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Beating the Digital Pack-Rat Syndrome

A 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.

SUMMARY

PowerDesk Utilities $40 list Mijenix 303/245-8000 www.mijenix.com

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.

SUMMARY

Uninstaller 4.51 $40 list CyberMedia 310/581-4700 www.cybermedia.com

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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PKZip $freeware PKWare 414/354-8699 www.pkware.com

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ZipMagic $40 list Mijenix 303/245-8000 www.mijenix.com

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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SyJet $299 SyQuest 510/226-4000 www.syquest.com