Apex Logic

How many of you think your PC’s hard drive or server storage is too small?

Don’t answer…it’s a rhetorical question.

There was a time when I was that way too…always needing more drives for storage of data. That was before I realized that I had never looked at my data for duplicates or outdated data I could archive to CD/DVD.

Archive to CD/DVD? Yes…archive to CD/DVD.

I have three PCs…a laptop and two desktops. The laptop is supposed to be for traveling, so when I am getting ready to travel I load the data I think I will need for the trip. One desktop, which sits in my dining room, is the”house PC” the one that anyone can use. The other is my my primary home PC in my bedroom.

So I took the data and from all three systems and placed it onto one external HD. I started with the laptop and by the time I was finished, I recovered 350GB of (cumulative from all three systems) space! The older files and files I did not need I archived to DVD and store it in a fireproof container.

If you were to do this, the major challenge would be what data is the correct data? The newest file? The largest file?

You will most likely find several versions of the same data…maybe even the same file name and size. How do you know it has the same data though?

The best way is to get a duplicate file manager tool like NoClone or DeDupe. These tools do more than check the filename and size, they also check things such as the CRC, MD5, and content to find matches. Doing the work for you you can easily recover lost storage space.

Using these tools, I am able to maintain a manageable level of storage and have not upgraded my drive capacity for the last two years. While this may not be a major cost savings for the home user, it can be considerable for the business (or SOHO) user.

Lastly, I now archive to DVD annually the data for all my systems and store the DVDs in a fireproof container. This allows me to delete unused files (ones I have not accessed for six months or longer) to save even more space.

With a well thought out archiving system, your data can be managed so that the existing storage capacity you have can last longer than you expect.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 12:05 am and is filed under Technology, Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.