How's your disk usage?

Hi, all.

Occasionally, I’ll find something that I figure might be of interest to others here. Many of you may already be familiar, but others perhaps not.

I downloaded an app yesterday called WinDirStat (https://windirstat.net) which gives a pretty detailed analysis of where your computer’s storage is being used. It took about an hour to run, and it revealed where the biggest storage users are… from the highest directories down to the individual files. For me, it was enlightening.

Here’s the bit concerning Xara’s software. As you know, you can set the programs to do automatic backups as you work. It will store as many as you indicate, starting anew with each file name. I won’t go too deeply into how I organize my work. Essentially, I save the project under a new name each time I reach a “milestone”, i.e., a point I want to be able to go back to if the continued work goes awry. For example, English01.web, English02.web, etc. As would be expected, each time I use a new name, the automatic backups for the old name stay in existence on the hard drive and the count starts again using the new name. I also delay optimizing images until I’m fairly sure they are how I will keep them in the final project. That can lead to very large Xara files (up to a half a GB),and consequently, very large automatic backup files.

So, when I ran WinDirStat, I was shocked to find how much storage the backups were using. Knowing that the versions I had manually saved were intact and sufficient, I carefully deleted all of the backups but the most recent (all versions of WDP and PG&D, 17, 16, etc.). The total diskspace being used went from 649GB to 488GB… a quarter of what was occupying my hard drive!

Incidentally, my full virus scan had gone from taking about five hours to about eight over the past year. I had not idea why. Until now.

So, for anyone who is interested in investigating their own computer with the WinDirStat app… and for anyone who thinks Xara backups might be hogging storage, I encourage you to check this out.

interesting app thanks, I'll give it a go

RE Xara: I also save incrementally [rename at milestones] and this is one of the main reasons I do not use xara backup; the other being that the whole system is being backed up by acronis on a continual basis

backups should be efficient, and there is no point in duplicating for the sake of it; I like all my project work in a project folder, and my backup gererations in a heirarchical, physically seperate, structure

Just use Everything. Once set up, you can add Bookmarks and Views or just browse and all details are instantly returned.
My Xara Backups are 11GB. My Xara apps are over 7.5GB. My caches are 31.5GB.

Search out SpaceSniffer if you want a dynamic, drill down, visual tool - http://www.uderzo.it/main_products/s...fer/index.html.

Any such Tool (even MS Explorer) can be dangerous if you start pruning without care.

Acorn

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Originally Posted by handrawn

interesting app thanks, I'll give it a go

RE Xara: I also save incrementally [rename at milestones] and this is one of the main reasons I do not use xara backup; the other being that the whole system is being backed up by acronis on a continual basis

backups should be efficient, and there is no point in duplicating for the sake of it; I like all my project work in a project folder, and my backup gererations in a heirarchical, physically seperate, structure

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I deactivated auto-backups a couple of months ago, too. At the time, I wasn't aware of how much space it was taking. I turned it off because it always interrupted me at the most inopportune times and would completely cut my train of thought, waiting for up to three minutes for it to finish. Though I don't use a whole system backup, I try to remain vigilant of the amount of work I do between saves, so as not to lose anything important.

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Originally Posted by gcellison

I turned it off because it always interrupted me at the most inopportune times and would completely cut my train of thought, waiting for up to three minutes for it to finish.

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Your files must be far bigger than available memory..
Also, if you switch the Backup path to another disk (not always possible), you avoid MS Windows performing lots of disk swaps.

My backup pause if around 5 seconds.

I also backup into the Cloud, all at the same time.

Acorn

three minuites is a long time

that said 5 secs is a long time if it it is not necessary when a third party does it from ghost without any interuptions at all

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Originally Posted by handrawn

three minuites is a long time

that said 5 secs is a long time if it it is not necessary when a third party does it from ghost without any interuptions at all

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But a ghost takes a finite time to collate and more to save. Before and during your file changes are vulnerable. 5s would also be the save time.

Acorn

tell me - hoe often does xara do a back up ? you can set your interval I know

I set my acronis intervals too - but it monitors the system all the time, and yes that has a performance overhead and is one of the reasons I have a high spec desktop

the whole system is then backed up in one place [and then backed out on the network]

to use xara back up would be a duplication of effort and a duplication of file instances, which i do not want

as acronis works in the background no program gets interupted, not even for 5 secs

Quote:

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Originally Posted by handrawn

tell me - hoe often does xara do a back up ? you can set your interval I know
I set my acronis intervals too - but it monitors the system all the time, and yes that has a performance overhead and is one of the reasons I have a high spec desktop
the whole system is then backed up in one place [and then backed out on the network]
to use xara back up would be a duplication of effort and a duplication of file instances, which i do not want
as acronis works in the background no program gets interupted, not even for 5 secs

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Not arguing any of that.
I was thinking of the occasions when Xara crashes.
I have a backup of 10 minutes prior, you have nothing.

As I have my design files in Dropbox, any manual save is copied straight away "without interruptions" as well.
My key files are on two separate drives, a fall-back drive, the Cloud, and a fall-back machine.
I prefer my ghosts to be for my system files rather than data; data is the more mobile.

Acorn

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Originally Posted by Acorn

Your files must be far bigger than available memory..
Also, if you switch the Backup path to another disk (not always possible), you avoid MS Windows performing lots of disk swaps.

My backup pause if around 5 seconds.

I also backup into the Cloud, all at the same time.

Acorn

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It's true that while I was developing the templates for the website, the auto-backup only took a few seconds. Once I started adding in the images, particularly a fairly large gallery page, the size exploded. The largest the project file got was 613MB, at which point I optimized all images to 192dpi, bringing it down to 326MB. In the past couple of weeks, I revamped completely, converting all jpg images into 50dpi placeholders with html code to access webp/jpg images from an external directory. The current project size is 29MB. And indeed, saving is swift. Learning as I go...

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Originally Posted by Acorn

I was thinking of the occasions when Xara crashes.
I have a backup of 10 minutes prior, you have nothing.

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re 'nothing' not so because:

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but it [acronis] monitors the system all the time

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ok it take longer to ghost the system, but acronis is fast, especially if not much else has changed, and you can argue that if a system backup taskes n minuites and you set to backup every 10 mins, then essentialy you are getting backups every ten minutes, but with an initial historical offset of n - ok it is not quite that simple, but it is the way I prefer it; and whilst the system backs up in three seperate locations [of course] I only keep the current and last but one iterations

if it is that important I could setup another backup routine to specifically bak the project file folder[s], but usually I save and therefore bak the program file iterations offline directly which keeps me happy... too much automation makes me twitchy :D

and you know, xara very rarely crashes for me these days, have not had one worth mentioning for ages [testing out new features does not count, you expect the possibility] - but then I use almost exclusively the features that have been there for a long time and who's glitches are 'established'

I am actually more concerned about losing the whole system in a power failure for example, and of course these days, xara is mostly ancillary to my workflow anyway....