Help!!! Save my hard drive space

[leeann77]

So, I am completely addicted to the Sweet Shoppe and the awesome designer kits. I have limited hard drive space on my laptop but I still want to be able to continue purchasing kits. How do all of you save your hard drive space and still have easy access to your kits? Am I asking too much? Am I just going to have my husband install a larger hard drive?

Please help!!!

[Darcy Baldwin]

Bigger hard drive.

[Julie Billingsley]

I know some people delete the kits once they've used them. I'm a saver though, so when I was on a laptop with a small hard drive I got an external harddrive. You can find good deals on them this time of year because of Christmas. I got mine at costco, but best buy, target and lots of places have them!

[carriesmom]

I have an external hard drive.

[kscwgirl]

Get an external from Santa. You'll need it.

[Vickilyn]

I too have an external hard drive.

[ColleenSwerb]

External hard drives all the way I've stopped storing digital supplies on my laptop hard drive to conserve space and keep it running fast.

[Balinda]

ditto! couldn't live w/o my external hard drive

[leeann77]

When you digiscrap you are always connected to your external hard drive? I do have one, but thought it might be a pain to use...I suppose I may be wrong.

I actually plan on getting a second one to save my pictures and kits on (taking to my parents house for safe keeping)

[msbrad]

Externals!!!!
I am not a lap top fan, so DH had a super desktop built for me.
At the moment...I have 3T of space (total).
I also back'em up on CD.
m

[nikkiARNGwife]

Yep..external...I have 2

[nun69]

ditto for the external hard drives

[pewtertm]

External, and backup to CD or DVD as well (because those EHDs can croak too)

[HeatherKS]

External here too. I had one of the bulky and a while back I bought one of the smaller "portable" EHD's by WD. LOVE it! Small enough to move around with my laptop. I moved all my digi supplies off of my laptop HD and things are so much smoother now!

[leeann77]

thank you...thank you...thank you! I am so excited now...off to browse the internet for a new, portable, external hard drive...I really think this will make my computer more enjoyable!

You all rock...it's always nice to get advice from the pros.

[g8rbeckie]

I tried a EHD for a while, but since I scrap on a laptop and I like to sit on my couch, I gave up on that pretty quick!

My computer is only a little over a year old - so I still have space on my HD to have all of my "good" kits on my HD with no problem. But I did beg hubby to let me get a NAS (Network area storage) device. It is hooked up to our wireless network, so I can access all of the storage space wirelessly just like an EHD but I don't have to be plugged in. Also, it has built in mirroring capabilities - I bought a 1TB HD on sale at Amazon a few months ago to go with the one that came with the NAS...so now I have 1TB of mirrored (backed-up) storage!

For anyone interested - I have a Ready Nas Duo...it also has an FTP site, a web server (so you can host photos and web content), and a bunch of other stuff. I LOVE it!!

[Emmy]

Leann - just remember that you want to have your photos, your layouts, and your kits in TWO places. If you save everything on an external hard drive and then that drive crashes, it's all lost. So yes an EHD is a great way to go but you still need to figure out a back up system whether that's burning CD's, backing up at Mozy.com, getting a 2nd EHD, etc.

[rach3975]

I tried an external portable with my last laptop (which only had a 40GB HD), and it was a pain. Fine when I scrapped at my desk, but when I was away from my desk it was cumbersome and the external would get jostled and lose contact with the computer temporarily. That led to problems with my Mozy backup and occassionally corrupt files on the EHD. I had to have the EHD plugged into the computer all the time because of my Mozy backup. If not for that I probably would have used the external for storage only and copied everything I wanted to work with for a given LO to my laptop HD. (Plus kept a bunch of basics on the laptop at all times for when I needed something and didn't have the external with me.)

Now I have a laptop with a 200 GB HD. Still small compared to what some here have, but big enough that I'll never go back to working with an external for anything but backup. I just purge often and try to be selective in my shopping.

[Kara]

I have 3 EHDs - one for current scrapping and photo stuff and backing up my laptop, one for older stuff, one backing up #2. I only have a 50 GB hard drive on my laptop.

[Sarah8914]

Leeann, I have and use my EHD for my scrap supplies... however, I don't like turning it off and on all the time, so usually I have a handful of kits on my computer at a time... until I use them, then move them to the EHD. That way I don't have to always have it plugged in/on.

And someone mentioned having more than one back up. I don't spend a ton of digi-scrap supplies, but the most important things to back up are pictures and layouts (all that time!). I don't back up scrap stuff because I don't want to pay for an online thing or invest in another harddrive... but I have back ups of pictures and layouts for sure!

[MamaBee]

I have a Buffalo Network Accessable Storage Device... it's a personal server. It sits in the basement and I can access it from my PC laptop or from my Mac desktop, wirelessly ... I can't say enough how much I love this!!

Then the server is connect to a EHD and that gets back up to Mozy. I also have a second EHD where has my favorite kits on for when I travel. We have had the server for about 6 mon, 1 TB... and it was around $250... pricey, but it's awesome that I don't need to connect to EHD when I move around the house with my laptop...