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What to do with a 250 GB harddrive

Archived thread 1021154 from Other OS Talk. Markdown source: Other_OS_Talk/thread_1021154_What_to_do_with_a_250_GB_harddrive.md

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#1

Ah well, I'm amazed at how big these harddrives are now. I'll probably never have more than 20 gigs of data and I'm thinking of just setting up a bunch of partitions and installing some other distros. Any suggestions?

I tend to like something stripped down and basic, but I guess I can do a few partitions and try some different things.

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

#2

Well, other than other distros, you could easily fill it up with every season of every show you enjoy. :O

#3

dannytatom said: Well, other than other distros, you could easily fill it up with every season of every show you enjoy. :O

haha...I'm trying to avoid that and be productive!

#4

eh, good idea.

#5

For Learning New things I would try

!. Ubuntu Gnome

  1. Puppy any Version
  2. NimbleX for KDE
#6

Re: What to do with a 250 GB harddrive Put files on it ;) Yeah, when I bought my laptop, I never thought I'd use anywhere close to all 80GB.

#7

give someone a belated christmas present (I'll volunteer)

#8

well, I'm not meaning to show off...I got it from dell w/ubuntu installed and it was really cheap, I thought (also save about $100 by not installing windoze)

my last computer had a 20 gig hard drive, which I thought was huge at the time.

also, thanks rokytnji for the tips

#9

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#10

woodside said: ....and I'm thinking of just setting up a bunch of partitions and installing some other distros. Any suggestions?

Rather look at using Virtualbox to try out different distros, it's just so much easier than fooling around with partitions and rebooting etc.

#11

I got 320GBx2 + 160BGx2 + 80GB for my OS and I am running out of space. Were can I give you my address - Hurry !!!!

#12

beyboo said: I got 320GBx2 + 160BGx2 + 80GB for my OS and I am running out of space. Were can I give you my address - Hurry !!!!

Me first, my 1.4TB is almost full :)

#13

You guys must have a lot of...hrumf..."important papers" on your hard drives to fill that up.

#14

ELF_O8 said: You guys must have a lot of...hrumf..."important papers" on your hard drives to fill that up.

Correct, the NSA rsyncs with me for secure offsite storage :)

#15

mips said: Rather look at using Virtualbox to try out different distros, it's just so much easier than fooling around with partitions and rebooting etc.

just installed virtualbox ;-)

#16

450GB DV clips, 40GB of music, 137GB of virtual machines, 56GB of TV shows...

Welcome to the age of high quality media ;). Especially when work with media is involved, it kills space fast.

There are ways I could save space, like..

Having on computer exactly those clips I need at the moment for editing.. Clearing up crap from music folder.. Creating smaller disks for virtual machines and wasting additional time if I run out of space..

But question is... save space for what? To have saved space? :)

#17

Delever said: Welcome to the age of high quality media ;). Especially when work with media is involved, it kills space fast.

wow! seems like I've been living in a cave...I remember when I maxed out my old 20 gig hd and I kind of felt guilty about that :P

#18

woodside said: wow! seems like I've been living in a cave...I remember when I maxed out my old 20 gig hd and I kind of felt guilty about that :P

Heh, no, I think that people do different things with their computers, so it mainly depends on what they do.

#19

true, generally my home directory is a few k of text files unless I go on a movie downloading binge and end up with 15GB...but I delete them all after awhile and get back to a few k (well, 113.0 MB currently) ;-)

#20

mips said: Correct, the NSA rsyncs with me for secure offsite storage :)

I bet they use encryption.

#21

Delever said: 450GB DV clips, 40GB of music, 137GB of virtual machines, 56GB of TV shows...

Welcome to the age of high quality media ;). Especially when work with media is involved, it kills space fast.

There are ways I could save space, like..

Having on computer exactly those clips I need at the moment for editing.. Clearing up crap from music folder.. Creating smaller disks for virtual machines and wasting additional time if I run out of space..

But question is... save space for what? To have saved space? :)

You could build for only what you need to spend on drives a FreeNAS box out of an old PII or PIII from the rubbish dump. You could use software RAID of one configuration or another so that your important media is more secure, mirrored or RAID 5.

Something I don't like is having gigs of data that is not backed up in some form. When there is so much of it, if you loose it, you will never get it all back, apart from the expense, even if it is only the time & bandwidth, of getting back what you can.

#22

woodside said: Ah well, I'm amazed at how big these harddrives are now. I'll probably never have more than 20 gigs of data and I'm thinking of just setting up a bunch of partitions and installing some other distros. Any suggestions?

I tend to like something stripped down and basic, but I guess I can do a few partitions and try some different things.

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Well if you don't know what to do with it you could give it to me. :p

#23

MasterNetra said: Well if you don't know what to do with it you could give it to me. :p

If you read the thread you would've seen that you are a long way down the Q. :-)

#24

handy said: You could build for only what you need to spend on drives a FreeNAS box out of an old PII or PIII from the rubbish dump. You could use software RAID of one configuration or another so that your important media is more secure, mirrored or RAID 5.

Something I don't like is having gigs of data that is not backed up in some form. When there is so much of it, if you loose it, you will never get it all back, apart from the expense, even if it is only the time & bandwidth, of getting back what you can.

When I bought second 500GB drive, there was a question - to use it as RAID or to store more data... Since I have my DV clips on tapes somewhere, I went with more data option. Well, the most important data that I need saved is nowhere as big, it's mostly text.

#25

I am going to go with the majority on this one and just say "give to tom egnoto". :)

#26

you guys are all to late. :D :D

so woodside. what did/are you going to do?

#27

For learning...

250GB?!?

...I dunno.

Such space where meant to be back-up HDD. So this means you can back-up all the PDF lesson files and such. But hey, it's 250GB. Go and download Prison Break, Heroes and such torrents ;)

Right now, I'm downloading 11GB Johnny Bravo torrent to be backed-up in my 160GB external HDD. :P

#28

Download 250 GB worth of porn? :lol:

#29

kernel sanders said: download 250 gb worth of porn? :lol:

+1

#30

Kernel Sanders said: Download 250 GB worth of porn? :lol:

-1

You will only be (re)productive. :D

#31

1 use it as a safety back up 2 help the community by using jaunty jackalope on it. (or debian sid :)) 3 give it away to some one that has no hardrive at the moment 4 keep it for later . harddrives can break just as any other thing can and its handy to have lying around just in case.

#32

cmay said: 3

give it away to some one that has no hardrive at the moment Now we have a new line -- people with *no hardrive at the moment*.

I happened to have lost my 160GB.

Yeay, I'm first in line. :D

#33

What to do with a 250 GB harddrive

Throw it though a window and put it on youtube like this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTVA-p0qhrQ !::D

or

you can change it for smaller one and some cash.

#34

thelions said: throw it though a window and put it youtube!::d

:p:p

#35

Now we have a new line -- people with *no hardrive at the moment*.

I happened to have lost my 160GB.

Yeay, I'm first in line. :grin: yes stuff like that happens all the time. i just lost a 6 gigabyte harddrive i cant seem to locate anymore. i figure i would put minix on it if i can find it again. i could use a 250 gb byte hardrive at anytime. i never had one bigger than 80 gigabytes. all mine are below that size (20 gigabytes mostly)

#36

Reading everyone's replies I feel spoiled (knocks on wood lest all my nice spacious drives go kaput).

If you've got the bandwidth, grab a copy of Virtual box (or apt-get install kvm) and start downloading and installing OSes. That's what fills up 30gigs on my hd. :guitar:

#37

Put all your Favourite OS on the HDD.

250 is pretty small Hdd if you ask me tough mine is presently total of 226GB usable but i am always in a fix in few days od deleting or transfering some of the data to other media..

15GB is sufficient for Leopard (MacOSX) 20GB Win7 15GB Ubuntu 8.10 (4-8 GB SWAP ) Rest remaining Hdd space you can make a partition and use it for Data usuage or say make your Document Picture Videos etc folders in it and direct all the Os to use them as your default. storage areas so you have access to all the data on all the os and enjoy the flexibility..

If you are opting for one Single Os make it a Linux (Ubuntu preferably)

#38

Use it to create a HUGE stockpile of random pictures of mudkipz and slowpokes and Epic Fail Guys for posting on 4chan.org in your spare time?

Don't forget to work on your annoying ASCII art!:lolflag:

#39

I said the same thing about my first 250 gigger haha. was full and needing to make room in less than 3 months. Of course most of it was open source I planned on doing something with and ...... well.... you can figure out how that goes.

#40

i got a 500GB + 250GB + 80GB and i run out of space too often and have to clear things up. load up on VMs and movies and space seems too little no matter how much you have :P

#41

You'll use 250GiB as easily as I used my 80 GiB HDD on my old computer.

I started off with a 500GiB HDD on this computer, added a 160GiB for my / and now I just bought a 1TiB HDD to store all my DVDs.

Five-hundred Gibibytes wasn't enough to store all my DVDs, CDs, Blu-rays and personal data.

#42

When you get the room, you find uses for it pretty fast.

If anything, keeping your partitions at low percentages will reduce fragmentation and increase performance.

#43

I have 8 of them .. I have them in drive caddys and in USB external enclosures and use them all the time. Music and live performance videos .. and one set aside for downloaded programs and another set aside so that I can repair Windows drives (an Apricorn set-up) .. copy the drive contents and clean all of the garbage off with a CLEAN, not on line, computer that has all of the utilities already installed on IT's main HD! .. copy the contents back and the bad drive full of crap that Windows attracts is now clean, quick, and will work until chatty Kathy or gamer Sluggo goes to an infected peer to peer and shuts the protection down again!

#44

woodside said: Ah well, I'm amazed at how big these harddrives are now. I'll probably never have more than 20 gigs of data and I'm thinking of just setting up a bunch of partitions and installing some other distros. Any suggestions?

I tend to like something stripped down and basic, but I guess I can do a few partitions and try some different things.

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

If you have time, try installing Arch. It's tough, it's intimidating but it may just be as good as it gets. Setting it up scares the hell out of me. You can mess up and just start over.

#45

Amateurs. :D

8TB and counting.

In all seriousness 250GB is nothing. Stop deleting things you've downloaded for a start. We live in an age where data accumulation is cheap. Why conserve space?

Here's an idea for you though, for all that spare room you have.

Start converting all your CDs and DVDs to .iso image files. Store them on the HDD. You'll never have to look for a CD again, and won't have to worry about scratches.

#46

They've got a point, 250 GB isn't as much as you'd think. I happen to have a 250 GB external USB drive. I've got ubuntu on 30 gigs of it so i can use it when i feel like it, and probably about 100 gigs of movies, 20 somethin gigs of music, lots of pics and the rest are program installers for all my windows friends who don't dare to try anything else. i'm currently trying to switch over from XP pro to ubuntu.

Edit: oh and did i mention that the entire drive is compressed and i've only got 14 gigs left

#47

250 GB is great for productivity; you would never have to worry about running out of space unless you download a lot of music/movies/games.

I'm amazed that you can get 4 TB harddrives now.. seems like a bit of a waste lol.

#48

card_ace said: ...I've got ubuntu on 30 gigs of it so i can use it when i feel like it...

What kind of speed do you get running Ubuntu through USB 2.0?

#49

When you partition the drive give it some thought as to how many distros you want to install it will save you some headaches later. Give NOP Puppy Linux 4.12 a try. Its a very nice distro. Im running it right now with compiz.

#50

Bart_D said: What kind of speed do you get running Ubuntu through USB 2.0?

you would think that itd run slower than if it was an internal hard drive, and that's what i hear a lot but it runs pretty good for me. the only thing that seems to take a long time is booting from it. it takes about 5 minutes to boot up, but other than that its all good. i just prefer to be able to take it with me.