Disk Space

Let'sgoflying!

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Feb 23, 2005
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Display name:
Dave Taylor
I have only 10% available space now (which means its balking on the defrags), of the 30gB.
What is an easy way to see which things are using most of the space so I can decide what has to go?
If I can't free up space what are the options?

-bigger HD? (Toshiba Satellite laptop)
-external HD?
-burn backup CDs
-new computer (no, no, no)

Can I buy a terabyte size external harddrive and use it to backup 4 or 5 different 30gB computers every month or so? I would have to carry it around to each and plug it in, leave it running for a few hours, right? What about viruses?
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
I have only 10% available space now (which means its balking on the defrags), of the 30gB.
What is an easy way to see which things are using most of the space so I can decide what has to go?
If I can't free up space what are the options?

-bigger HD? (Toshiba Satellite laptop)
-external HD?
-burn backup CDs
-new computer (no, no, no)
All are viable options. The external HD isn't the cheapest but would be the easiest. Just offload stuff like pictures or inactive work stuff.

Let'sgoflying! said:
Can I buy a terabyte size external harddrive and use it to backup 4 or 5 different 30gB computers every month or so? I would have to carry it around to each and plug it in, leave it running for a few hours, right? What about viruses?
A terabyte external hard drive would back up 33 computers with 30Gb HDs. You don't need to go that big if you don't want to. A 200Gb drive would do nicely while leaving room for offloading stuff from all of the computers, if desired.

Get a network ready external HD and you could hook it up to a wireless network, accessing it as a mapped network drive whenever needed. An option but hardly required.
 
Since this is a laptop you're talking about, I'm going with the external HD recommendation. Laptop drives are a bit trickier than desktop drives, and a bit pricier. Maxtor has an external, USB 250GB HD for just over $0.50 a gig: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_hdd.asp?CatId=136 and you can go smaller and much cheaper.

Even with multiple computers, a networked drive will add more configuration considerations - a simple USB external drive can be plugged into any Win XP or 2k machine and it will JUST WORK.
 
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