A Neat Hard Drive Is A Happy Hard Drive

A Neat Hard Drive Is A Happy Hard Drive

Posted 08/17/2007 at 3:10pm | by Eugene Robinson

 

 

Inspired by review editor Roman Loyola’s dogged insistence on every bit of technology lasting as long as physically possible, I’ve recently decided to resist the blandishments of all new gear and get my trusty PowerBook G4 to last as long technologically possible. Or, however long I can take it before I break down and yield to the KoolAid consumed in these regions every time Apple turns on the klieg lights.

 

To do that it’s clear that I need to do that which I most love doing: being a degenerate, paper shuffling neat freak. I don’t require things be clean. In fact I have very little interest in this, as the sticky mung that’s accumulated on the lapper will attest to. I just want to be able to find it [stuff, shoes, car keys] when I need to. And I need the desktop to look ordered. And I need it to work well and to know that I’ve not got stuff cluttering up the drive because I’ve slacked on the kind of mental maintenance neat freaks delight in.

 

So I hit up WhatSize 10.3.92 so I can quickly ferret out that which is slowing me down. I find which files are hogging up the most space and systematically delete all my abortive attempts at iMovie genius, all of my attempts at iPhoto genius and all of my genius literary attempts at genius. I get the 8 gig buffer I need to return my machine to semi-optimal functioning.

 

On my way to a newer, neater, thinner me.

 

 

I then use Xslimmer to de-fatify some of my heavier duty apps. The demo version is free. This thins out big apps where it’s clear I don’t need all of what’s in there. Total elapsed time now 30 minutes.

 

I delete a few other things, back up all of what’s left [yes, I have learned], empty trash, restart and yes, breathe a sigh of relief because you see, laptop neatness is once again MINE.

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Tatuka

March 10, 2008 at 4:45am

Thank You for another very interesting

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zagrandom

April 02, 2008 at 10:16am

Great article.

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Mark Gilvey

November 07, 2007 at 8:35am

I think Cocktail will take care of some of this as well.

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Anonymous

November 07, 2007 at 1:08am

I think you have no need of deleting the data from your computer, you can do the defragmentation of disk. That will surely increase the speed. Or you can do the things like me as i put all my Ipod downloads, Mp4 downloads and PSP games at a separate drive on the computer. I dont use C:/ and D:/ drive for placing them. I mostly use other drive lke E and F for them and place only necessary softwares on C and D drive that keep my computer speed uptodate and if any time it slow down than i use defragmentation rather than deleting the stuff.

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The CHZA

October 24, 2007 at 12:37pm

WhatSize is the single most useful tool I've found (thanks to Mr. Robinson). I had some unused Second Life crap in my library that was taking up 500MB of space, among other surprises. At the end of it, I had regained almost 3GB of hard drive space! Great article.

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Недвижимость

February 29, 2008 at 9:55am

Да, помогают такие статьи, я вот только начинаю, и с удольствием читаю ваш блог

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Tom Andersen

October 17, 2007 at 10:51am

Leap is just amazing for getting rid of old files on your computer. I found literally gigs worth of stuff that I did not need.

http://www.ironicsoftware.com/leap/

--Tom Andersen

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Jaems

September 30, 2007 at 7:04am

Another item to mention when removing any programs is App Zapper. I've used this with great success (Borat style)..

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Joe Branan

September 24, 2007 at 3:39am

I also want to avoid upgrading my hardware to accomodate each software update. What are general rules of thumb I should use to determine where my system is bogging down?

Also, is there software available for the Mac that will identify and eliminate duplicate files, like NoClone does for Windows?

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Georgina Spelvin

September 16, 2007 at 3:46pm

Both of these will kill Rosetta apps if you're on an Intel Mac and you choose to strip the PPC code out of your system. Also, it's probably best to leave any language localizations in place—Adobe apps won't function if certain languages are missing (not sure which ones ... all the more reason to leave them be).

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dave

August 20, 2007 at 4:10pm

It's free and includes a useful graphical view of which files and folders take up the most space on a volume. So, you can easily see whether a folder that takes up 10 Gb has 5 2Gb files or thousands of 10 Mb files.

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Ivan the Swiss

August 18, 2007 at 12:56pm

And don't forget Monolingual and remove all the Japanese (and German) parts of your software that you left in there when you believed your Japanese friends would ever have a look on your Notebook. You're too paranoid for having anybody use your screen anyways.

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Начинающий оптимизатор

March 01, 2008 at 5:07am

You're too paranoid for having anybody use your screen anyways nice

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Freespirit

August 20, 2007 at 1:07pm

Xslimmer does the same thing as Monolingual and will also strip your applications from unnecessary Intel or PPC from your Universal applications, its a really good virtual liposuction for your applications, gauranteed to remove all the fat.

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