Remember you do not gain the space until you empty the recycle bin make sure you do that.

So Total space is 74.7 GigBytes and you are using 42.6 GigBytes.

Then (74.7GB Total)-(42.6GB Used)= 32.1GB of free space left. Plenty of space left. When it gets down to 14GB FREE SPACE left then you would need to start freeing up more space.

100 pictures is not really that many unless they are extremely huge in size, as zep said you still have a good amount of free hard drive space. Is it hard drive space you are referring to with resources?
documents are generally text if this is the case they take up very little space on the hard drive.

are you concerned about how much memory RAM you have on the pc? what has you concerned? is it running slow or having some kind of problem?

A typical high quality digital picture might be around 2 Mb in size, so a hundred of them would be 200 Mb, or about 0.2 Gb, so you can see that those 100 pictures are a trivial part of your available storage.

As long as the hard drive has about 20% free space it is good. Storing things like photos does not diminish your resources unless your hard drive is overfilled. Much like when you bring food from the store and put it in the cupboards, it does not impact your ability to work on your kitchen counters.

A few times I have had close to 10,000 photos each about 3 megabytes on my hard drive with no ill effects.

Well, then, this brings up a question I have long wondered about, and can ask, as long as we are talking recycle bin, I clean it out from time to time, know that it goes "somewhere" on the machine, just where do these things go when you empty the recycle bin, and how does that stack up. I know it can't really "go" anywhere, it does stay on the machine somewhere, and this has always puzzled me greatly.
Could someone enlighten me?
Raven, I am concerned, not because of what I have on the computer, just that I see lots of times, ladies saying their puters have crashed, am wondering what exactly causes this, and thought perhaps if I were to take my documents etc., that I want to save, and store them on flash drives, would be a better thing than worrying about computer crashing? I am no geek, hence, trying to find the simplest way, for me anyhoo, to store things and be able to retrieve them, these are crochet patterns for my own use. Lots of text, little pics, hoping this is a simple solution, and know there are lots of people out there that will have other ways to guide me, but this seems simple enuf to me, at least at this time.
the machine is not running slowly at least right now, and as I stated, am just worried about perhaps something inadvertantly happening, and I would lose the great amount I have amassed, was my worry.
This computer world is wonderful, and I am trying so hard to at least try and participate in it.
Thanks so much for your concerns, your replies, and your information, KISS, always heard that in supervisor class, Keep It Simple, Stupid, and have tried to follow that!
Thanks again folks, you have been great!!!!!

When you save a document, picture or anything else the operating system recognizes that the area of the hard drive occupied by it is no longer available for any other use. When you put something in the recycle bin, that protection is removed and some or all of that data can (and probably will) be overwritten when you add/change other documents, pictures or programs.

In general,

When you empty the Recycle Bin the items in the bin figuratively leave, but in actuality are still on the H/D. The space they occupied is designated available to the O/S to be used for new data. Once that space is overwritten the previous data is gone.

Since you dedicated your crash question to RC I will wait for her answer before contributing.

DA

fwiw
I saw a girls computer the other day on remote desktop.
To try to make hard drive space she apparently drag/dropped her 'myPictures', the whole folder, into the trash/recycle bin. And did not gain any free space.

It didnt delete the folder in the original location, nor any of the pictures contained in myPictures. She deleted nothing.

I emptied the recycle bin,, and still the pictures remained in myPictures folder, until I selected and deleted them. Then I went into my documents and it probably contained every download she had ever made probably in all the time she had owned that computer and deleting those made quite of bit of free space followed by running ccleaner to remove microsoft update remainders.

That wasnt all.... her C: root was full of pictures too. I didnt take time to search *.jpg,bmp, etc.. but i left with the feeling that probably lots more were around .. she had a huge hard drive and not really huge free.

Mikie,

I too have seen downloads and pictures galore on systems. And as you report all over the place too.

For the inexperienced user, and even for the more seasoned user who hasn't done it in a while, a START>Search>jpeg could be a very enlightening experience.

DA

There are a gazillion reasons a computer could crash. To protect your valuable photos, the key is to back them up somehow outside of your computer. Than could be an extra memory device, on a DVD, or on a flash drive. I don't really like those flash drives as a total backup thing because being so small they are easy to loose. But the key thing is, develop some kind of backup routine so you don't loose all your family photos if your computer crashes for ANY reason.

feel free DA I think she used my name since I had asked her if she had some specific concerns.

I think it is a great idea that you are trying to make a back up of your valuable files shaddy, if you find using the thumb flash drives is what you can do then that is fine, it depends on your level of knowledge and confidence. There are many methods of course, doing an image of the entire hard drive is an excellent choice also. Anytime you want to learn how to do some of those options just ask, someone here can help you.

As to what might have caused someones computer to crash well that could be any number of things including malware or infection to not keeping the insides of the computer clean and free of dust bunnies.

Shaddy, I agree with RC's suggestion of saving your crochet patterns, etc. to flash drives in addition to having them on the hard drive of your computer. One reason is that you can then share those patterns with another person who has a computer by taking the flash drive and plugging it into a USB drive on the other person's computer. I do that to share programs and applications with my friends, and it saves having to download these from the Internet onto their computers. Flash drives are very inexpensive, and though they are easy to lose, I don't believe that would be a problem for you. Mine have all come with lanyards or wrist straps, so I can actually "wear" the drive wherever I'm going with it. And, best of all, they are easy to use. Just ask here if you need instructions.

As regular readers recognize I support backups. Further, I always promote that if the data is critical to the user multiple cross media backups might be in order.

For those who might not be familiar with the concept; backup on a thumb drive and a CD or DVD. No media is 100% efficient so cross media backups will reduce the chance of loss even greater.

Speaking of CDs, for long term permanent storage an archive quality CD is preferred rather than the standard media. The disks are more costly, but their production technique and materials are far superior for long term.

DA

Grandms, again, you are coming thru for me also, and yes, that is my thinking, I am pretty good with keeping things handy, and my little techie, he comes with his flashdrives loaded with things I might need, or programs he uses to clean me up sometimes, great thought.
Thanks to you all, this has been an enlightening experience, and sometimes I actually feel I am moving forward with this computer, in other words, I learned sumpin new!!!!!!!!!!!!
to anyone else that has replied, your words are most important, and have been saved by me for future reference, never can have too much of that.

various companies make very nice little cases to hold flash drives, I have several from Case Logic, think I may have picked up some at walmart, this keeps them safe and handy and I can even put a little label in the individual slot so I know what is on that flash drive.

this is exactly like one of them the pictures show how they have the individual slots for each one. They have larger ones that hold more also.
Caselogic JDS-6 USB Drive Shuttle 6-Capacity

I have similar cases for my memory cards

I agree that it is always better to try to do backups to more than one type of media because you never know when one type will become obsolete or will degrade. But one is certainly better than none!

raven what a wonderful idea, and thanks for sharing with me. Of course, someone found a need, and is filling it with this case. How thoughtful, and will check it out certainly.
You all have been so wonderful, I really appreciate your interest, your time, and your concerns!!!!!!

Ooh. I love this thread. So useful. Since folks have been encouraged to ask, here's some simple questions:

- is there a recommended brand of archival dvd?
- I've never used a flash drive. Any particular brand, size or type I should get? that might depend upon purpose. Some for backing up word documents. Some for music, pictures and then there's video (about 300GB so far). I'm thinking video is best backed up on separate hard drives and not flash drives. So I have my Tivo with 2TB and a new, second internal 1.5 TB hard drive in my pc.
- this is really elementary. if I plug a flash drive into my pc, how do I choose which documents to copy? or do I pick the files first, and then insert the flash drive. (and I even need instructions as to how to select the files)

I think I'm forgetting some question, so that's it for now.

Thanks.
Lynn.

there are many many brands of them Lynn, I generally get Kingston but any of the regular name brands are fine, I have never had any problem with my Kingstons.
I think you are right about your video that is a LOT and being on an external drive or tivo is best.

you plug the flash drive into your usb port on the pc or a usb hub, you can move files to it in various ways, go to the file, highlight it right click and select send to and you should see the flash drive listed there sometimes by name or sometimes by a drive letter. You can copy an entire folder if you want the same way, you can drag and drop also if you prefer. I usually open the folder my files are in and highlight them in blocks of several (do you know how to select blocks to highlight?)then right click the block and select send to and the drive.

Just be very sure that you use the safely remove icon in the systray before removing the usb flash drive!! you don't want to corrupt anything.

Lynn, flash drives come in many different sizes, also. The first one I bought was a SanDisk Cruzer and held a whole 128MB! Then I bought a 1GB by PNY. I bought a Kingston 4GB at Big Lots last week for $12. I plan to use it to put all my music on since I only have my music on my computer's hard drive, and after losing it once, I don't want to lost all those good ole "moldy oldies" again.

BTW, another way of adding things to the drive is to copy and paste, although that is more time consuming.

Shaddy back with a question for Raven, can you explain to select blocks of folders, as in text below, and also, what's with the safely remove icon in systray about? Don't understand the corrupting thing.
Need answers to these perplexing questions, please?

"I usually open the folder my files are in and highlight them in blocks of several (do you know how to select blocks to highlight?)then right click the block and select send to and the drive.

Just be very sure that you use the safely remove icon in the systray before removing the usb flash drive!! you don't want to corrupt anything."

I was talking about how to hilight more than one line as in a whole section or in a list several items at one time as a block.

place the cursor at the very beginning of the word or phrase that you're trying to highlight, before the first letter. hold down the "Shift" key and keep it held down.
now go to the end of the list or section/block that you want to highlight place the cursor at the end and click. that entire section should now be highlighted and ready to select. It is called shift clicking.

there are a lot of highlighting tricks here are more
How to Master Text Highlighting with Your Mouse
How to Highlight Text Like a Keyboard Ninja

about using the safely remove icon in the systray here is why you need to do that any time you remove anything from a usb port on the pc.
"Many USB devices (and certainly all flash/pen drives) draw power from the USB port itself for their functioning. Yanking off a device without using safely remove feature could affect both the device and the port.
Certain operating systems do delayed writes to devices to optimize writing. If this is the case with the operating system in question, there is a risk of data getting corrupted if the device is pulled out abruptly. Writes could continue even after the operating system signals that the writing is over. If the light on your device is blinking, it means that it is in use and should not be pulled out."

It is quite simple to do, when you plug any device into the usb port it will be recognized, in the systray by the clock you will see a new icon the safely remove icon, when you are completely done using the usb device click on the safely remove icon, select the device, wait till it tells you it is safe to remove it.

you can google it for more info also