Laptop Memory Space... Lack of

[Ricardo]

Had a message flag up on the laptop saying i'm running out of space on the C drive, i dont think downloading pics off the new digital camera has helped but im still going to take more so it's going to be a problem. Its obviously running much slower so now I need to know what I should do with all the pics. I want to keep them but where can i put them to clear memory space on the laptop?

It's an old laptop, free and still want to use it. But it's slow using the net now. How do i check how much overall memory space it actually has, what's left?

[Os8472]

Pop into to PC world and buy an external USB hard drive, you get a 100gb job for not a lot these days, transfer everything over and free up the main hard drive on your laptop

[Guybrush]

Pop into to PC world and buy an external USB hard drive, you get a 100gb job for not a lot these days, transfer everything over and free up the main hard drive on your laptop

Just don't give them the laptop, you'll be the next Gary Glitter.

[ScottKinnear]

You should find your local maplan cheaper but wait until there on a deal

[TopCat]

Speak to mingblus aka Simon. He's local and a computer whizz

[Trevhib]

Agree, USB external HDD is the simplest (and a cheap) way of sorting this problem out. I have one (a Seagate 500gb), and use it to back up my entire laptop. It's been superb.

https://www.google.co.uk/#q=external...2,vw:l,p_ord:p

http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Storage/...ive---External

320gb from about £30. 1Tb from about £65. Dependent on quality etc etc.

[dj_craig_]

Open a photobucket account and upload your pictures on there then you can delete from laptop, or do you have a old mobile you could save the pics on ?

[Guybrush]

You call that a backup?

I've got 2 Readynas units on my network. Each with 2x2tb drives in them with RAID-1.

My photo automatically backups up automatically to one of the NAS's using an app called FolderSync.

Important stuff is replicated between each NAS using rsync.

Each NAS also selectively backs up to the Netgear cloud.

Probably about £250 to set up 1 Readynas.

[Ricardo]

I have a FlickR account which I pay about £4 every couple of months. I wouldn't class that as backup but useful for uploading pics to forums.

Some of my pics are personal to me and need to keep them somwhere reliably safe ( I'll have a few printed so they're in hard copies instead of just backed up on an external drive)

Trev that 320 gb option seems like the ideal solution, thanks

[Trevhib]

No probs Ricardo.

Impressive stuff G. There is always someone with a bigger, better, faster, more robust solution out there. I suppose it's about individual requirements. In this case I imagine his R's lappy itself is probably worth about 1/3 of 1 Readynas.

[Guybrush]

No probs Ricardo.

Impressive stuff G. There is always someone with a bigger, better, faster, more robust solution out there. I suppose it's about individual requirements. In this case I imagine his R's lappy itself is probably worth about 1/3 of 1 Readynas.

yeah, wasn't trying to say it was appropriate.
cheap external usb drive from amazon would have been my recommendation.

[Ricardo]

No probs Ricardo.

Impressive stuff G. There is always someone with a bigger, better, faster, more robust solution out there. I suppose it's about individual requirements. In this case I imagine his R's lappy itself is probably worth about 1/3 of 1 Readynas.

You're right Trev, I was given the laptop, it's about 8-10 years old but still good enough for me to surf the net. Buying an external hard drive is a cheaper and better option than buying another, newer laptop.

Appreciate both yours and G's input

[Trevhib]

Sorry Gordon, I didn't mean to come across as boorish.

Your set-up sounds mint. It's something my colleagues and I might look to do in the future. We have a dedicated test/trading environment with putty SSH remote access that I can only see becoming more central to what we do (and thus require a better backup than what we have implemented so far) We waited until a power cut caught us out before getting a UPS, d'oh.

[Guybrush]

Sorry Gordon, I didn't mean to come across as boorish.

Your set-up sounds mint. It's something my colleagues and I might look to do in the future. We have a dedicated test/trading environment with putty SSH remote access that I can only see becoming more central to what we do (and thus require a better backup than what we have implemented so far) We waited until a power cut caught us out before getting a UPS, d'oh.

Oh, i've got a UPS covering the NAS's and broadband/network bits.

[Trevhib]

Sweet

So what do you use this piece of IT for? Just personal stuff like films/pics? Or business related?

Sorry for the hijack Ric

[Coops]

nice setup gordon, i was thinking of getting a single nas and loading a couple of drives to it for all my pictures and music

[Guybrush]

Sweet

So what do you use this piece of IT for? Just personal stuff like films/pics? Or business related?

Sorry for the hijack Ric

1 of the NAS has films/tv and a backup of photo's/documents/etc
the other has music and is the primary location for photo's/docs/etc

I've got a squeezebox radio in the kitchen which plays music, an xbox 360 and a few xbmc devices that play the video round the house.

[Trevhib]

You and my brother should get married.

[Guybrush]

You and my brother should get married.

I was never good enough for him, but me and your sister are pretty close

[Trevhib]

[Miller]

I use one of these now.........

http://bit.ly/16Bqtb0

As I have had two external hard drives go tits up, with about 8 years of my pics on them plus all my wedding and honeymoon pics.

This one stores the same pics into each hard drive so I always have a backup.

Plus I can get full access to everything on it from my phone when out.

Chris

[mingblus3]

Hi Ricardo,

Go with a USB 3.0 external hard disk, get the faster device as you may at some point change laptops. Western Digital is very reliable and the prices are not too bad. 2TB TeraBytes of storage will be plenty.

You main aim is to free up disk space on your C: drive. Straight away you can clean out your temp file locations which should help, but will only improve performance. There will not be enough space to download more pictures etc.

[Ricardo]

Hi Ricardo,

Go with a USB 3.0 external hard disk, get the faster device as you may at some point change laptops. Western Digital is very reliable and the prices are not too bad. 2TB TeraBytes of storage will be plenty.

You main aim is to free up disk space on your C: drive. Straight away you can clean out your temp file locations which should help, but will only improve performance. There will not be enough space to download more pictures etc.

Thanks for the info Simon, had a very quick look and Staples do a 500gb item for £49.95, would that one be suffice? I'd hate to think what a 2TB one would cost

[Trevhib]

Use the ebuyer site and save some money Ricardo. They are an excellent, trusted service/site. Just look for online reviews of the drive you go for first though. 500mb is a lot for pics etc but the space will get eaten up if you start to store HD films on it for example.

To help clear out some space on your lappy, download and run 'ccleaner'.

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

[Ricardo]

Cheers Trev

It will only be used for storing photos (Hi Res) past and future, I don't do the whole film, DVD download thing hence thinking the 320gb option being the one.

[R5MJH]

Thanks for the info Simon, had a very quick look and Staples do a 500gb item for £49.95, would that one be suffice? I'd hate to think what a 2TB one would cost

rich you will find the exact same drive on ebay for probably almost half that matey

as trev says thou ebuyer is sweet too

[mingblus3]

500Gb for home use is ample in my opinion. 2TB is not as much as you might expect.

[mingblus3]

probably won't get cheaper than Amazon as crazy as it sounds.

[mingblus3]

CC cleaner we remove this as soon as we find a trace of this on a PC. Can do all sorts of random things that can end up being annoying.

Another program to never install which is normally embedded into Java updates is the ASK Toolbar. Remove this tool if you see it.

[Trevhib]

For every piece of s/w out there, there is always someone who has an issue with it. That's the nature of IT.

What random things have you seen the 'windows and applications cleaner' tool do though Mingblus? I've never had any problem with it in the years I've used it on various machines.

I think the one thing to say is that the Registry cleanup tool should be avoided (like almost all registry cleaners). Otherwise there is no issue here whatsoever IMO.

Ricardo probably has a ton of temp files/cache that could be removed to free up space. It's not that long since the last time I ran it and yet I just freed up 673mb (which might be a significant amount of space in Ricardo's case).

On the browser toolbar installations that often come packaged with freeware, I agree absolutely, they are a blight.

[DaveL485]

The magic word is "Backup"!!

Whatever you do, do it TWICE. Do not let one hardware failure take anything away.

Amen.



PS....has anyone tried RAID5? Four 1 TB drives can be used to build a 3 TB array

VERY clever. My desktop is bulging with 6Tb of drive space so looking at moving to RAID5 now....

[DaveL485]

Thanks for the info Simon, had a very quick look and Staples do a 500gb item for £49.95, would that one be suffice? I'd hate to think what a 2TB one would cost

You can get internal 2Tb for under seventy quid right now. I got an external Buffalo 1TB for under £50.

[Trevhib]

Link to the Buffalo 1Tera?

Edit - looks like Amazon have one similar at £55 delivered:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Slim...302197-0492401