Maxed Hard Drive

[ptonsparky]

My laptop SS hard drive is getting full. It still does what I want and I really don't want to buy a new one. One of my misc programs will search and find duplicate files. How do I know which one to let it delete? Any simple answers?

 

[kwired]

My laptop SS hard drive is getting full. It still does what I want and I really don't want to buy a new one. One of my misc programs will search and find duplicate files. How do I know which one to let it delete? Any simple answers?

Some programs/apps may have photos or videos or even other file types that are duplicated in some folder that the program/app utilizes. Say you post a picture on facebook that originated from your primary photo storage - you probably end up with a duplicate file in some folder that facebook uses. Is usually safe to delete the entiere folder, facebook will just create a new folder next time it wants to store such a file.

A lot of stuff you have downloaded can be similar. Your downloads folder possibly the default location for downloads. You then often might save the file in a different location - even with a different name but contents are the same. The copy in downloads folder can probably be deleted.

Some scanning software kind of does this as well. Scanning saves a file in a default location and people end up saving a copy in some other location.

 

[Besoeker3]

My laptop SS hard drive is getting full. It still does what I want and I really don't want to buy a new one. One of my misc programs will search and find duplicate files. How do I know which one to let it delete? Any simple answers?

Could you add a Terabyte? I have one which on one of the USB ports. It has a huge capacity and if your laptop fails you can you still have all the data on your Terabyte. I use it for photographs. It's 930 GB.

 

[ptonsparky]

Could you add a Terabyte? I have one which on one of the USB ports. It has a huge capacity and if your laptop fails you can you still have all the data on your Terabyte. I use it for photographs. It's 930 GB.

I still need to get rid of something(s). I think I've moved most of the photos I want but there are tons of stock photos other programs use.

 

[__dan]

If it's just a general cleanup, you can look at "programs, install uninstall" to see what's installed that you want to remove.

Older laptops with an optical drive, cd rom drive, the optical drive might be in a second bay that can be swapped for a second SATA ssd, in a caddy that fits the optical bay. Older Thinkpads were like that.

Depending on the size of the drive and the workload, the drive could just be too small. Older drive might be 90 gb and that would fill up even with a brand new machine. If you're trying to archive lots of stuff on the laptop, you could try sweeping a lot of that stuff to a USB drive, either a thumb drive or one of the newer portable USB drives that are pcie internally.

New laptop is a good bet. Pace of change has been pretty fast. There are some really nice machines that go on sale regularly. Depending on the workload you could try cleanup or replace the older drive, new ssd's are inexpensive.

If you're putting money into an older machine, a new machine is worth a look, but I would wait. Pick out the machine you want then wait for the sale.

 

[zbang]

Good advice all of that.

Get a cleanup program, like ccleaner (https://www.ccleaner.com/, the free version is fine), and have that look for temporary files and the like (it'll probably find tons of them).
Archive off projects you no longer need, like jobs from 10+ years ago.

Every so often, I uninstall programs I no longer use but keep the installer.

 

[ptonsparky]

Good advice all of that.

Get a cleanup program, like ccleaner (https://www.ccleaner.com/, the free version is fine), and have that look for temporary files and the like (it'll probably find tons of them).
Archive off projects you no longer need, like jobs from 10+ years ago.

Every so often, I uninstall programs I no longer use but keep the installer.

i have the purchased version of CC. It found WAG of a few hundred duplicate files. I just don't know which one of each should go.

 

[Sea Nile]

My laptop SS hard drive is getting full. It still does what I want and I really don't want to buy a new one. One of my misc programs will search and find duplicate files. How do I know which one to let it delete? Any simple answers?

Simple answer: purchase an external hard drive and move files onto it.

Otherwise, if the program you used to find duplicates allows you to see details of the files, such as size and date modified, you can use that to help make a decision.

Assuming a file has the exact same name, exact same size and date modified, I would consider it safe to delete one of them.
But you also have to consider which folder they are saved in. if you delete the one in the folder you expect it to be in, you may not be able to find the duplicate that's located in the wrong location. Especially after you delete the duplicate, because if there is no duplicate, then the duplicate finding software will not find it for you a second time.

 

[tthh]

My laptop SS hard drive is getting full. It still does what I want and I really don't want to buy a new one. One of my misc programs will search and find duplicate files. How do I know which one to let it delete? Any simple answers?

How big is the current SS drive? Is it replaceable? Probably just easier to replace the SS drive with a larger one.

 

[jim dungar]

i have the purchased version of CC. It found WAG of a few hundred duplicate files. I just don't know which one of each should go.

Unless the duplicate files are substantial in size it may not be worth the effort.

I only look at duplicate files in the folders which I created, like my documents or project folders. I definitely would not mess with duplicates installed by apps/programs, as they expect to find the files where they put them instead of having to search for them.

 

[zbang]

A quick check of my own system with ccleaner turned up almost 3G of temp. and other disposable files; that's not trivial.

 

[paulengr]

Just buy an external hard drive for cheap and transfer over a lot of unused stuff and delete the files. If it’s important back it up.

In my case I have two Synology NAS. One is Ds720+ with two 1 TB NVME cache drives and two 4 TB Ironwolf NAS drives. So basically 95% of the time my server is running at NVME SSD speed. Second NAS is a DS220j that I bought before finding out how limited it is. All my phones, PCs, etc. sync to the NAS (basically private Google Photos and Dropbox). Plus regular backups of everything. It also dies E-Mail, video and music server, and a lot more. Second NAS is physically separate from primary. Once a week primary backs up to secondary which at this point is all the secondary does.

So all my work data is backed up twice, once to the primary NAS and then to secondary. I can safely delete things that I’ve saved directly to the NAS (file server feature). So I never run out of space or lose access. If I paid for cloud backup I’d spend hundreds per year plus who trusts them anyway. I’m running my own “data center” for very little cost. Synology servers by the way are super simple. Everything is just clicking on web based forms. I can but haven’t tried to do any special scripts.

 

[tthh]

How big is the current SS drive? Is it replaceable? Probably just easier to replace the SS drive with a larger one.

I've replaced many hard drives with SSD. Samsung EVO 2TB is about $225 right now. That would be pretty easy to do on any machine that has a 2.5" hard drive in it.

 

[hbiss]

I don't know how you set your laptop up, but one of the important things is organization and that starts from the day you set up the new machine. Separate folders and sub folders for everything you create or save will let you see at a glance what you have, if there are duplicate files and lets you decide what needs to be backed up.

Many times, I never let a program use its default "save to" location. I want to know where things are and not be intermingled with files from other programs.

As was mentioned, there are .tmp files that can be safely removed. That should free up some space, but I have a feeling that's not your problem. Do a Google search for removing the temp files specific to your version of Windows.

For files that I don't use all the time I like to move them to USB drives, which are also good for backup.

-Hal

 

[ptonsparky]

232G with 18.6 free.
It was the largest we could get in at the time.

 

[Amps]

The OS is installed on the drive. Replacing the drive means reinstalling the OS, etc. If its Windows 10 can you run Disk Cleanup?

 

[paulengr]

The OS is installed on the drive. Replacing the drive means reinstalling the OS, etc. If its Windows 10 can you run Disk Cleanup?

Not as bad as it sounds. Acronis Trueimage is inexpensive and lets you easily backup and restore to a different drive.

Realistically unless you just don’t organize anything about 1 TB should be plenty. The exception is a lot of VMs or doing a lot of graphic arts. These days that’s about $100. Those 250 GB units were too small even when they were top of the live without a second drive.

 

[Amps]

Not as bad as it sounds. Acronis Trueimage is inexpensive and lets you easily backup and restore to a different drive.

Realistically unless you just don’t organize anything about 1 TB should be plenty. The exception is a lot of VMs or doing a lot of graphic arts. These days that’s about $100. Those 250 GB units were too small even when they were top of the live without a second drive.

I keep most of my files on Google drive and backup to a USB, lol.

 

[__dan]

If it were me, swapping the drive would probably be easiest. I like to do a fresh install of Windows, fresh app install, because of all the crap that gets collected.

Last time I did it I recall Win 10 being very easy to use. I had Win 10 iso on a thumb drive and it booted from that. You have to make sure that you have a wired Internet connection to get the drivers at first boot. I also use a WiFi dongle with a driver for the dongle on a thumb drive to get that first Internet connection.

The laptop is bricked until you get it an Internet connection. Then it will go out on its own and get drivers

 

[kwired]

Unless the duplicate files are substantial in size it may not be worth the effort.

I only look at duplicate files in the folders which I created, like my documents or project folders. I definitely would not mess with duplicates installed by apps/programs, as they expect to find the files where they put them instead of having to search for them.

Facebook stores a lot of images that you will never look at again on local storage devices. Even ones that originated from elsewhere on your device before you posted them.