Captain Colonial Posted March 4, 2012 Posted March 4, 2012 Just found this handy free software called TreeSize. In basic terms, it shows you the folders in your hard drive in descending order of size, helping you pinpoint where files you no longer need are living so you can, if you so wish, delete them to increase the free area of your hard drive. In my case, I found a mass of old video files I had compiled when producing DVDs for the family that I had no idea were still there because they were so well buried. I freed up 30 Gb off the hard drive! I had plenty of free room already, but it will speed up regular backups considerably. Download here Thought others might find this handy! TOTAL & UTTER DISCLAIMER: I am in no way responsible for anything you do to your own computer by copying anything I did. This reported positive post applies to my own personal experience only. If in doubt with regards to changing settings or deleting files on any computer, then for heaven's sake, DO NOTHING. Your house is at risk if you set fire to it. Do not expose this software to complete numpties. In other words, if you screw up, it's your own fault and we all reserve the right to say we told you so. BE CAREFUL. Quote
Dibby Posted March 5, 2012 Posted March 5, 2012 I use Spacemonger, it shows your folders as a block diagram. Quote
Captain Colonial Posted March 5, 2012 Author Posted March 5, 2012 Yep, this works in a similar fashion, basically putting the folders in descending order of size. After ignoring all the Windows folders of course, I did have a few what the devil? moments when I found those ancient video files. Quote
Dibby Posted March 5, 2012 Posted March 5, 2012 'Those' ancient video files eh? I had a what the devil moment fixing the local postman's computer, his hard drive was full and not leaving enough space for the virtual memory. Found a folder hidden way down in the file system (out of view of his kids no doubt) and it was rammed full of grumble-films. How to breach the delicate subject of 'Well I found the problem in 30 seconds flat, your hard drive is full of dirty movies!' Quote
Captain Colonial Posted March 5, 2012 Author Posted March 5, 2012 'Those' ancient video files eh? I had a what the devil moment fixing the local postman's computer, his hard drive was full and not leaving enough space for the virtual memory. Found a folder hidden way down in the file system (out of view of his kids no doubt) and it was rammed full of grumble-films. How to breach the delicate subject of 'Well I found the problem in 30 seconds flat, your hard drive is full of dirty movies!' Boringly, my videos were copies of TV series that SWMBO wanted copying for her friends like "Tenko" and "Yes Minister" that I converted to NTSB and sent to my mother in the States before she passed away. No naughty vids on my computer (although I've now got 900 Gb of room for them if I wanted! ) Quote
Dibby Posted March 5, 2012 Posted March 5, 2012 Don't worry, I'll believe you! 900GB of room? Got 5TB of drives in total for all the music and films. I 'got hold' of a copy of Harry Potter for her indoors but when we settled down to watch it we'd ended up with a salty grumble-flick, such are the joys of internet piracy. Still, waste not want not. A night of watching saucy films with the Mrs followed by disappointing each other upstairs. It wasn't wasted internet bandwidth after all. Quote
Captain Colonial Posted March 5, 2012 Author Posted March 5, 2012 Enlarge-i-amous? 5 TB, good heavens, I'll bet doing backups takes some time... Quote
Dibby Posted March 5, 2012 Posted March 5, 2012 Only thing was it was nothing to do with Harry Potter, just a random grubby film with the right filename. Don't do many backups, don't care if I lose the music and the films, only the family photos and my documents get backed up. The important stuff is all backed up internally on RAID hard drives. External backup on the net through box.com. There's another free software worth the money: www.box.com - like dropbox but 50GB of free online storage. Quote
Blatman Posted March 6, 2012 Posted March 6, 2012 I've put 4 x 2Tb drives in to one of these and used the optical drive bay with a hard drive converter/adapter to re-ourpose the 160Gb HDD I got with mine as the O/S drive. It stores all my movies and music and is RAID 5. Oh, and the cash back offer was easy, which I wasn't expecting... Quote
blankczechbook Posted March 7, 2012 Posted March 7, 2012 one other useful freebie.. ccleaner - a bit quicker/finds more than the windows version seems to and also has a registry checker. Quote
Dibby Posted March 7, 2012 Posted March 7, 2012 There's really not much need to pay for any software any more. There is usually something free to get through 99% of everyday computing. Aye, CCleaner's a good one, free security from Avast/ AVG/ Microsoft Security Essentials do a better job than the paid stuff through the big players like McAffee or Norton. Even for an operating system, Jolicloud is very good for netbooks/ laptops - mother and wife get on with it well for Facebooks, surfing and email, Ubuntu is really coming along for desktops, XBMC'buntu or Mythbuntu are excellent for home theatre PCs. I don't know why people pay for Office any more when Open Office does everything your average home user will do - finance spreadheets and letter writing. Quote
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