[FRIAM] Advice on configuring computers

[Owen Densmore]

(I gotta stop, I'm on a roll here. but...)

Here's an example of the hierarchical storage on my laptop:
[image: Snap.11.04.18-10.28.17.jpg]

The top level lets me know that "Users" is where to look. On unix systems
that is the set of user accounts, which in this case has only me but often
has temporary accounts I create for hacking in a "clean" environment. OK so
yup, I'm it. So diving in, I see over 85GB (Music, Movies, Pictures) are
better kept in the cloud and I should "empty the trash) getting me over
95GB. Wow!

I only have around 7GB on Dropbox .. i.e. code and docs I create. Here is
where Github does have some impact, I can kill off all those repositories
and simply depend on Github for archival storage.

This does ping my brain on one issue: document storage other than mine:
ebooks, talks, tutorials etc. Last time I did this I found 10GB or so of
these, to my surprise, so I shuffled them off to archival storage, keeping
only active ones available.

   -- Owen



On Sun, Nov 4, 2018 at 10:24 AM Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net> wrote:

> Oh, forgot: one of the "surprises" had to do with email. Even tho I use
> gmail, which keeps all the email in the cloud, the mail *clients* (apps
> that interface with the email on the server) often store a huge amount of
> my email in a local "cache". We're talking 10s of GBs.
>
> Try running one of these storage hierarchy apps and let us know what you
> find.
>
> On Sun, Nov 4, 2018 at 10:19 AM Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net> wrote:
>
>> I'd recommend using a program that tells you where all the storage goes
>> to.
>>
>> My OS has a simple facility that tells me I have 75GB left out of 250GB
>> SSD drive on my laptop. That's OK but prompts me to run a finer grain
>> program that tells me what my folder hierarchies contain. It good in that
>> it tells me the total storage of each top-most folder, then dives into each
>> of them, recursively telling how much each of the second, third, etc level
>> folder contains.
>>
>> Doing this is constantly surprising! For example, I found that my photos
>> and music were well over 10GB. And that my programming libraries
>> (./node-modules) were absolutely out of control. And many apps and system
>> tools have huge "caches" of files.
>>
>> My solution is to use DropBox, a cloud storage and sync (sync == keep the
>> files synchronized over my various computers, tablets and phone). Syncing
>> can actually cause a huge *increase* in storage, but DB has a simple
>> setting that tells it to just use the cloud version, thus turning into a
>> fairly easily managed system.
>>
>> DB also lets me share files with others easily, so for example I can
>> share a model/simulation I'm working on with others. Github also solves
>> this sort of storage but I think isn't germane here. Google Docs might,
>> however.
>>
>> So I developed a simple approach to DB: any keystroke I make ends up
>> there: i.e. all docs I create is on DB. Photos, no .. I take the pictures
>> but don't edit them .. i.e. add/subtract bits, thus they do not fall under
>> the DB range, just backup.
>>
>> DB isn't cheap .. it starts out free for up to 6 GB but its first paid
>> level is $100/year for 1TB. And it hasn't got all the features I need. But
>> so far is the best for me.
>>
>> I find that my cog load for my own docs is around 20GB so am happy with
>> cloud storage for all the rest. And actually, a lot of my cloud storage is
>> a form of backup.
>>
>> Do you have a similar situation? I realize storage is "domain specific".
>>
>>    -- Owen
>>
>
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