I recently added another external hard drive to my computer system, one with 2TB storage. Of course, it's not two full terrabytes, because of the odd way manufacturers measure a KB as compared to what the actual size of a KB (decimal vs. binary) There's also the file system to consider, which takes away from the expected total, then the recovery partition on my computer hard drive has to be taken into account.
That said, I was sitting here marveling at how much cheaper hard drives and external storage have become, as well as the relatively huge sizes of them. My first computer was advertised as having 13.1 GB of storage and I never really came close to maxing it out before the computer bit the dust. Oh, I had come "close" a few times, but then I went through and deleted duplicate files and many of the animated GIF files I had transferred from disks to upload to my MSN Groups and not deleting them after the upload.
When that first hard drive failed, I lost everything. I didn't have much "real" music saved to my computer, mostly midi files, thousands and thousands of them, plus photos I had taken and had transferred from film to digital as well as the first photos taken w/ my first digital camera. I was upset, to say the least. That's when I started researching external hard drives. I had saved a few photographs to floppy disks, but they were limited in their capacity, even by the standards back then. My next computers all had CD burning capabilities and I saved many files to disk, but they too were limited.
Around that same time I also upgraded my internet connection from dial-up to DSL and I found myself saving more and more things, such as free songs from Amazon, YouTube videos and all sorts of downloadable games. With the increased broadband came storage concerns; I was running out of room for things and it didn't help that I was transferring music from CDs to my computer for my mp3 jukebox.
So, with my last computer, I also bought a 1TB external drive. When the 'puter bit the dust (not "dead", it just needs a new power supply) at least I had saved all my music and digital photographs. This computer has a 1TB hard drive (actually 914GB what with the recovery space and file system) so that meant I had nearly 2TB of storage.
About a month or so ago, I became a little alarmed after seeing that I had used over 3/4 of my external hard drive's space. I decided I needed to do something. I d/l a duplicate file finder and let it go to work. I found thousands of duplicate tunes (the main problem was how I had put music into different genre folders as well as dupes via Amazon, downloading free tunes I had forgotten I had already downloaded) I was also copying folders I use in a monthly "work" folder and not replacing the older folders w/ the new ones. (What can I say? I'm an anal retentive pack rat, albeit a disorganized one.)
I managed to find over 35GB of dupes until I became too bleary eyed to check each file to see which duplicates I wanted to delete. 35GB! In a few hours I had deleted nearly three times as much file space as my first computer had total in storage! I've probably got another 5-10GB of files I can delete.
What's funny is my first computer having just around 3% (if my math is correct) of the storage I have now, but being more concerned now with how many files I am able to keep! Here's a screen shot of my current storage, both computer hard drive and external drives. (Click for larger view)
That said, I was sitting here marveling at how much cheaper hard drives and external storage have become, as well as the relatively huge sizes of them. My first computer was advertised as having 13.1 GB of storage and I never really came close to maxing it out before the computer bit the dust. Oh, I had come "close" a few times, but then I went through and deleted duplicate files and many of the animated GIF files I had transferred from disks to upload to my MSN Groups and not deleting them after the upload.
When that first hard drive failed, I lost everything. I didn't have much "real" music saved to my computer, mostly midi files, thousands and thousands of them, plus photos I had taken and had transferred from film to digital as well as the first photos taken w/ my first digital camera. I was upset, to say the least. That's when I started researching external hard drives. I had saved a few photographs to floppy disks, but they were limited in their capacity, even by the standards back then. My next computers all had CD burning capabilities and I saved many files to disk, but they too were limited.
Around that same time I also upgraded my internet connection from dial-up to DSL and I found myself saving more and more things, such as free songs from Amazon, YouTube videos and all sorts of downloadable games. With the increased broadband came storage concerns; I was running out of room for things and it didn't help that I was transferring music from CDs to my computer for my mp3 jukebox.
So, with my last computer, I also bought a 1TB external drive. When the 'puter bit the dust (not "dead", it just needs a new power supply) at least I had saved all my music and digital photographs. This computer has a 1TB hard drive (actually 914GB what with the recovery space and file system) so that meant I had nearly 2TB of storage.
About a month or so ago, I became a little alarmed after seeing that I had used over 3/4 of my external hard drive's space. I decided I needed to do something. I d/l a duplicate file finder and let it go to work. I found thousands of duplicate tunes (the main problem was how I had put music into different genre folders as well as dupes via Amazon, downloading free tunes I had forgotten I had already downloaded) I was also copying folders I use in a monthly "work" folder and not replacing the older folders w/ the new ones. (What can I say? I'm an anal retentive pack rat, albeit a disorganized one.)
I managed to find over 35GB of dupes until I became too bleary eyed to check each file to see which duplicates I wanted to delete. 35GB! In a few hours I had deleted nearly three times as much file space as my first computer had total in storage! I've probably got another 5-10GB of files I can delete.
What's funny is my first computer having just around 3% (if my math is correct) of the storage I have now, but being more concerned now with how many files I am able to keep! Here's a screen shot of my current storage, both computer hard drive and external drives. (Click for larger view)
