So I sort of made the weekend my "Computer Spring Cleaning" day, in which I uninstalled games I don't play, got rid of programs I didn't need, tweaked XP a bit, ran Disk Cleaner, defragged, and so forth.

When I got around to cleaning out My Documents, I organized everything into spiffy subfolders and deleted thing I didn't need, which ended up being a crap load. After just throwing out old zip files I didn't need, old pictures, old videos that were useless, and just general crap, I went to see how much drive space I cleaned out, I freed up about 8 GB from just cleaning out my documents. I was awed.

8 Gigs may not seem like much to some 160 GB people, but for my old, dieing, almost full 80 GB HD, it was like a new beginning.

Anyone else set aside time to just clean up a bit? I actually enjoy doing, I like knowing my comp is running at tip-top shape.

I have about 10 gb of 370 gb free......my wife recorded a 14 day Simpsons marathon. I'm still trying to work out what to do with 198 episodes

I desperately, desperately need to sort out my comp. I only bought it last summer and it's already starting to behave like it's seriously decrepid. Unfortunately, I really know nothing about reformatting, defragging, whatever else is involved!

I clear out my docs and try to get rid of surplus programs as often as possible (though I'm quite bad with downloading trials and then forgetting to get rid of the program if I decide I don't want it), but other than that, it's just getting messier and messier!

[edit: just checked, I have 8G of 80G free, and to prove how screwed my comp is being, it took about 4 minutes to get that info]

Your wife is awesome.

I am pretty fanatical about keeping unused things off my comp, I think I have about ~32 GB free of my 40GB drive.

Yeah, I know the feeling. Theres nothing like a free, clean, 100% organized Hard drive. It's almost better than sex. Almost.

Not that you'd know. Snap!

Okay, now that's just weird.

But of course this is coming from a guy who hasn't bothered organizing his comp since he bought it 6 years ago. Defragging maybe once.

Format is the only way to go brother.

As for backup--DVD burners are cheap.

wait, who told you that? I just got my current rig back in Febuary, and I optimized the hel out of my old computer. That was back when compaqs used to be good.

That would be me, not you.

That's nothing. I have every episode of the Simpsons created on my computer (with the exception of the first season, which wasn't good at all). About 25GB with DivX/Xvid compression.

soon, when my 200GB (that I got for 60 bucks mind you) comes, I'll have 420GB of storage. Lookin forward to it.

mscbuck's arrangement of hard drives shows us that we're going to need a new way of measuring data storage. It will be the day soon when common folk are saying "I have a 60 TB" hard drive. Sixty times ten to the twelth bytes of storage. Can you even fathom a trillion of anything? Example: A trillion seconds is 31,000+ years.

I don't think we'll get that big. Seriously--if we do, we won't even know it. By then storage media will have changed a lot. Trust me, even the biggest, most uncompressed image is what, a few megs? 50 at the most. That's a texture. That's what takes up over 50% of games today. That's why programs are so small, or at least part of the reason.

The only thing I can see happening is RAM becoming amazingly cheap and in huge quantities. I mean imagine a stick of 10 gig RAM. Mmm...

Usually, if I want to install a game, I have to give up another game, sometimes two. I've uninstalled Diablo II and Warcraft II just to get NWN on. Then it said my hardisk was full, so I got rid of JO and the evil genious demo. *sigh*

12 gigs of HD space sucks. BAD

I just did an install of Visual Studio .NET 2003. The program is 2 and a quarter disks big. However, I was able to get away with using only a 20 GB for about 4 years. I got a 40 GB not too long ago. The 20 GB is now my Linux server.

No.



I have 3/4ths of my 160gig HD still free. Having that much space to play with is a lot of fun.

Get her to bring you some snacks and drinks and watch them, duh :p

where? Me want.

I get rid of crap pretty regularly

50 mB? I wish. Some stuff I work with has incredibly high resolution, enough to enlarge to billboard size w/o pixelating.
( 300 dpi minimum. Usually like 600 dpi or more). I have no need of anything that large, but some of my clients do. They make large posters out of my work by enlarging the hell out of it at a printworks place (i don't make large prints myself-- i dont have the equipment or the money to justify offering such services) Those PSD files get so big that they are around 600 mb to 1.2 GB. I have to keep them on DVD+RW discs for long-term storage.

JEEZ. 80 GB SEEMS LIKE A NEW BEGINNING TO ME . I have a 19 gig harddrive and with that amount of space i could do anything.

Just so you know there's people on the other side of the fence, I more-or-less never defrag. I also delete almost nothing.

My data is organized from the get-go so going through to "organize" would take about 50 seconds to click through my most "random" folders and realize there was nothing for me to do.

I currently have 5 computers, 4 ~2 GHz, all with 100 GB of HD space or more, and 1 really old dead one, that had 47 GBs and was the home to my JK work from 97 to 00. The one I'm on now, and the newest have over 200 GB. When load times get excrutiating on a computer (after a few years), I just buy a new HD and do an image copy: defragging won't speed up a HD who's moving parts are wearing out enough for my liking. For example, the oldest of the 4 computers (one I'm on now) time to load windows was double that of the other computers (which are all more or less clones with about a 200 MHz difference between the slowest and fastest CPU, all have the same motherboard and RAM) I tried defragging. It took about 5 seconds off the boot time. * bzzzzt * not good enough. Bought a new HD; problem solved.

Morale of the story: if things are getting slow, don't waste time defragging, you may need a new harddrive.

QM