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Spring Cleaning For Your Hard Drive
Shutup Now writes "Spring cleaning for your hardrive. This article talks about some extremes for keeping your computer running well. You decide whether this stuff is necessary." More than once a year is a good idea, too.
Sad but true. Everytime I have a new piece of windows software I ask is this the one thats going to irretrievably break my OS.
I have 14GB in ~/, and I've still got another 20GB to go before I need to delete some useless files or get a new HD. But at the rate of increase, I may well have a new computer by then anyway.
Incidentally, of that 14GB, about 10MB is actually important, and that is backed up.
One step further: buy a new hard drive every spring. Their capacity doubles every year, so you don't even need to back anything up, just copy to the new hard drive and stash the old one somewhere.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
For me it comes down to a balance...
A pile of CDs ($2), several hours of an IT professional's time (mine) spent backing stuff up (3x$30-50/hr), the pain in the ass when you managed to miss something vs. that shiny new hard drive ($80).
On a straight time and cost equation, it's reached the point where it's now cheaper to buy a new drive and have a complete backup whenever I want one (plus a fully booting system I know at least semi-worked whenever I break my main one). Six months, or however much, later, if I'm sure I don't need that backup version, instead of a bunch of full CDRs, I've got an extra drive for a toy Linux box.
Then again, the geek factor of getting to fiddle with the minutae kicks in. (Although the extra drives for toy Linux boxes appeal)
If I'm short of time, buying a new drive ultimately works out cheaper. If I've not met my geekiness quota recently, fiddling's more fun.
...More often than not, it's all those System Restore points that are using up gigabytes of space (unless you're uber and have that service disabled). Just about every time you update a driver, XP will make a restore point for you, even if you don't ask for one. Thankfully, you can make XP get rid of all but the most recent:
.DLLs and junk files" they sound like someone extolling the virtue of the Intel chip because it's more "compatible and stable" than an AMD chip. I.e., locked into stale notions of a computer's capabilities. I would recommend Norton's system cleaning utilites before I recommend a full wipe.
Go to My Computer, right-click on your XP drive/partition, click Properties, click the Disk Cleanup button to the bottom right of the pie chart, click the More Options tab, click the bottom "Clean up" button and click OK. I do that about once a week and free up at least 100MB each time.
The disk cleanup applet will take care of the majority of system cruft. I don't know why people wipe and reinstall so often, it's really not necessary. When people talk to me about "random
Mostly, the gradual system slowdown people experience as they add programs over time is due to excess baggage like startup programs and unneccesary services. Check your system tray, hit CTRL+ALT+DEL and check your services list. You don't need WinAmp Agent, Mozilla QuickStart, or anything that automatically starts up anyway when you click on a multimedia file.
And check out This excellent page for getting rid of half of the services you never use anyway.
And use BootVis. It will clean up your boot time. Maybe a lot.
(*) These numbers are true on Unix but less true on Windows.
This is an important distinction, but Linux/Unix will still have problems when running out of space. Using pipes or applications that use temporary files will be adversely affected on either system if space is low. In any case, 10MB on a modern system is not enough for trouble-free operation. In the case of Unix/Linux, having not enough free space will cause problems with running X, logging, user logins, etc..
If you know what you're doing (as in, not the type of thing that should be posted in an article for novices, although he did include a warning) doing a clean install can have a *much* greater performance advantage in windows--including windows xp. Heck, from what I observed with my computer, I'd do it every 3 months...although every 6 months is good enough for most heavy users and every year should be good enough for the rest of the population.
The trick is knowing what you want to backup, and making absolutely sure that you have it in places that you'd normally back up anyway. If possible, keep all data files in a separate partition so you can just format the one where windows and the installed programs are. I'd never back up the windows directory (that's where most of the trash that I want to get rid of is), but I changed the outlook directory to "E:\My Documents\mail" (yes, I changed the my documents directory to the "data" partition as well). If you don't have a separate partition, keep a checklist of every directory that you need to backup, and save everything that you would want to backup to those directories.
The only good time to reinstall the OS is if there is something wrong with it.
Not really, sometimes there's something wrong with your system and the best way to truly fix it is by doing the clean install thing. Try running adaware and see how much spyware is installed. Then there are viruses...I've never had problems with them, but a friend of mine recently ran a scan and found 9 viruses in his computer, and his only detectable symptom was the computer would lock up often.
Basically, what I'm trying to say with all this is that, if you're careful, you can safely do clean installs without risking the loss of any data at all, and the benefits are much greater than "reorganizing and defragging". And to those who will undoubtly respond...yes, I know, I've never had the need to do frequent clean installs with my linux partition either.
One final advice for all you novices who are going to take the risk and do this for the first time. Don't follow these instructions:
Then you turn your computer off, put the operating system CD into the drive and turn the computer back on.For god's sake...don't force your cdrom open when the computer is off. Just turn it on and plop the cd in there first thing, while in the bios screen :)
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Ah, sexism at its best. Believe it or not, a number of my lady friends(ie, bachelorettes), have -exactly- the same problem. Folks, it ain't just guys who procrastinate cleaning up- women are just better at the last minute frenzied pickup :-)
Please help metamoderate.
its real spring cleaning:
when that 6 oz. of dust blocks the blades, and your PSU pops all over the back wall...
true story
400 Person LAN for Charity: Zion LAN 2005
Now, how many of you clean your keyboard the hard way, i.e. with a q-tip, trying to go between all the keys?
:) ) So go on, and clean your keyboards under the sink.
Cmon, unscrew your keyboard's upper molding and wash your keyboard under water, no soap. This is what I do and it works well. I have done it last week with my two Logitech iTouch keyboards. They look like new. Yeah, so water spills over the electronics. So what? As long as the keyboard is not plugged while washing it, and that you let it dry properly on a hot dry day (I let them dry 24 hours to be sure), they will continue to work.
Do not forget, water + electronics is not the problem, its water + electricity (off course, leaving your electronics for months under water, well, it might rust... Don't over do it.
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
When I recieved the new laptop from work, I tore Windows 2000 apart into seperate bits and gave each their own partition (4 in total). (and I mean tear it apart at the "core", not just install programs to a different drive/partition) The system part, ie WINNT directory, stays defragged and clean, just like the Program Files directory. And it has proven itself seeing this thing runs 21 hours a day and I've messed with software a lot.
home
Your system will run just as well with 10MB of free space verses 10GB of free space.
This isn't true on Unix either, but for a different reason. See the BSD manpage for tunefs for a hint:
This is one of the reasons why Unix has always had a "reserve space for root", besides making sure things like logfiles can get written even if a user screws up.
Newer FSes like reiserfs don't have this option anymore (last I checked anyway), so maybe they are more efficient about it. I've never seen any Linux docs make a similar claim, but I'd imagine that however it's implemented having a small amount of free space is also going to force higher block fragmentation.
Cryptic Allusion - New Mac and Dreamcast Games!
That has been my philosophy since about 1996, and it has served me well. Having a notebook also helps to making sure that important data is duplicated.
I buy a new HD about every 18 months, it usually gives me enough room to dump my (full) previous HD, and still have an equivalent amount of free space. It takes me about 18 months anyways to fill up what's left on the new hard drive.
My friend's trick is to buy small sized hard drives from a big retailer that gives the 'premium' warranty, which is usually good for 2-3 years. When the warranty is almost out, he backs up his data, takes the drive out of the case and drops it from waist height onto the floor. He brings it in, and thanks to Moore's law, gets a new drive that is usually about twice as big as what he originaly had, since HD manufacturers stop making the small sized drives with time.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
My wife's laptop running Win98 (and no Norton) could really use a reinstall, on the other hand. So go figure.
Congratulations! Now we are the Evil Empire
a new install every six months is the best way to make sure every thing keeps running well
Uh oh, I'd better find my Windows 2K CD and reinstall Windows, according to you I'm two years overdue!
Oh wait that was a gratuitous MS bash, I get it.
Been running Windows 2000 on a P3/800MHz very well now for 2.5 years.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Are you kidding? You have to leave your home, pay a new keyboard ($75+taxes for the Logitech which is equivalent of more than two hours of work), wait in line at the cashier, come back home and open the box. Also, you spend money for the gas, which again you had to work for, thus consuming more time.
Or, spend 15 minutes washing your keyboard in the confort of your home, listening to music. Also, my way of doing it is much more environmentaly friendly.
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
Every now and then I'll back up my home directory, and any apps I really need, and then boot off of a CD or another hard drive so that I can run disk utility and zero all data on my boot drive. Afterwards, I either restore my backed up OS (I used to do this mostly on OS9; haven't tried it on OS X), or just reinstall the OS from scratch (I just did this last night with an iMac I'm selling).
The nice thing about zeroing all data, is that it's the poor man's defrag on a Mac - your data will be written close together when you reinstall it. It's especially good if you use your boot drive for A/V work - you'll end up with large chunks of contiguous space for huge files, instead of those huge files being fragmented.
The thing I've seen most people forget is they tend to gloss over how long it took them to learn the first computer OS they worked with.
//e (as was my second since the first was stolen!). I then learned to use DOS, then Windows 3.1, then Windows 95, then Windows NT, then Linux (Slackware), then Solaris, you get the picture.
Once people know how to use a computer a certain way, they don't want to relearn. I had no choice since my first computer was an Apple
The linux documentation project is the best. Plus just do google searches for your problems. Linux is more difficult to install than windows (newer versions, 95 is a nightmare). However, it becomes quickly easier to use (kind of like OS X).
Steffen Gerlach's Scanner (see also his excellent Borland Delphi-based Civilization clone) and SequoiaView were invaluable back when my hard-drive was a puny 20 giger. I highly recommend you all get them and try them out.
P.S. Be sure to turn on the colour mode in SequoiaView.;)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Man, Slashdot readers sure show their ignorance when it comes to maintaing Windows systems.
:)
:)
This is at least the 20th post that I've seen which states "all you need to do is clean out your 'startup items' and remove excess software you don't use".
Ok, so: who can list all of the places an application/service can start from within Windows? (hint: it's more than programs\startup, win.ini, and the 3 or 4 registry keys you may have heard about - and I bet most people don't even realize this much). Ok, so you've nailed all of that. Now, it's time to remove the excess applications - what's that? All uninstallers don't behave nicely? You're finding DLLs from applications you removed that are still in \system32? How can it be??? I asked Windows to uninstall it!!!!
Yes, it's not as bad as Windows 95 these days. However, the registry just keeps getting worse. Extra and conflicing libraries are still a huge hassle on Windows-based systems. And unless you're intending on auditing, line for line, every registry entry you have (mine's a few megs of binary data, have fun), and checking every single file you have, making sure it's the appropriate version (did I mention you can't check source for most applications, so you really never know what DLL should be there?)....
Um, certified Windows professional here that has been in the NT beta program since its beginning. Putting me in the 'slashdot ignorance group' is not going to work, especially when you know very little about what you are talking about. (PS your spelling sucks as well)
You have very limited knowledge if you think that an 'uninstalled' DLL that still exists in the system32 folder is going to affect your system. Other than taking up the 32kb of space, it will have NO affect on ANYTHING under Windows.
In 'modern' Windows there are three basic areas of startup locations. The Startup Folder (including the All Users Startup Folder), The HKEY_CURRENT_USER Run area, and the HKEY_Local_Machine Run area.
However there are a few extra places that you probably don't even know about that legacy applications can place startup applications, like a win.ini file (although the win.ini files tend to be unique to the software application in Win2k and especially WindowsXP - hence the Windows folder in your user profile that maintains this).
There is also the load and run areas of the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE WindowsNT - Current Version, etc. (This one tricks most self appointed Windows Know it Alls.)
But for the MOST part ONLY the three main areas I mentioned above are used unless someone has written an app that is a worm and hides itself in the other Run areas. Software that has been written in the last eight years does not use these other areas anymore.
And again, with the conflicting DLL problems and where the DLLs should or shouldn't be are NO LONGER a problem whatsoever under Windows2k, and especially WindowsXP.
You see these 'modern Windows' OSes can put conflicting DLLs with the applications and not even let the application know that they really are not still sitting in the System or System32 folder.
It is a part of the protection mechanism in WindowsXP. And with WindowsXP, different DLL versions are isolated and can even run concurrently supporting the application that needs whichever version of the DLL it needs. This is all maintained by the WindowsXP OS. A quite nice and impressive feature of the OS that ensures stability and keeps crappy programmers from compromising other applications.
Geesh...
If you were a 'real' expert when it comes to maintaing Windows, you would not only have known this, but would only know how to clean out a system (even Win3.1 or 95) without formatting and starting over.
You know, I am also tired of the ignorance on maintaining Windows from Slashdot readers as well. Your name has just been added to the list.