A question of space!

[greybird]

I recently had a "blue screen" error on my computer, which referred to lack of available space. I have
defragmented it and removed several programmes which were not used. I understand that photographs take up a lot of space, and, looking through the photo batches I have stored, there a are quite a lot that I could do
without ( I do have another issue with this, which I may put on another thread).

Can anyone tell me if I can delete individual photos, and if so, how? As far as I can see, if I ask for "delete", it wants to delete the whole batch, which I don't want.

[col48]

You'll need to say what 'it' is -- by which I mean what program you are using to try to delete the photos. Then a user of that program can advise.

Do you know what kind of space the blue screen was referring to?
If it means memory, then no amount of deleting files from the disk will make any difference.
If it means disk space, it could be an issue with the size of the 'swap file' (which is used as a temporary overflow from the memory) or with the amount of unused space on the disk. There should be no problem if the latter is (say) 20% of the capacity, and you might even get away with 5% if you are very lucky.

[greybird]

I didn't know there was more than one kind of space and I didn't write down what it said! After the defragmentation, I think it said I had 24%, so presumably this is OK? How do I know how much memory I have?

[greybird]

Sorry, I got interrupted and didn't answer your first question. Its just the Microsoft programme that comes up when I plug the camera in.

[col48]

The 24% after a defrag would be disk space. Should be OK.

I'm assuming you use Windows.

Memory. I've forgotten how for Windows, but it will be something like looking in the 'Control Panel' and clicking on 'System'. How much you need will depend on the kind of things you do. The most demanding tasks are video editing (which could be photo editing software) and games with a lot of video action.

Thinking of this another way, if you only have running at any time the programs you need at that time, you will have less requirement for a lot of memory. Each program will have its own need of memory while it is running; if the memory is full and more is called for, the least active applications are temporarily shifted to the swap file on disk. When you call on one of these, it is shifted back to the memory and something else swapped out - this can slow things down a lot. Reality is more complicated - editing ten photos will need just one copy of the program but copies of each of the photos in memory. If even the swap space gets full there is nowhere to go and the computer crashes - I don't think the sophistication exists to say "if I do what you've asked I will crash so please don't ask".

If you've got more than 3Gb for a 32-bit machine (there is a limit of 2.somethingGb for what it can use) or more than 8Gb for a 64-bit machine adding more memory will make no difference.

I'm more hazy on the size of the swap file. Ideally it will be as big as the size of your memory (RAM). It is a hidden file with the .swp extension - I think in somewhere like the C:\.system hidden directory. The size is set when Windows is installed, and I don't know how it can be changed safely - not when Windows is running, for sure, as it will be in use! A Google search should yield the answer.

[greybird]

Thank you Col. OK, if I am understanding you correctly, the memory issue consists of my possibly asking it to do too many things at once? I can sympathise with it in that case because I can't either! So if I have too many little windows open at the bottom it will complain?

I wasn't doing anything with photos at the time it crashed, but I take your point that it uses a lot of memory. I have been using Picasa for this (mentioned on my other other thread) - I assume the same applies?

You have probably gathered the extent of my computer ignorance!

[col48]

Re the 09:58 post. I think the program is probably Photo Editor or Picture Manager. Perhaps it is organising your individual photos into albums without your being aware of it and it thinks you are wanting to delete a whole album. When you are running it can you click on 'Help' and 'About' (or it may call itself 'Help About' and report back what it calls itself, including the version?

However, I haven't used either program in earnest and it is outside my knowledge. Anyone got any experience of PE or PM?

[PS the swap file is also referred to as Virtual Memory - it means the same thing. It might be possible to change its size when Windows is running, for the change to take effect next time the machine is booted up]

[col48]

So if I have too many little windows open at the bottom it will complain?

If only it did! It might just get slower but more likely it would just crash. What's more, you can't say n windows good, n+1 bad because it will depend on the specifics of each and what order they were opened in and last accessed in. It's a bit like packing a car - how soon it gets full depends how you pack it, repack it and repack it again.

The way to overcome (or cope with) ignorance is by asking questions. And that's what forums like this one are for.

[WendyPusey]

If I want to delete one photo only I open the folder that it is in, find the photo and press "delete".

[greybird]

I do feel reassured about the memory - I shall have to take more notice of what I'm doing I think. I tend to lurch from one thing to another (like this morning - I'm supposed to be putting my son's accounts onto a spread sheet, but it isn't nearly as interesting as this!).

I will have a look Wendy at the folders my photos are in and have another go. Perhaps I am just reading it wrongly. Once the photos have been stored, it appears to want to treat all of them alike - for instance, if I ask it to rotate one picture, it rotates all of them. I am doing this by right-clicking on the picture - perhaps I should be looking somewhere else.

For now, however, back to the accounts!

[greybird]

Thanks very much for the help - really appreciated!

[TrevorFranklin]

While you are using your PC, files that are needed by the processor are stored in memory for only the time that they are being used in its calculations, they are then put in a 'swap file' that is on the hard drive.
When you open an application, all the instructions etc that the processor will need are in this file and called to memory as and when needed, when you close the PC this is all deleted.

While you are working on a file EVERY change is saved as a sepearate version of that file in the temporary area on the hard drive, this is how you are able to undo many previous actions you have carried out.
So if you are working on a picture that was 4MB, you could end up with 40MB+ of temporary versions of it being held on the hard drive space,

This is making your storage space less and less, until Windows will warn you that you are running out of space, because it will not be able to hold further application instructions or file versions.

Defrag a drive is only putting files that have pieces spread all over the hard drive together in one place to make them faster to open and has nothing on saving space.

Any drive with less than 30% free space is getting too full for the 'expansion' process the computer needs to do to function correctly
You MUST either move images onto alternative storage (CD etc or external drive) to free up space, or have a second hard drive installed to act as the 'data store' where all the images etc will be and the original drive will then only have the applications and operating system, which will not have the problem of running out of expansion space for all the temp files it needs to run correctly.

[col48]

Trevor is substantially correct, but I hope he won't mind if a pedant raises a few quibbles!

While you are using your PC, files that are needed by the processor are stored in memory for only the time that they are being used in its calculations, they are then put in a 'swap file' that is on the hard drive.

The data (and the program itself) are held in memory until that memory is needed for something else - which may be more data for the same program or something else entirely. Even then, it may only be a part of the data or the program which is 'swapped out'. When it is needed again, something else is swapped out if necessary. The whole process is handled by the Operating System (eg Windows) and the program has no influence over it - and all the user can do to influence it is to set the (maximum) size of the swap file up front. As long as this maximum size is big enough there should never be an issue with it. I think the swap file will never get smaller in normal use and is likely to reach the set maximum size very soon after the computer is first used (ie out of its box).

when you close the PC this is all deleted.

The swap file remains, but there is no way to interpret its contents and in any case it will be partly overwritten next time you switch on.

While you are working on a file EVERY change is saved as a sepearate version of that file in the temporary area on the hard drive, this is how you are able to undo many previous actions you have carried out.
So if you are working on a picture that was 4MB, you could end up with 40MB+ of temporary versions of it being held on the hard drive space,

This is making your storage space less and less, until Windows will warn you that you are running out of space, because it will not be able to hold further application instructions or file versions.

These temporary versions do not go into the swap file - not that Trevor says they do - but go elsewhere on the hard disk. Quite possibly they would be hidden files and/or stored in a folder specially created by the program - I'm talking generally rather than Picasa in particular. This is under the control of the program. Hopefully it will delete all these temporary versions when it closes (or, better, as it goes along). But what if it crashes? Office programs (Word, Excel etc) usually have a Recovery Mode so they can pick up more-or-less where they left off when they are restarted and in this case these temporary versions could be deleted at the next normal close. But the critical word here is 'could'. And if there is no Recovery mode, the temporary files will stay around until you delete them. I don't know ccleaner, but it may well not do it for you.

For some people the 40Mb of Trevor's example may not be a problem (what's 40Mb in 1Tb, after all?), but multiply that by 50 pictures and then allow a proportion of the temporary files to stay around and it could add up quite spectacularly. When Windows complains of lack of space, it wouldn't be because of what you'd just done so much as the weight of what you had done over a long period.

Defrag a drive is only putting files that have pieces spread all over the hard drive together in one place to make them faster to open and has nothing on saving space.

With large disk drives such as are normal today, this is 99.99% true. But a badly fragmented nearly full disk may lack the contiguous disk space which some processes need.

Any drive with less than 30% free space is getting too full for the 'expansion' process the computer needs to do to function correctly
You MUST either move images onto alternative storage (CD etc or external drive) to free up space, or have a second hard drive installed to act as the 'data store' where all the images etc will be and the original drive will then only have the applications and operating system, which will not have the problem of running out of expansion space for all the temp files it needs to run correctly.

You'll see many different figures quoted instead of Trevor's 30%, but the principle is a good one. If you are doing anything which has the potential to eat up most of your resources, make it eat up dedicated ones so that your main ones are not compromised. Like giving a student lodger his own fridge and locking up your own!

[greybird]

So, I should store my pictures on discs and delete the ones on the hard drive. Once they are on a disc, would I be able to have access to them - for instance to attach to an email - or are they "fixed" once I've done that? Is it just pictures that take up a lot of space, or are there other things I should move?

I do have an external hard drive (my old computer died and my son-in-law got all the old stuff out for me), but now I have a problem looking at the stuff on it, it says it needs another programme in order to read it, but I have been unsuccessful in applying it. You can tell the extent of my ignorance - thank you for explaining things so succinctly!

[TrevorFranklin]

I was trying to simplify if for the fourm
But the fundimentals about space being used up while working on files remains
:-)

[col48]

So, I should store my pictures on discs and delete the ones on the hard drive

In all the below, where I write DVD, CD would be ok. It's just that a CD has much less capacity than a DVD.

Be fairly relaxed about it - keep an eye on the amount of space on the hard drive and move pictures off once the amount of free space gets down to 30% (or whatever figure you decide). Up to then, they are more easily accessible on the hard drive. When you move them off, make at least two copies so that one can serve as a backup to the other and make sure you can access the photos on both copies before you put them away on the shelf, rather as one is supposed to do when making any kind of backup. It's also an opportunity to organise them more closely to how you want, so that instead of having (say) all this month's pictures (whatever the subject) on one DVD you have all this year's pictures of one subject on a DVD. Don't delete them from the hard drive until you have checked you can open them from the DVD.

Once they are on a disc, would I be able to have access to them - for instance to attach to an email - or are they "fixed" once I've done that?

If you have copied them to a DVD in the correct manner you should be able to access them just as before, except that you won't be able to edit them or rename them - in other words the DVD is fixed but you can still read what's on it. The correct manner means creating a temporary folder on your hard drive, copying in what you want to be on the DVD then "burning" the DVD from that folder and finally deleting the folder. The process you use may hide the detail of that under a single action on your part. This is one case where drag and drop directly to the DVD will not work.

Instead of this you might also tell the computer to do a backup with your photos to the DVD; in this case you may not be able to read the individual photos on the DVD - to access them you may have to restore them to your hard drive. It depends on the backup program you use.

If you can open the photos directly from the DVD so you can see them on screen, you can attach them to an email. Both processes would be slower than from the hard drive, but it should not be too bad.
Once you have composed the email and done the attachment, you need to bear in mind that you are now storing a copy of the picture on the hard drive as part of the email. This space is not freed up until you delete the email from your Sent box and the Deleted box is emptied (perhaps when you close your email program - it depends what options you have set there).

If I were you, I would suck it and see. Send yourself an email with an attachment made this way and see what happens. As long as you have not deleted anything from the hard drive up to this point you haven't lost anything.

Is it just pictures that take up a lot of space, or are there other things I should move?

Other things can take up space, but high-resolution pictures, some PDF documents, videos, downloaded TV programmes and films probably cover most of the field. And, as I said above, emails with big attachments also take up space - if you don't normally delete old emails it would be worth looking through them for big ones with a view to deleting them. Small ones don't matter any more than small files, unless you have tens of thousands of them. Most email programs will tell you the size of the emails in each folder/box (including attachments), a bit like your Explorer / File Manager program does for the hard drive.

I do have an external hard drive (my old computer died and my son-in-law got all the old stuff out for me), but now I have a problem looking at the stuff on it, it says it needs another programme in order to read it, but I have been unsuccessful in applying it.

Ask son-in-law! Sounds like either there is a fundamental incompatibility or something new has gone wrong.

I hope this helps - sometimes I can be too complicated!