File Overload On My PC

Post by **racketboy** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 6:17 pm

It can be a bad conversation when you have over a terabyte of harddrive space, a nice cable internet connection, and some excellent sources of games, music, TV shows, Anime, books, magazines, and bunch of other stuff.

As you can probably imagine (because yours is just like it), my [multiple] hard drives are an absolute mess in terms of organization. Because I'm downloading torrents and other files I see featured online left and right, I have a ton of stuff that is just crammed wherever there is room.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

This weekend I've been really making an effort of getting it cleaned up.
I think I've actually categorized a lot of stuff so far and have about half of the folders I used to.

I think the nicest thing is I'm not setting up an online backup program (using Amazon's S3) to backup just my important (smaller) stuff. Having that stuff categorized and separated really makes things more efficient in terms of time and cost.

Thanks for reading my rant and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Post by **Mozgus** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 7:22 pm

I have too much free time, which lets me organize my stuff well.

1 80GB SATA: Main drive for Windows + installed software
1 80GB SATA: Main download location for large games and movies
1 80GB SATA: Main Documents location where I keep music, pictures, drivers & software installers, emulators & roms, my site contents, etc.
1 60GB IDE: My backed-up Dreamcast GDIs and anything else I wish to save for long term use with burning.
1 80GB IDE External USB: The safety backup for my Documents drive.

Also roughly 500 CD-Rs and DVD-Rs of games and movies and TV series scattered in booklets.

Post by **Yackom** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 7:40 pm

lol yeah i have 3 500 gig drives in my machine, and its a mess.

Post by **fastbilly1** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 10:10 pm

I came up with a simple solution not to long ago. I have a 80gig primary harddrive: windows, programs, games/emulators, mp3s, documents, etc. Then I have a dedicated download drive, right now it is 40 gigs. I could have upped it long ago but keeping it that low means I have to be on top of my burning.

Though with terrabyte harddrives in the wild, a NAS with 2tb would be a nice thing to have.

Post by **Perseid** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 11:40 pm

If MP3s are the problem, I'd recommend checking out MP3 Tag Studio(http://www.magnusbrading.com/mp3ts/) and Mp3Tag(http://www.mp3tag.de/en/). If your stuff is properly tagged check out WinAmp's Media Library. That can get your MP3s all accessible from one spot no matter where they may physically be. For general file stuff you might try Directory Opus(http://www.gpsoft.com.au/). It replaces explorer.exe and does some really nifty search/rename tricks. That doesn't help cases like mine where I have 600GB of MP3s(yes, I'm a freak) and my largest hard drive is 500MB. I guess I either buy a raid system or squeeze stuff where it fits.

Post by **racketboy** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 12:48 am

Perseid wrote:If MP3s are the problem, I'd recommend checking out MP3 Tag Studio(http://www.magnusbrading.com/mp3ts/) and Mp3Tag(http://www.mp3tag.de/en/). If your stuff is properly tagged check out WinAmp's Media Library. That can get your MP3s all accessible from one spot no matter where they may physically be. For general file stuff you might try Directory Opus(http://www.gpsoft.com.au/). It replaces explorer.exe and does some really nifty search/rename tricks. That doesn't help cases like mine where I have 600GB of MP3s(yes, I'm a freak) and my largest hard drive is 500MB. I guess I either buy a raid system or squeeze stuff where it fits.

Actually, MP3s are my most organized off all.
I used a tagger and then iTunes to keep everything tidy

Post by **kinn** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:19 pm

I tried to keep things neat and tidy but things just ended up getting messy!

Now that I've got a media pc as well, I've like got some stuff on there as well as some stuff on the main desktop....plus some duplicate files on both! Doh!

I've also got a 250gig hardrive for backing up important stuff like family pics and movies.

I actually have loads of Dvdr fims, shows etc. I'm actually going through them now and throwing a lot of it away. I'm trying to get out of this "collecting everything I can" phase. I mean most of the stuff I will never watch again! So why hold on to it for?!

Post by **aaron** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 2:59 am

same issue here. it's killing my ratio on UG and oink to be downloading so much. i also got a free subscription to napster to go, so i download just about everything i want music-wise in their shitty janus-protected WMA format, then convert it to an unprotected MP3 using tunebite, THEN convert it to m4a in itunes, just because m4a is a little smaller than mp3. space saving, ya know.

what i really need is a dvd player that will read divx and xvid discs natively. not to thread hijack but if anyone's got any tips in that field let me know. i think the ps2 plays divx natively but not xvid.

Post by **racketboy** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 6:43 am

aaron wrote:same issue here. it's killing my ratio on UG and oink to be downloading so much. i also got a free subscription to napster to go, so i download just about everything i want music-wise in their shitty janus-protected WMA format, then convert it to an unprotected MP3 using tunebite, THEN convert it to m4a in itunes, just because m4a is a little smaller than mp3. space saving, ya know.

what i really need is a dvd player that will read divx and xvid discs natively. not to thread hijack but if anyone's got any tips in that field let me know. i think the ps2 plays divx natively but not xvid.

I have a Phillips player (bought at Circuit City) that supports Xvid, has HDMI, upscales DVDs, and has a USB port to ready music/videos of a an external HD or other USB drive. I think it cost me like $80-90. I actually don't use it much now that I have a Media Center PC