On Thursday 26th October we discussed:
What is the clutter problem?
- Freeing up space?
- Duplicate files?
- PC Slowdown?
- Running out of cloud storage?
- Untidy desktop?
- Bookmarks?
Note that the number of files on your device will not noticeably affect the performance, but many large files could create a storage problem, so housekeeping is more effective if it targets larger files.
File Size comparison
The following comparisons give an idea of the order of magnitude of different types of file (images, documents etc), and some free file storage options
| 1KB | → 1024 Bytes | → 1 text email message |
| 1MB | → 1024 KBytes | → 1 photo or 1000 emails |
| 1GB | → 1024 MBytes | → 1000 photos |
| 5GB | → Max iCloud / OneDrive account online | |
| 15GB | → Max Google account online | |
| 64-128GB | → Max Mobile phone storage | |
| 500GB | → Max PC disk storage |
Note that an Amazon Prime account gives unlimited storage, for photos only.
Rough file sizes
- Video clips 5-200MB
- PDF documents typically 500KB- 5MB
- DOCx documents typically 15 – 30 KB
- Full length movie compressed about 2GB
Zip Files. Note that JPG images and MP3 audio files are already compressed so putting them in a zipped (compressed) folder normally makes little difference to the total size.
How should I send photos to my friends & family?
Attaching one or more photos or documents to an email is convenient but is not the smartest way to send them. Not only does it use up your limited email storage but it gives both you and the recipients the problem of extracting the files from email – where you would not normally look for photos – to somewhere more organised.
If you receive emails with attachments you can remove the attached files from your mail by Replying to the received mail & deleting the original.
Also if the files are very large you might hit the email limit for attachments (Gmail limit is 25 MB) which results in the need to split the files across several emails which is even messier.
Nevertheless, if you do attach snaps to an email you should reduce the size to Medium for example, if you have the option.
The better solution is to send just a link to the photos/documents in cloud storage e.g. Google Photos. The recipient can view or download from there.
Alternatively, you could upload the files to a service like:
- WeTransfer https://wetransfer.com/ Free Send up to 2 GB, or
- TransferNow https://www.transfernow.net/en Send up to 5 GB
where your recipient will be sent a link to download the files which are available for a week.
Note that for videos you can upload to Youtube and send a link form there.
There are a few tools available to help you organise your files e.g.
- Photos. Google Photos and other programs can help you search for photos by subject matter type and can be trained to look for people by .faces
- File duplicate finder programs to get rid of copies
- File type classification e.g. on phones, tablets Settings-Storage or File Manager
- An option is to sort files by date then file in year folders
- Windows System file clean-up will delete redundant temporary Windows files
But generally the manual effort of filing cannot be avoided so it is better to work smart to prevent your files getting in to an unmanageable mess.
Get Organised !
Have a strategy for filing. Some suggestions:
Decide on one location for all unsorted files e.g. Downloads folder. If you choose the Desktop for this, remove all program links to reduce clutter and use areas of the desktop for different topics.
Organise your files when you are viewing or working on them. Dont just dump them on your PC. File immediately in the target folder and rename if necessary especially photos.
Learn to use all the features of the File Manager program
Gmail. Use the Promotions, Social etc tabs to facilitate bulk deletion of multiple emails.
Schedule time to regularly organise your files, desktop, downloads, bookmarks etc.
Manage your cloud storage.
Explore the tools provided for managing your storage. With Google accounts for example,
Manage your Google Account – Manage Storage
GMail Use options to search for files larger than say 10M
Google Drive Select file type e.g PDFs to view
Google Photos – Storage (bottom left)
Happy Sorting !