?'s About File Storage And Space

[sufievan]

i have a couple ?'s . right now i have about 40 gigs of movies on my laptop and probably about the same of music. i have about like 10 gigs left on my comp i dunno wat a safe number should be like wat other peoples space is like. and if u for example put a movie on itunes and its there can i delete the second copy from my movies cause in a folder there is always 2 copies of the movie in itunes and in my movies file. and any1 know of other ways 2 delete stuff i dont need

any help is appreciatedd thancx

 

[Makosuke]

Well, on the two copies, you have two options:

1) Go to iTunes' preferences, and under Advanced, uncheck "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library." After you do that, anything you drag into your library will NOT be copied to it. On the plus side, you won't end up with a duplicate every time you add something. On the negative, if you move the files, iTunes won't be able to find them.

2) If you only use iTunes, you can leave that option checked and just delete things after you add them to the library. Since iTunes will make a copy in its library, the original can be tossed to free up space and reduce clutter.

I personally use 2 with my music (much tidier), but I don't use iTunes to play videos; if I did, I'd have to think about it, since I often want to do something additional with them.

As for how much stuff, I'd say keep at LEAST 5GB free on your boot drive, preferably 10GB to be safe. Other than that, put as much as you want. Another number that gets used is 10% free, but I generally stick to 10GB.

If you have another partition for files (or an external), you should still keep at least 1-2GB free on that.

 

[twig]

My rule of thumb is to keep a minimum of 10% of my HD free, and I find that having more free space makes things run faster.

As far as iTunes goes, in addition to the above comment, to tell for sure whether or not you have 2 copies of songs/movies etc, do a spotlight search for some of your songs or movies and see if multiple copies are showing up (if you're running Leopard, simply check out the All Movies smartfolder). While you're at it, make sure you get rid of old downloads, email attachments you no longer need, expired trial versions of software, etc.

Have you ever done an archive and install when moving to a new OS? If so, you might have a 'previous systems' folder which you might be able to get rid of (or at least slim down).

There's also applications such as xslimmer which removes things like foreign languages and unnecessary code from universal applications which can free up some space.

Another idea would be to pick up an external hard drive for things like movies which take up a huge amount of space.

 

[sufievan]

coo thanks guys just the answers i need.

 

[sufievan]

actually i got another question wat would happen if u went into the music file and deleted your itunes library folder with all the music in it. would it still play in intunes like the song sare in itunes. im guessing though that would be a bad idea.

 

[sufievan]

so then it would be cool if i added the movie to my itunes and the deleted it in the movie file since it is know in itunes?

 

[twig]

actually i got another question wat would happen if u went into the music file and deleted your itunes library folder with all the music in it. would it still play in intunes like the song sare in itunes. im guessing though that would be a bad idea.

I don't have an "iTunes library folder" per say, but your setup could be different with a different version of iTunes. Within my library, there's an iTunes folder and I'm not sure what would happen if you deleted that folder, but I'm guessing it's not a particularly wise idea.

If you go to your Music/iTunes folder, you should see an iTunes Music folder which is where your songs should be stored if you had the copy to iTunes music folder option checked (they should be organized into folders by artist and album). You should also see an iTunes Library database file which tells iTunes where to find all of your files, along with an iTunes Music Library xml file which lets you use iTunes music in other applications (e.g. iPhoto). Don't touch any of these files.

If all your music has been copied to the iTunes Music folder, then you should be safe deleting any additional copies of your songs stored elsewhere on the computer If you have other copies of the songs in a folder somewhere else, try moving that folder to your desktop, then open iTunes. If iTunes gets confused and can't find your music (or if some songs are missing), then move the folder back to its original location. Otherwise, if everything is fine in iTunes, then it should be safe to delete the extra copies of the songs (again, move them to the trash, then open iTunes and see if it still works before emptying the trash).

I don't have any movies in iTunes, so I can't say for sure whether or not they work the same way as songs.

 

[sufievan]

so then it would be cool if i added the movie to my itunes and the deleted it in the movie file since it is know in itunes?

does anyone have an answer to this question because its kinda important?

thancx

 

[Makosuke]

so then it would be cool if i added the movie to my itunes and the deleted it in the movie file since it is know in itunes?

Make sure that checkbox I mentioned is checked, but if so, yes--once it's been added to your library, you can safely delete the original.

actually i got another question wat would happen if u went into the music file and deleted your itunes library folder with all the music in it.

iTunes would not be able to play anything, because the files it was playing would be gone. If you deleted the ENTIRE folder, it would open up as if it had just been installed, with all default settings. If you just deleted the folder with all the music in it, every time you tried to play a song you'd get an error because it couldn't find the original file.

So don't do this. Ever. Unless you actually want to completely wipe all iTunes settings, of course.

 

[sufievan]

ok cool thanks for all the help.