molly.com
Sunday 2 April 2006
Got Some Time? Dump Yer Stuff!
Finding I’ve got no room left on my main computer’s hard drive I decided to begin tossing everything I didn’t need. There’s something refreshingly cleansing about a good, thorough computer purge, and I’m recommending it as a spring-clean must-do for everyone.
Here’s what I’ve been tossing:
- Miscellaneous utility apps I downloaded for a spin and never ended up using. Return on space: 500MB
- Big apps I never use that came with packages like Office. I mean, who really uses Project anyway? Return on space: 3GB
- Music I downloaded that I listened to once because someone recommended or it looked interesting, and I’ve never liked it or wanted to listen since. This is a big category because I’m lazy and let the piles build up. Return on space: 5GB. And I could trim it more
- TV Shows / Movies. This stuff takes up huge amounts of space. I’m going to get me a Lacie drive soon for those things I want to keep. Return on space: 10GB
Total return on space: 18.5 GB. I feel so fresh! How about you?
Filed under: humor, software, hardware
Posted by: Molly | 7:01 am |
April 2nd, 2006 at 7:32 am
Hi Molly… I just did that very thing last weekend, though it was my hard drive that took it upon itself to purge, and was totally indiscriminate (purged itself clean). >:| It was a blessing though because I didn’t realize how much junk I really had until it was gone! Oh, and I’m lazy with music too. That was the one thing I hadn’t backed up.
April 2nd, 2006 at 8:05 am
and all your porn, 500 gig.
April 2nd, 2006 at 8:07 am
Mike, she said stuff you didn’t need
I pruned my feeds yesterday actually — that’s equally theraputic. So Molly you can feel happy you survived
April 2nd, 2006 at 8:32 am
I’m a hoarder, and I’ve kept every podcast I downloaded, regardless of whether I’ve listened to it or not. I ran out of space on my external harddrive and had to clear something out. Since I’m getting a little jaded by podcasts and how it locks in content into difficult-to-find areas, I did a wholesale cleardown of my podcast directories. I used to have every Adam Curry Daily Source Code, every Gilmor Gang, every IT conversations piece I downloaded, and 100+ episodes of Coverville I’ve not listened to. That freed up about 30Gb. I’m never going to find that soundbite I heard anyway, so it shouldn’t be too great a loss…
April 2nd, 2006 at 12:14 pm
295gig if I removed tv shows etc, but I don’t really want to. I just do it as I need.
April 2nd, 2006 at 12:30 pm
“I mean, who really uses Project anyway?
Woah… don’t say that if you ever pop into my office!
April 2nd, 2006 at 2:35 pm
+ Defrag too and ‘Compress All Files’……SWOOSH….more space saved!
(It all helps right?!)
:)
April 2nd, 2006 at 2:48 pm
I managed two cras both my computers in the same weekend (don’t try this at home!). The hardrive of my desktop past away silently and on my laptop damaged files in my security software caused windows to go completely mental. I was faced with a pretty thorough purge! But now it’s all been disgested I feel very pleased with my new, clean systems. I guess I’m left with about 30% of the stuff I had one there before.
April 2nd, 2006 at 3:26 pm
I tent to wait until I run out of room, my computers gets very slow or my hard drives crash. I’m lazy.
April 2nd, 2006 at 4:24 pm
here here sian!! but…….i did a spring cleaning & gained alot of space!!! good for the soul too!!!!
April 2nd, 2006 at 5:32 pm
You may also find something cool. While doing my spring hard-drive cleaning I discovered a whole much of Super Nintendo ROMs. YEAH! Super Mario World here I come!
One problem is that I found all these projects I never finished so my to-do list just got huge.
April 2nd, 2006 at 5:43 pm
There is WinDirStat - a program for spotting what is taking space on hard drive.
April 2nd, 2006 at 6:12 pm
Great Idea - I’m doing it right away!
April 3rd, 2006 at 7:28 am
SXSW namedropping
I’ve been jotting down a partial list of the people I’ve been meeting (some old friends, some for the first time) in the halls and at the parties here in Austin. I’m sure I’m forgetting various cool somebodies and I’ll upd…
April 3rd, 2006 at 7:45 am
Hmm. 273gb free space. Nope, don’t think I need to do any housekeeping on my Lacie 1TB drive for a while yet.
April 3rd, 2006 at 8:47 am
I can rustle up 45GB of free space on the desktop if I move my movies, TV shows, photography folders and miscellaneous MP3s to the external HD.
It’s tempting. .
April 3rd, 2006 at 10:19 am
You should’ve capped it off with “Not having to spend a penny on 18.5GB of HDD space: priceless”
April 3rd, 2006 at 10:48 pm
Microsoft Works. Never use that anyway. 300MB
Paint Shop Pro. Never use it, Photoshop 7 all the way.
160MB
Microsoft Money. I’m 17, what do I need with that? 150MB
Bittorent. I use Morpheus anyway. 20MB
All in all, I didn’t get rid of a lot. I COULD get rid of all my anime and videos, which would free up about 20+ gigs, but then that means no more Sailor Moon and Simpsons. So you see I cna’t possibly do that.
April 4th, 2006 at 6:31 am
When I got my 4GB nano I was quickly running out of space ripping every cd I own to the hard disk, not to mention the tv shows. Solution, went out and got myself a 300GB hard disk. Delays the inevitable.
April 4th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
i’ve done the physical equivalent: gone through 40 of my old (5+ years) backup CDs, sifted through the duplicate files etc, and only copied over about 3 Gig of stuff onto my harddrive, dumping all of the physical media. also chucked any old *cough*illegal*cough* copies of Office97, Windows 98/2000, etc. space saved: 3 drawers in my filing cabinet!
this also gave me a nice taste of digital preservation: some files were from such outdated versions of Word, etc, that I had trouble loading them up. plus some CDs were quite scratched and wouldn’t open on my main PC. luckily i managed to at least read them in via my ubuntu laptop, transfer them over, then opened up in OpenOffice and re-saved in ODF format. no more vendor lock-in for me, thanks.
April 5th, 2006 at 8:17 am
I had a super clearout a few months back.
Had a bookshelf full of things I’d collected since 2000. I smashed and binned disks, got my drives 92% free, put everything I wanted to keep on labelled DVD’s and even made a DVD of apps and drivers I currently use in case of a re-format.
I’m the king of the world!
April 5th, 2006 at 9:54 am
Eh, I’m going to have to do this soon. On my 160GB secondary, 2/3 is filled by the media folder: Music, TV, movies, etc. I’m sure I could drop that down to 1/2, and back up the movies to get it below 1/3.
But… too much effort, papers to write.
May 13th, 2006 at 6:55 am
I’ve got an automated caching system that keeps the stuff I favorite and input. I never save anything and never lose anything I want to keep. Wrote it in x86 (win32 api) asm (masm) five years ago.
May 13th, 2006 at 6:58 am
Did I say it’s still working?
July 21st, 2006 at 2:08 am
i try to find something at google.com and take it on your site…thanks
March 30th, 2008 at 10:34 am
thanks
August 21st, 2008 at 12:55 am
Triple penetrtion.
Triple penetrtion.