Laptop running out of space

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Ldutch

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Lesley
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My laptop is fast running out of space because I am storing my pictures on it. I have to delete stuff or upload older pictures on to a memory card /disc just to be able to see what I have got on my new storage cards after holidays etc which means I cannot browse ALL the pictures I have taken over the years.

I have deleted all duplicates but have only managed to free up about a gigabyte of space and am being told that there is only 14gb left which will soon go if I take a couple of hundred pics on my next holiday in August.

The laptop runs on Windows 10 and really doesn’t have much else on it apart from the pictures and I have already deleted unwanted programmes to clear space. Has anyone got any recommendations on solving the problem short of buying another laptop just for storing my pictures? I am not very techwise so no complicated suggestions on re setting up the laptop please.
 
Have you checked to see if your hard drive is partitioned, quite common to have hardly any space on one partition with the other nearly empty.
 
Tijuana - I have no idea how to tell whether it is partitioned. After 4 years, I am still trying to get my head round the windows system supplied with the laptop- Windows 8 originally then upgraded free to 10 because no one could work with 8). And Fujitsu (according to one of their technicians who maintained my former employers network) built something into that model so you couldn’t swap to Windows 7 which was much easier to work with.
 
I have an old external hard drive which was used to download my husband’s cd collection which took up an awful lot of space. It is full now and is not much smaller than my laptop. I can see from the links that things have moved on a tad since we bought that in the dark ages. Seem to be very slimline with bigger memories. Can someone give me a rough idea of how many pictures 1tb would hold so I can judge how many tbs I should think about getting.
 
You could also possibly change the hard disc in the laptop to a bigger one. You can buy a kit (hard disc, cables, software etc) that contains eveything you need and is quite simple to do.
 
Ldutch said:
a rough idea of how many pictures 1tb would hold
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What are your images being taken as?

If you're using a 70D (your profile says that's what you have), that shoots images that are 24Mb in raw, 6.6Mb in large jpeg and 3.6Mb in medium jpeg. So that's...

1Tb / 24Mb = 41,600 raw images
1Tb / 6.6Mb = 151,000 large JPEG images
1Tb / 3.6Mb = 280,000 medium JPEG images

As you can see it depends on what image quality you're using as to how many images you can get per Tb.

This obviously doesn't count any duplicates you might make while editing, and if you shoot jpeg+raw and keep both, you need to take that into account too.

if you're using a different camera, just find out how big the files are that it generates (it's in the manual) and divide it into 1Tb. You can actually type "1tb/25mb" into Google and it will tell you. Don't need to worry about what a Tb or Mb is :)
 
Sounds like you are not backing up your photos :( . If not, you may as well delete them all to make space as you’ll lose them when the hard drive fails anyway :( .
 
Never store you photos in only one place.
If the laptops hard drive died you would loose the lot.
This should have been said in the next post after yours.
 
Ldutch said:
Tijuana - I have no idea how to tell whether it is partitioned. After 4 years, I am still trying to get my head round the windows system supplied with the laptop- Windows 8 originally then upgraded free to 10 because no one could work with 8). And Fujitsu (according to one of their technicians who maintained my former employers network) built something into that model so you couldn’t swap to Windows 7 which was much easier to work with.
Click to expand...

Might be worth checking Lesley, its very easy, right click on the start button and then select disk management.
That should show you all the drives and how much space is used or free.
If you're lucky you might find you have some space you didn't know was there.
 
Ploddles said:
You could also possibly change the hard disc in the laptop to a bigger one. You can buy a kit (hard disc, cables, software etc) that contains eveything you need and is quite simple to do.
Click to expand...

If his laptop has a removable panel underneath so he can access the hard drive, yes it would be easy to plug another hard drive or SSD into a USB port and clone the original hard drive.
If it's a modern budget laptop chances are it need to be striped down (keyboard and top panel minimum and a lot of screws) just to get access to the hard drive.
No disrespect to the OP but as he needed to start a thread without thinking about buying an external hard drive, I doubt he will be comfortable taking his laptop apart.
 
hashcake said:
Never store you photos in only one place.
If the laptops hard drive died you would loose the lot.
This should have been said in the next post after yours.
Click to expand...

As the recieved wisdom says "there are only two types of hard drive, those that have failed.......and those that will fail"

You do not want all yours in one basket.........or even two for that matter. It you have some especially previous images put them on their own external drive and store it at relatives or close friends house i.e. off site!
 
There is probably a hidden restore partition, unless you have a copy of windows on a DVD then leave that alone as you might need it in the future.
Your easiet option (as previously suggested) will be to buy an external USB hard drive
 
sphexx, i don’t put them on any of the clouds because I find them too difficult to wade through to find them and try as I might, I just can’t get to grips with Windows 10 to run a back up of the system. This laptop isn’t used on a daily basis as I have an iPad for banking, e-mails etc and if I want to do letters we have another computer attached to a printer. However, I do keep the originals on memory cards so they are safe. My main problem is that I can’t store everything on the laptop to be able to browse through all my pictures.
Hashcake - I am a 65 year old granny and while I am comfortable with working with inputting programmes etc, you are correct in assuming I won’t be too happy about taking the laptop apart, especially since I stood and watched an ‘expert’ take out a hard drive on a previous computer and accidentally managed to wipe the drive. I was asking for suggestions from others who might have had the same issues before to see how they got round it. If I was still working with Windows 7 I would be much more clued up. Windows 10 just doesn’t gel with me, I am afraid.
 
Ldutch said:
hashcake - I am a 65 year old granny and while I am comfortable with working with inputting programmes etc, you are correct in assuming I won’t be too happy about taking the laptop apart
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My apologies for thinking you were male.
My sister and brother in law are older than you but they were fine once I showed them how do use an exteran hard drive :)
Do you hav any tech savvy grandchildren?
 
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Tijuana, I do have a ‘D’ drive but I assumed that this, like in some of my previous computers, was for running cds/dvds. I will check it out before going down the external drive route. Thanks for that.
 
Ldutch said:
Tijuana, I do have a ‘D’ drive but I assumed that this, like in some of my previous computers, was for running cds/dvds. I will check it out before going down the external drive route. Thanks for that.
Click to expand...

Hope it is a partition Lesley, if so you can use that for photo storage, did that on my old laptop.
 
Click thw windows icon [lower left corner of your screen] - there will be a tile there called 'This PC' - go there, how much space does it say is on your D drive? and how much is free?
 
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Please don't forget in regard to 'backup' if the hard drive is partitioned it still a single physical hard drive......if/when it fails you will lose access to both partitions!

A backup can only ever be a combination of separate physical hard drives.
 
Ldutch said:
sphexx, i don’t put them on any of the clouds because I find them too difficult
Click to expand...
As others have said, get an external hard drive (or two), it’s really very simple to just copy your photos across at the very least.
However, I do keep the originals on memory cards so they are safe.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, not true. The memory cards fail eventually even if not being used :(
I am a 65 year old granny
Click to expand...
I am not a granny but I’m a lot, a lot :( older than you.
If I was still working with Windows 7 I would be much more clued up. Windows 10 just doesn’t gel with me, I am afraid.
Click to expand...
Sympathise with you about Windows 10 being confusing:( but it sounds as though you are capable of sorting this out if you persevere with getting help here - there are a lot of knowledgeable and helpful people here.
 
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Latest update: I took Tijuana’s advice and had a look at the D drive. For some reason, probably only known to the good folk at Fujitsu and Microsoft, this is 5 times larger than the C drive. As people usually only look at and save stuff to the C drive, it is hardly any wonder I was running out of space. I did a test run on the D drive and copied one of my albums into it., shut down the computer, re-booted and opened the D drive again. The album is still there. I have now transferred all my photos to the D drive which still has 350 gbs left, more than enough to do me for a while. I still have half the C drive (35 gbs) left to import and edit future pics before transferring them over to the D drive for storing and browsing. I still have most of the originals on memory cards as a back up in case everything goes belly up.
Thank you all for your suggestions.
 
Ldutch said:
Latest update: I took Tijuana’s advice and had a look at the D drive. For some reason, probably only known to the good folk at Fujitsu and Microsoft, this is 5 times larger than the C drive. As people usually only look at and save stuff to the C drive, it is hardly any wonder I was running out of space. I did a test run on the D drive and copied one of my albums into it., shut down the computer, re-booted and opened the D drive again. The album is still there. I have now transferred all my photos to the D drive which still has 350 gbs left, more than enough to do me for a while. I still have half the C drive (35 gbs) left to import and edit future pics before transferring them over to the D drive for storing and browsing. I still have most of the originals on memory cards as a back up in case everything goes belly up.
Thank you all for your suggestions.
Click to expand...

Excellent news Lesley, think an external hard drive to use as back up would still be a good idea.
 
One other option and this is one that has come to use for me is to actually go through the images you have and delete some.
Back in time, I used to keep all images. Then, similar to what you are facing, I was running out of space.

By going through all I had taken, there were a large number that were just sitting there and I didn't actually think were any good.
Start of with a mild cull, and then gain confidence to wield a sharper cut - you may find that you save lots of space that way.

(I'd also get an external disk as well!!)
 
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