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Format hard drive and backup

Muz1234

Sempai
13 Aug 2014
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You downloaded tons of media, films, for example, but you also like to make backups of it. However, the hard disk is starting to overload as you download lots of films, what do you think I should do? Just reformat the hard drive and re-download the films? Or burn every film to a DVD disc that might take days and hours and so on.
 
I have about 6 external hard drives. They hold a ton of data and don't cost too much. I only back up once a month. When I notice my computer getting a bit slow , I find if I defrag and optimize my hard drive about every 2 weeks , it speeds it up.
 
Years ago I did disc backup , but now I use an external hard drive for backup. Todays external hard drives are super fast and can hold a years worth of backups and still have a ton of empty space for pictures and films . I tape a note on my external hard drive telling what is on it and the date I downloaded it. I find an External hard drive is much more efficient and faster than using CD's or DVD discs. I have an old external hard drive from 10 years ago that still has unused space on it and still works fine even though the items on it are from an older computer with and old Windows program. I can get an external hard drive at my local store for $100 to $200 US and get years of use for it. Once things are down loaded to the external drive , I delete what's is on my desktop to make more room and also do a defrag on my PC. Keeping the desktop as clean as possible makes it run faster.
 
So should I stop burning it to disc? I have stacked up like around 200 burned disc. That's lot of data I've downloaded so far. I don't know if I even have space to hold the stacked disc in my room.
 
I have about 100 DVD's and CD's that I have stored pictures on. I collect pictures for Facebook photo albums and I have about 10,000 or more photos saved on disc. I could download them to my external hard drives , but since I have a big house with a lot of storage space , I just put all the discs in a big cabinet I have. I found about 200 old program discs from 15 years ago down in my cellar that I no longer wanted. I often go target shooting and I used all the old discs as targets to get rid of them. I shoot at a big old sand pit with the discs stuck in the sand banking. When done shooting , I just bury the discs under the sand so no mess to see. I also have a friend throw the discs up in the air and shoot them with a shotgun. I bet with your computer , you could download all your discs to one large external hard drive in just one day. With my computer , a fully loaded DVD can download in about 2 to 3 minutes , very fast. I think if you buy a new external hard drive , you will be surprised how much you can put on it and how fast it works. A full backup of my desktop to external hard drive only takes about 5 minutes or less. I run Windows 10 on a Hewlett Packard desktop and use Western Digital external hard drives that hold 4 tetra bites of info. They come with a built in backup program that works fast and easy.
 
Just like @Uncle Frank I back up important data on external hard drives (twice in case of very important files, such as photographies). Most of my iPhone and iPad data goes into Apple Cloud which is comparatively moderate at 120 JPY/month for 50GB, and on external hard drives. Photoshop files are stored in Adobe Cloud.

I haven't burned a CD in 15 years. :D
 
I do triple backups on 3 external hard drives every month. External hard drives are cheap
 
You downloaded tons of media, films, for example, but you also like to make backups of it. However, the hard disk is starting to overload as you download lots of films, what do you think I should do? Just reformat the hard drive and re-download the films? Or burn every film to a DVD disc that might take days and hours and so on.
Reconsider whether or not you really need all this media. Do all of them spark joy for you?
 
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