFILES\Downloads comes up with empty. But consiodering about the serious issues occurred when Windows 10 October 2018 came out at the first time, I am very cautious about it, to be honest.
To be fair, one thing I need to mention is that Microsoft already declared the deprecation of Disk Cleanup Utility and suggested using Storage Sense instead. Maybe its inconsistent design (select a drive but clean folders in C drive anyways) leads to such fate. However, consider about many users used this tool for many years (including me), it is still quite a change.
P.S.
Whoever came up with the idea of adding Downloads folder into Disk Cleanup Utility, I think he/she did not think about it careful enough. Personally, this is not really a welcoming change to me. I read some Internet comments related to this, some people claim:
- “Downloads” folder should only be a temporary place to store downloaded files
- “Why your Downloads folder XX GB? What did you download?”
, etc.
From academic-textbook file organizing perspective, they make some sense. But I have my problems on them:
- When “Downloads” folder was introduced by Windows Vista, there is no explicit indication saying it is a temporary place for storing files
- You really should not tell users “should / should not”, or post unnecessary limits on users
- People got used to select all checkboxes in Disk Cleanup Utility, because in past years all items in its list are harmless to be cleaned up
- Some of downloaded files are not available anymore online
…and many, many others.
Yes, you can say it is users’ fault not to check before action. But many users developed a habit to check all items because they knew it was harmless to delete them. Using the words from Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design (2nd Edition):
When one uses an interface repeatedly, some frequent physical actions become reflexive…
…It’s a sure bet that users will
make mistakes, and the more experienced they are—that is, the more habituated they
are—the more likely they are to make that mistake.
Because this becomes a habit, when a potential harmful option is added to the list (and without any additional explicit warnings), users will NOT have conscious about it. The new “Downloads” item looks nothing special, and even worse, there is an option called “Downloaded Program Files” (from Internet Explorer). I bet some people will think “Downloads” is an alias of that, thus did not pay attention to it.
In a word, I think this is a really bad change. Even though Disk Cleanup Utility is declared deprecated, it is still a really bad idea for users who do not track such information.