This week we tackle some of your memory questions , including consolidate , de - duplication , and management .
Too many drives
Reader Jon spell that he has a batch of partly full outside USB drives formatted for use with Windows that he almost always ride on a Mac , and expects there is a lot of duplication among the different drives he ’s using .
I need some steering on the good approach to consolidate all of the data point down to one drive , best disc file system recommendations , parse through the datum for extra and deleting it , and then assay somehow , magically , unionise , filter or quickly search all of the content .
Let ’s take these in order , and the recommendations will work for any gathering of drives , macintosh HFS+ or Windows format .
consolidate : The easiest way to consolidate would be the wearisome but necessary labor of copy everything on to a individual drive . As dumbfounding as it sounds , you could purchase a 5 TB ( yes , that ’s five whole terabyte ) extraneous USB 3.0 - connect Seagate drive for $ 129 ( Amazon ) right this moment if you require that much storage . We live in staggering times .
To keep drives ’ mental object distinct , I recommend dragging the entire get on private road loudness into the new disk . This will create a folder with the entire content . You should name those descriptively , if they are n’t already , so you know to which drive they agree . ( afterwards , delete your erstwhile USB drive , and donate them to a charity if you no longer need them ! )
File organisation : Given that this reader is dealing with Windows file and wrote that he already hasParagon Software Group ’s NTFS for Mac , NTFS is probable the full format to standardize on . NTFS handles OS X file just fine , and you ’ll still be able to wax the drive on a Windows system . A converse option is to standardise on OS X ’s HFS+ and useParagon ’s HFS for Windows .
take away extra : You have a assortment of software that finds and removes duplicates to choose from , all of which analyzes the file — it does n’t rely on the Indian file name or other entropy . Only byte - identical data file are tally as duplicates . After find written matter , you could choose how or if to remove overlaps . WereviewedDuplicate Detective($3 ) andreviewedGemini($10 ) . They have slightly different feature film .
WhatSize is big at find extra , even if they have different filenames , and it can weed out file with the same name that < em > aren’t duplicates , too .
I just finisheda reviewofWhatSize($30 ) , which includes Diamond State - duplicate as part of its toolkit , and appropriate “ tough linking , ” a Unix method acting of making multiple file - organisation links to one stage set of data , reducing storage usage without effectively deleting the point that a file existed at in the original leaflet structure .
Organize , filter , and hunt : Organizing is an idiosyncratic chore , as you have to have a destination as to how you ’re sort file . I ’ve mostly give up file sorting into folders , relying instead on Spotlight . In a 2013 feature article , we asked several Mac expertsabout how they organise Indian file , and they gave a variety of answers and software recommendations .
Deleting downloads
Sally Greer asks :
Can I delete my downloads ? They are get monolithic , and since I was PC user before , I do n’t know the rules of the Downloads folder .
This may seem like a simple question to many readers , but I find folks who are fresh computing machine users or fresh to Mac get set off up on the things that old Mac hands already screw .
Every OS X user ’s habitation folder contains a Downloads leaflet , in which Safari and other browsers preferentially drop files you download . I recommend dress this folder regularly , as it can wind up becoming massive over time as subsequent interpretation of a piece of software download into .
If you have a large enough ride , you might not care about deletion . But it does inflict a burden on your backups . Even though an soggy downloaded file only needs to be stored once with any software or service that creates a substructure set of files and then incremental differences later on — including Time Machine — it still occupies space . For on-line computer backup , it ’s more you ’re upload and storing remotely .
OmniDiskSweeper can facilitate you discover and delete large files from anywhere on your Mac , including your graveyard of a Downloads folder .
I ’d argue that if you do n’t involve a data file after install software , delete it , and empty the shabu . If you do , copy it elsewhere so that you recognise it ’s useable . Most software system you purchase can be download reinvigorated , or a full copy is downloaded with each update . I recently set up several dissimilar downloaded versions of Adobe Lightroom , each a pocket-size update but also each be hundreds of megabytes !
To contain if you ’ve left jumbo downloads scatter about that you no longer ask , the folks at the Omni Group offer a free public-service corporation calledOmniDiskSweeper . It ’s not a de - duplicator , like the software program above . Rather , it can test a private road and list files from the big to small , pass water it well-off to see elephantine lumps you no longer need .
Ask Mac 911
you could email things that perplex you or demand solve tomac911@macworld.com , pinch them at me ( if brief)@glennf , or call 206 - 337 - 5833 and go away a voice mail message . ( We ’ll be experiment with some audio in the hereafter , and may put your doubtfulness “ on the atmosphere . ” )
