I'm Afraid I'll Run out of Disk Space I'm Afraid I'll Run out of Disk Space Many people go to great lengths to "conserve disk space" because they really have no idea how much hard disk space they have. Contrary to popular belief, hard disk space is neither scarce nor expensive. You don't need to copy things to CDs and floppies to conserve disk space. Once you understand how much hard disk space you have, chances are you probably won't have to worry about running out of space for several years, if ever.
To envision the storage capacities of various types of disks, try to imagine each as a "container" for storing files (in much the same way as a filing cabinet is a container for storing files). Without even getting into the specific numbers involved, you can mentally envision the relative storage capacities of various types of disks as illustrated in Figure 1. (Since a floppy disk's capacity is so tiny, it doesn't even rate as a filing cabinet. More like one manila file folder within a filing cabinet).
Figure 1
Not every computer has exactly the same hard disk drive with exactly the same capacity. If you're using Windows XP as your operating system, you can easily find out how much free space you have on your hard disk, right now, to store stuff. Here are the steps to do so:
Click the Start button and choose My Computer from the Start menu, as below.
The dialog box that opens will look something like the example shown in Figure 2 below. The pinkish purple color indicates how much empty space you have available on your hard disk. As a rule, you don't even have to think about running out of disk space until that gets down to less that 1GB (one gigabyte or 1,000,000,000 bytes). At that point, Windows will start showing you a message telling you that it's time to think about clearing some room on your hard disk.
Figure 2
Of course, if you don't know a gigabyte from a giggle, then it's hard to imagine how long that free space is going to be free But if you completed the steps above, you now know how much free space is available on your hard disk, as measured in gigabytes. If you type in that number where indicated below, and click where it says "Click Here", the numbers below will show how that translates to things from regular life with which you're more familiar, like typed pages, pictures, and songs.
By the way, you can close that dialog box shown in Figure 2 above at any time by clicking its Cancel button.
In addition to knowing the numbers, it helps to see how quickly (or more likely, how slowly) you're using up your available hard disk space. Here's how to do that:
Make no attempt to conserve hard disk space. Just store
everything on your hard disk (for example, in your My Documents folder), and
don't worry about moving stuff off to floppy disks or CDs.
Once a day, or once a week, or however often you wish,
repeat steps 1-2 above to see how much hard disk space you still have left.
With time, you'll get an intuitive sense of just how much space really is on your hard drive. And once you get that sense, you can stop worrying about it, probably for years to come.
By the way, running out of hard disk space is no big deal. If things get tight in a few years, you can just start moving old junk off to CDs in half-a-gigabyte chunks. Or, you can just add a second hard disk. Hard disk space is cheap -- about $1.50 a gigabyte. So you needn't treat it like a rare and precious commodity. Use it! That's that it's for, and that's why you have tons of it!.
Alan Simpson