Beating the Digital Pack-Rat Syndrome
Andrew BrandtA full hard drive is like an overflowing
closet: crammed with junk and too much of a hassle to clean out. The solution:
Check out these tips to keep your disk neat and organized from the start.
And as long as you're cleaning up, dump any unused files. You may find that
you don't even need a new hard drive. After all, you don't run out and buy
a new house every time your closet overflows.
Make a place for
everything. Do you save files the way you put things away in your
closet, just opening the door and chucking them in? If you answered yes, it's
time to change your sloppy ways. With long file names and third-party Windows
Explorer programs at your disposal, there's no excuse for not storing data
in appropriately named, neatly arranged directories. If you miss the way Windows'
File Manager used to help you keep things organized, we recommend PowerDesk
Utilities 98 from Mijenix as a replacement.
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Format with FAT32. You can
save a lot of space by formatting your hard drive with the new FAT32. In the
latest version of Windows 95, Windows NT, and Windows 98, you can take advantage
of this file system, which saves space consumed by many small documents. Files
on a hard drive are stored in one or more fixed-size clusters, and bytes that
are unused in the file's last cluster are wasted. FAT32's clusters are smaller
(and hence more efficient) than FAT16's. A 2KB file stored on a 1.5GB FAT16
partition, for example, uses 32KB of disk space because each cluster takes
up 32KB; with FAT32, the same file uses 4KB of space because FAT32's clusters
are much smaller. For more information about FAT32, see "
Future Developments" on PC World Online or Microsoft's FAT32 FAQ .
Throw out temporary files.
Temporary and cache files are the detritus of Web surfing and installation
that fills space on your hard drive. With every application you install and
with each new Web page your browser loads, you lose a little more space. Fortunately,
it's easy to reclaim. You can delete the temporary cache files in the Preferences
window of your Web browser and also set your browser to keep a smaller cache.
Likewise, you can safely delete the contents of the C:\Windows\Temp\directory,
which is where the system throws unnecessary files after software is installed.
Software like CyberMedia's Uninstaller 4.51 will find and delete all these
files for you, as well as remove unnecessary registry entries and other rubbish
left behind by other programs.
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Defragment your hard drive. The huge amount of storage
available on today's drives mean that files can more easily become fragmented.
When that happens, the hard drive must search for pieces of files, a process
that eventually degrades performance. The Speed Disk utility from Symantec's
Norton Utilities is the fastest defrag program. You can also get the job done
for free (albeit slowly) with Windows 95/98's Disk Defragmenter program (click
Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Defragmenter).
Archive old data. You don't need a slow, clunky tape drive to archive
volumes of data anymore. Compress old files you don't need now (but just can't
live without) with a free, no-frills archival program like PKWare's PKZip.
For a more full-featured commercial utility, try Mijenix's $40 ZipMagic software.
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Add storage
with removable media. If you must keep large documents or programs,
consider using removable storage, which lets you add a little storage space
at a time and move easily from one PC to another. Iomega's Zip and Jaz drives
and SyQuest's SyJet drives are the most popular devices. Files you want to
share, downloaded software, and seldom-used documents stand as natural candidates
for removable storage. You can also install many applications on a removable
disk, which saves you from having to install rarely used applications on your
hard drive.
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Zip, Jaz
Zip, $149
list; Jaz, $299 to $469 list
Iomega
800/697-8833
www.iomega.com
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