Health & Fitness
Stuffed!
What happens when your computer's hard drive becomes full with pictures, music and video files?
The patient: A newer MacBook Pro laptop
The problem: Unpredictable performance with frequent system freezes and app crashes
The investigation: My initial assessment of the computer revealed the 120 GB hard drive was 99.99% full
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The solution: In order for computers to work efficiently, they need free space on the boot drive for virtual memory operations. In the Windows OS and the Mac OS, virtual memory allows the physical memory (RAM) to operate more efficiently. If the drive is too full, the operating system can't use its virtual memory feature and the system slows down markedly, and becomes unstable, leading to the freezes and crashing apps.
I needed to delete some of the user's file to make space available for virtual memory operations, so I moved the 40 GB iTunes library to another disk drive. That gave me enough space to clone the drive and protect the data. Once the backup was complete, I installed a new 500 GB hard drive and restored the user's files.
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I recommend about 20-25% free space on a computer's hard drive to make sure the operating system can use virtual memory efficiently and system runs smoothly. As a hard drive fills with data, it has to work harder to find space to read and write the bits. the issue reaches critical mass when the drive is nearly full and it literally works itself to death trying to read and write the bits. Not a good thing.
Time on task: 2 hours
dbr ~ TeqOne
TeqOne provides on-site sales, service and support to small office and home office clients throughout the Twin Cities area. We want your technology experience to be as productive and trouble-free as possible. Call Us. Talk to real people with proven solutions for your Digital World.
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