or, The Care and Feeding of Your Hard Drives

Updated January 29, 2012 in Italics

Before I address the subject of this blog, let me introduce you to part of my workspace. It is a stand-alone garage, about 50 feet behind our house, that we converted into a wonderful office for me. With his office inside our house, Arnie quips that he gets to stay at home, while I have to go off to work in the morning! And yes, I pass by those two faces several times a day as I trek back and forth on the stone path between the two buildings.

Along with the normal photographer’s fare, my office is filled with framing materials, bookcases full of fiction, non-fiction, and reference materials, and special things gathered from life and travels. Here is where I spend most of my time when we’re home. Here is where I do the bulk of my computer work.

There’s a little Pussy Willow mouse, tail wrapped around a feather and hanging over the monitor. The Raven that Arnie found for me in Bryce Canyon keeps quothing, “Nevermore.” A little box under the monitor to the left is one I decorated at age eight as a present for my mother. It has an enameled copper plate on the lid. And that little red racer with the feather (I collect special feathers) is a Ferarri given to me by a Porsche friend. The two little birds were created from branches by another friend who gave them deliciously irreverent names.

There is the Bermuda Sea Garden paper-weight that my parents brought back when postage there was a mere ha’penny. My great grandmother’s Birds-eye Maple stamp box sits in front by one of my mugs (ginger-lemon tea within to be replaced later by a nice glass of red wine delivered by Arnie). A real boomerang from Oz perches over the door. (Yes, I have flung it, and yes, it returned to me!)

It is a great place to work, and six-plus years after its completion, I am still really happy with my design.

Over the years, a number of our alumni have asked, “What do I do when my hard drive(s) get full?”

Excellent question, and one easily answered, but please don’t let it get to that point. And before you tackle anything to do with the hardware, check with your computer guru to make sure it makes sense for your computer. The age of the computer, the operating system, the processor, and a host of other things can determine what is best for the health of your computer.

• defrag (defragment) your hard drive(s) on a regular basis. This is important for PCs. Macs are based on a different system, so they work differently. That process cleans up deleted-file areas. Think of lifting the plant off the porch railing. It leaves a residue. Yuck! But when you get out the heavy-duty cleaner, poof! All gone! Everyone has her/his computer set up differently, but check with your help file, Google defrag computer, or ask your computer guru to help.
• Avoid letting your hard drive(s) get more than 3/4 full, preferably only 2/3. This goes for internal hard drives as well as external ones. Computers need space to work. Have you ever reorganized your shelves when they are full? It’s hard to do. You have better success if you free up some shelf space so you can move things around.
• Use a nifty file cleaner that rids your computer of old Internet and e-mail caches, files left after uninstalls, memory caches, etc. Those files can take up a LOT of memory and/or space. I use CCleaner which is available for both for PC and Mac, and I use it regularly. I also use it to clean the registry of old entries.
• Check any backup folders you have (probably many more than you realize). Just do a search for backup, and see what lurks within. I suspect you will find long lists of backups that go back to the Year of the Dodo! Personally, I only keep the two most recent ones in any given folder. Then, don’t forget to empty your Trash or Recycle Bin. Just because you deleted all these excess files, does not mean they are gone from your computer.
• Check your Downloads folder (again search for download), and get rid of everything you don’t need any more. You may well be appalled at how much is hiding in there.
• Although this may be a bit paranoid, I make it a habit not to buy two external hard drives of the same brand at the same time, on the assumtion they are likely from the same manufacturing lot, and as such, when one fails, the other may not be far behind.
• Pay attention to how your hard drive is behaving. If it starts acting funny, and you have recently done all your defragging, catalog optimization, etc., gallop, don’t run, and get yourself a replacement before it’s too late!

And now, for us photographers who travel and tend to amass gigabyte upon gigabytes of images, plan ahead. I do, so it will take a very l-o-o-ong time before my external hard drives get to that 2/3-full mark. As you know, if you have been following this blog (also see Backup, Backup, Backup), we keep all our images on external 1.5TB and 3TB hard drives. The smaller ones are for travel, the larger ones for home.

The larger ones hold the master backup files, and we have several, as you can see from the Backup blog noted above.

We use the smaller ones to divide and tame. And their physical size is small enough to not be a traveling issue.

Margo’s travel external hard drives:

• I drive – My Lightroom catalog, my images, & BCPA images
• W drive – Arnie’s images (synced with his drive)
• N drive – Car Stuff, Family, Jobs, Videos, YouTube, and ZAP
• B drive – Backup drive for my Lightroom catalog and on-the-road new images

Arnie’s travel external hard drives:

• U drive – His Lightroom catalog and images
• F drive – His on-the-road backup

Don’t forget, your laptop can be your secondary backup when traveling.

Now, when one of the above drives sneaks up toward that 2/3 mark, I will move the newer files onto a new hard drive. Why not the older files? Why waste your newest hard drive on the oldest images? After all, those older images are already backed up in what I call multuplicate!

Remember, your Lightroom catalog is like a browser, and your different hard drives are like different websites, each full of information. I designate a letter to my hard drives that they keep, whether hitched up to my laptop or desktop. So, my Lightroom catalog (remember, it is on the I drive) reads Arnie images from my W drive, my images from my I drive, and those other ones from my N drive. Usually, I don’t even plug the N drive into my computer, but it’s always there if I need it.

If you don’t know how to designate a permanent letter to your external hard drive, check with your computer guru or your ten-year-old son or granddaughter!

And when it’s time to replace your old computer, look for expandable memory, more than you need now, and get, say, half of its capabilities. Wait a year, and memory cards will be so much cheaper. Also, get the fastest, most powerful processor you can afford, and don’t forget to invest in a good monitor. Again, though, check with your computer guru to determine what is best for your needs. There are no one-size-fits-all practices here. As one of our readers wrote — and it’s an excellent point — sometimes, rather than add memory later, it’s better to simply replace the memory card with a larger-capacity one. That’s actually what I do with my computer memory.

For Mac users, resist the urge to automatically get those nice, bright, shiny screens. They can make images look unnaturally bright and sharp, and you will be disappointed when you see your images on the Internet or in a print. For PC users, look for a screen that offers a wider view angle. You’ve already heard us on the subject of calibrating your monitor, so we don’t need to address that here.

This bring up one final hint. If you have your Lightroom set for a totally black background when you hide the Lightroom program background (press L twice), and it doesn’t look black when you view an image, then tip the screen so that the space around your image is, indeed, black.

So, it’s the new year, and we’ve given you some ideas for your own, practical, New Year’s resolution to adopt hard-drive-health-and-maintenance practices that will make your computer life much easier!

For more information on our workshops, go to Barefoot Contessa Photo Adventures.

We always love to get comments.

We also hope you will LIKE this and SHARE this blog with those interested in photography by clicking on the buttons below. We also hope you will check out these links:

• Barefoot Contessa Photo Adventures
• Facebook
• YouTube
• LinkedIn