Three Videos Of A Cat On A Roomba?

I remember times when data storage was extremely limited. Not only was it expensive, but it took up a lot of physical space.

There were days where data was stored on audio cassettes. I was quite young then. By the time I was actually doing anything meaningful with computers, we had had 5 1/4″ diskettes. You could initially store 360 kilobytes of data on each. That’s about a tenth the size of a single modern day’s photo taken by a smart phone.

In those days, every byte counted. So much so, that tiny text files mattered. You’d have to use multiple diskettes for certain apps or games.

Times changed. Soon we had hard drives. You could suddenly store a lot more on your computer. At the same time, what you COULD store also grew in size. Higher resolution photos, better quality videos and music. Richer and more complex apps and games.

It seemed like a zero-sum game. You could get more storage, but it would still fill up.

And so, data storage is as much of a problem today as it was back then, it’s just the scale that changed.

One way to deal with the problem is clean up apps. These usually delete temporary files and help you find duplicates. I use a few of those on my different devices.

For Windows, there’s NoClone and CCleaner. For Android, you have Google’s Files. For my Mac, I use dupeGuru (which is multiplatform and free). To free up some space on the cloud, read up on cleaning up Gmail.

We have a lot more space now. However, it is still limited. Use it wisely. Let these apps help. And enjoy all the extra free space.