Storage, 1TB, 2, 3, 4...? Are you a waster or organised?

[fraggle]

I've got a desktop with 2.5 TB in it, and a server with 6TB, and a laptop with 1TB.

Just because I can, and it's cheap nowadays.

I remember when I had a problem with lack of space, it was when I had bought a 120GB SSD for the laptop and after installing windows, office, visual studio, msdn, Photoshop, and a few games, plus the source code that I work with it was fit to busting.

BUT I seem to find that if I have absolutely shed loads of space I happily waste it.

"Oh it's too laggy organising all these music OGG files, I'll copy them to this PC" bang! 130Gb of files duplicated, organised, copied back eventually, and somehow never deleted from this PC.

Ditto with the archive of software installers or the ISO files.

I just end up with duplicates everywhere.

Then I get fed up of the duplicates, use some nifty software to find them all and delete them all but the newest copy, copy them back to the server and end up with 2.2TB free out of 2.5TB and think "well, it's rather pointless having all this lot isn't it?"

I can't afford a 10Gb LAN just yet, so keeping them all on the server means waiting a little bit whilst they copy over when I want to use them.

I don't know about anyone else but I just get the feeling it's all disjointed, and is just waiting for someone to create a LAN version of the cloud which will work behind the scenes and give me a unified view of (the single, current copy of) all my files, and background sync them to whatever PC I'm using just in time for me to use them.

Anyone else as messy as me, or are you OCD organised with no duplicate files anywhere?

 

[vanthus]

I'm much the same,loads of duplicates scattered everywhere,what software do you use to sort it out?

 

[Wozza63]

2x2TB hard drives in my main desktop, both nearly full along with a 120GB SSD. Laptop has 120GB SSD + 750GB HDD also in need of another HDD. I also have a backup 1TB external between the two. On my desktop I tend to keep things pretty tidy. Programs and stuff on SSD, games on the hybrid drive and all media on the other. And backups on the external.

 

[TheGeeza]

Fairly OCD when it comes to my PC. Can't stand a messy hard drive. I tend to organise as I go.

 

[PokerFace]

Fairly OCD when it comes to my PC. Can't stand a messy hard drive. I tend to organise as I go.

That WAS my plan when I installed a second HDD. It's all gone a bit 'pear-shaped' (much like the missus!). I blame partitioning and not letting programs default to installing on 'C' drive. I set up a 'D' drive for programs I download, but some programs kind of insist on being put on the 'C' drive. This leads to having multiple 'Program Files' and 'Program Files (x86)' folders. It get's confusing!

 

[mishra]

I'm also fairly good at organizing my data.

I have a linux mini server (N54L) with 2x2TB drives (raid1) = this holds all my data (shares: photos, music, movies, private, and temp)
Then the same server have another array of 2x1TB (raid1) drives for backup (excluding movies - I have an rsync scripts to backup my files from array 1 to array 2 every day (preserving archive of deleted files))
This is also my XBMC entertainment device (which rocks) connected to my TV

Since data I care about is on that mini server. I only have 120GB SSD for system and main programs and additional 1TB for games.
That seem to work great in my house. My misses is using her macbook to connect to the same shares and we have a kitchen raspberry pi set-up as internet radio + mp3 player as it accessing music from the server too.

... and because I'm really anal about it. I keep 1TB drive at work which I bring once every few weeks to rsync data (+ archives) from my server. IIn the long run, 'm planning to use another raspbery pi as offsite private backup cloud (using owncloud software - but that's just plans for now).

 

[fraggle]

Interesting replies! I knew I was lazy though

The software I use to detect duplicates and tidy things up are these:-

Duplicate Cleaner Free
http://www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/duplicatecleaner.html

I've tried loads of duplicate file finders and always come back to this one. Lots of them are good at finding duplicates, but the trouble comes when you try to select what to delete - individually selecting a few thousand files is just impossible. This one lets you do things like select all duplicate files found in a particular directory, select all duplicates found elsewhere (when clicking on the one you want to keep), you can select files using some method and then invert the whole selection - I haven't found anything that comes close to the flexibility of this. I must buy the pro version to support it. It can also check files by various means, filename only, filename and time and date, CRC checks (with or without filename match).

The other thing I use is RED - Remove Empty Directories
http://www.jonasjohn.de/red.htm

This is a great utility BUT if you use it on your system drive it will find loads of empty directories that SHOULD exist, and that you must NOT delete or Windows will go and sulk

So use it, and it's great, but never use it on Windows, Users, Documents and Settings, Program Files or ProgramData (or any other system folders)

 

[fraggle]

One of the big problems I find with having loads of storage is backup.

USB3.0 helps, but it can still take hours and hours and hours to copy a few TB to the backup device on the weekly Sunday night full backup.

I do like Robocopy though - lovely and fast and checking for the changed files is brilliantly done (I think) via the directory info timestamps so it doesn't even read the data files themselves if they haven't changed

Roll on cheap fiber LANs!

 

[tom_gr7]

I've got a 120gb corsair gt ssd for my OS, another 128gb corsair gs ssd for a few games - (picked it up for fifty quid, why not) 1 tb cav black, a 2tb cav green and a 2tb wd passport for backing up.

But I need another 4tb green drive, as I've amassed a large collection of ripped dvd's. Then i need another 4tb drive to backup those movies. Then I Plan on getting a networked drive, so they can be accessed over the home network.

 

[bigben]

I've amassed a large collection of ripped dvd's.

I should probably do that. I could get rid of 2 bookshelves then..

I'm a bit OCD when it comes to my computer, everything is neat and tidy. I just have a 120gb ssd for OS, 2tb caviar black with folders for nearly everything else, 120gb ssd for a few special games. Everything is neatly laid out.

 

[mantadog]

Just had a mahoosive clean out over the past few days, sitting at 350gigs of a 1TB caviar black used.

now I have my own computer that no one else is allowed to touch I find I can keep everything much more organised than when I had to share a family computer. I tend not to have too many copies of stuff lying around, apart from where its supposed to be, like my backup HDD and my phone etc. I think my backup HDD is only about 250/320GB, it's old and I should really replace it before it dies but that a whole 'nother topic.

 

[DeadEyeDuk]

I thought 1TB would be enough 3 years ago. I call tell you that if I do change my PC it will have a lot more storage space! Do I need all these games installed? Course not. Do I like to have them installed so I don't have to redownload each time I want to play them? Yes, yes I do

 

[steaky360]

I'm the same as DED - I just recently installed a 4Tb HDD for games, its almost full. I don't really tend to use the PC for much else though so I hope there isn't much duplication going on, guess I should probably check!

I backup anything I cant re-download up on a NAS drive though so that might start some duplication here and there.