Users of the Livedrive cloud storage service may, for whatever reason, un-install the service. For users of the Briefcase aspect of Livedrive, this doesn't mean that files stored in the Briefcase are actually removed and will still be hogging valuable disk space.
In this guide, we will work through the steps to remove the Briefcase files.
The Briefcase is actually a folder on your hard drive. Any files that are marked to be synced with your computer will reside in that folder. It is hidden, so we need to be able to see the folder before we can do anything about it.
First step: Click on the Start button and then 'Computer'. At this point, its a good idea to open up the drive that will be holding your Livedrive Briefcase. If you only have one drive, double click on it to view it's contents. If you have more than one drive, you will have been given the option of where to store the briefcase when installing it. The default option is the C: drive but you may have chosen another location. Open up whichever drive you think is correct.
The resulting view will be similar to the one below:
In the 'Computer' window, click on 'Organise' then 'Folder and search options'.
In the 'Folder Options' window, click on the 'View' Tab.
You may have to scroll down the 'Advanced settings' list to find the options below. While you are in this area, we would suggest NOT changing anything else unless you know what you are doing, or make a note of the changes so that you can revert back to the defaults.
Then, change the 'Hidden files and folders' options so that 'Show hidden files, folders and drives' radio button is selected.
Also, un-check the 'Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)' box.
You will get a warning message regarding showing operating system files. You can safely confirm your choice.
Now click the OK button at the bottom of the 'Folder Options' window.
As you can see from the image above, the file and folder listing on the right has changed quite a bit. Those are all the files and folders that are normally hidden. There is normally no reason to see these files. They are important and hidden for a very good reason. DO NOT do anything with any of these files unless instructed.
The folder we are interested in is called '~LD'. This is the Livedrive Briefcase.
If you Right Click on the ~LD folder and select 'Properties' you will be able to see how much space the Briefcase is still consuming:
On the right, we can see the the Livedrive Briefcase properties on our test computer.
As you can see, the Briefcase is still taking up 19.5Gb of disk space!
Some people may panic at this stage and think that deleting this folder will delete any files in their briefcase. Don't worry! These steps are only affecting the files that were synchronised to your computer. The Livedrive briefcase will still be accessible from the web portal and all of your files will still be in there.
Having said that, sensible users will have already copied the files in their Briefcase to another location which will save having to download them from the portal or re-install the Livedrive software and re-sync the Briefcase.
This step was simply for information, so you can close the properties window.
The next step is to delete the ~LD folder. Make sure that you ONLY HAVE THE ~LD FOLDER SELECTED and nothing else. Now press and hold the Shift Key and then press Delete.
Why press the Shift Key? If you don't, the ~LD folder and it's contents would actually go into the Recycle Bin. Anything in there still actually takes up disk space. Pressing the Shift Key circumvents the Recycle Bin and physically removes files and folders from your hard drive.
Depending on the size of your Briefcase, the deletion process may take some time, so be patient.
Once you have removed the Briefcase, follow the first few steps again and re-set the 'Show hidden drives, files and folders' and the 'Hide protected operating system files settings'. As mentioned, the hidden files are vitally important to the operation of your computer and should not be tampered with. If you can't see them, you can't do any damage!