[Paul B]

I was clearly feeling a bit dense a few years ago when I took delivery of my current desktop PC as I forgot to partition the hard drive.

Currently it contains a single 1Tb drive which is 70% full and contains 2 partitions, 1) 70mb - a tiny system recovery 2) the rest.

I use a NAS drive to backup all of my 'libraries' (My Docs, Vids, Pics etc.) but as its now also quite full there's no room to also create a system image (as the system image contains the entire boot partition, i.e. everything).

Is there an easy (and safe) way to create a partition and move them over (then the system image need only contain the boot partition and the other partition can be backed up on the NAS in the same way it is currently)? I can't just create one for the remaining space and move everything at once as there simply isn't room (clearing out some stuff over the next few days might help though). I also don't have a spare 1TB drive kicking around to create a system image on in case I get this wrong.

I'd prefer not to screw this up so any help is very much welcomed.

[Bubba]

Always used Partition Magic but it appears to have been discontinued.  Seen some recommendations for this: http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

[slackline]

Unsurprisingly I use the GNU tool parted which has a a GNOME front-end called gparted.  Should be on most live discs (e.g. Knoppix or Ubuntu) as it can be used to shrink partitions before installing dual-boot systems.

Personally I've opted to archive off old photos I've not looked at in years to an exteranl USB drive which is now full and sits there, thus freeing up space on my desktop and NAS at the same time.  Could be an option as you could get one large enough to allow you to do all of this at the same time before then archiving off old pics to it.

[tomtom]

[Paul B]

Always used Partition Magic but it appears to have been discontinued.  Seen some recommendations for this: http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

Is it simply a case of creating a partition with the empty space, moving some stuff over to it, then expand that partition using the newly found space, move some more stuff over... rinse and repeat?

Slackers - extra space comes from removing all of the shots I used to judge exposure which I never get around to deleting once I've sorted out my picks etc. It'll free up a considerable amount of space given my shooting ratio, specifically when using flash!

[slackline]

Slackers - extra space comes from removing all of the shots I used to judge exposure which I never get around to deleting once I've sorted out my picks etc. It'll free up a considerable amount of space given my shooting ratio, specifically when using flash!

 

I'm too lazy to delete tons of crap pictures, got better things to do with my time and storage space is in comparison cheap.

[Paul B]

Its not though when you consider I'd need to upgrade 3 drives from 1Tb to 2Tb, and possibly get another for a system image!

[slackline]

Frogot you've a full-frame camera (and likely snap more pics than I do).

[dave]

Slackers you should deffo delete shit, ideally in camera if its obviously turd. Despite the "digital photos are free" myth you do pay to store them, and you pay as much for the 20 shit shots as you do the one good one. And you'll be paying to store them every time you uprade a HD in the future. Plus it makes reviewing old shots harder with all the shit in the way.

[Paul B]

something like Lightroom or in your case Darktable should make this relatively quick; After import and starring or flagging picks a generic "not rated" filter shows everything thats rubbish.

I know how you love your Gmail filters, you should be able to set up smart filters that showcase your best stuff etc. too.

I'm not so convinced by deleting in-camera, I guess it depends on if you have battery to spare.

[dave]

Ok not practical a lot of the time, but a bit of deletion discipline gets the worst of the shit before it becomes a problem.

[Johnny Brown]

Those Canons must be wack, I can't think of more than one occasion I I've not deleted due to battery life worries. On the other hand, having experienced raw editing before Light roomIer can sees why Linux users wouldn't bother. Nightmare.

[slackline]

Its not that I don't ever delete anything, I do ditch obvious crap from the camera when I'm flicking through and after saving to computer I'll repeat this.  Its simply just a time thing for me, don't have enough to look at the subtleties between 2-5 shots and decide which to keep and which to delete.  Didn't like darktable and have stuck with Rawtherapee works for me, its easy moving the little sliders around, and having never even seen lightroom running don't care for what I don't know about (and am not about to start forking out for a copy to run under VirtualBox as I'd rather spend ~£100 on either kit or towards a trip away or even a 2Tb drive and don't want to be caught in an upgrade cycle paying each year or so for the interface being tweaked).  Maybe if I made money from my photography I might think differently, but I don't actively try and sell my pics as I just don't think they're good enough, and the one incidental piece of interest didn't result in anything as they "found an alternative"  ).

I don't think my strategy really costs that much each time I upgrade since I only keep the last year or two on the desktop/NAS.  If/when I need to upgrade current drives as they're in a RAID (4 x 1Tb set up as two RAID1 with logical volume management over the top == 2Tb mirrored) then when I whip them out to upgrade that leaves me four 1Tb to buy cheap caddies (£10 or I could be even cheaper and swap them over into an existing one) to archive off old photos.  E.g. currently only have one 500Gb with old photos (mostly pre-SLR so small and not masses).  This drive came out of my last computer and at the time I would have wanted to buy at least one more drive as I wanted to have a RAID array.  Can't see me upgrading body for a good few years so based on last year I snapped about 80Gb of pictures (39Gb so far this year), so a 1Tb drive could hold about ten years worth (allowing for some variation around that).  Now an increasing archive of ripped DVDs and CDs/downloaded mixes served up over DLNA eats up my hard drive space a lot quicker.

If Rawtherapee had the ability to use the Flickr API and upload directly I might start tagging pictures locally but can't be arsed doing it there and then repeating when I upload pics (if I do want to look through old pics, jump on flickr, find the set look at the date they were taken and I can drill into my archives to find them).

Its not like I regularly sit down and look at pictures from two-five years ago seeing if there is anything decent, so there may be a case for just ditching anything that doesn't make it to online backup on Flickr, but I just can't shake my hoarding, and haven't much else to do with hard drives that have become redundant so they may as well get some use.

[slackline]

  That turned out to be a lot longer than intended, sorry for the early morning ramble.

More succinctly, I don't keep everything but don't have time to hone down to one or two pictures, and relatively hard-drives are only ever going to get cheaper (~£74 for 2Tb internal seems about the best price point at the moment, which is about 20 years worth of pictures on my current cameras/picture rate).

[dave]

Are you going to keep your current camera for 20 years though? Better not buy one of those 40mp nokia phones.

[Johnny Brown]

Doesn't sound like you do any more editing than I do, ie weed out obvious mistakes, test shots etc. I rarely delete shots on the basis that another one is slightly better, but then having learnt on slides I don't treat the camera like a gatling anyway.

Appreciate Linux makes this more hassle, but spending £70 for a Windows license plus £70 for Lightroom, (or £25? OS for MAC plus £55 for Aperture) strikes me as about the best bargain under £150 you'll ever get in photography. LR4 added a lot of bloat, so LR3 would be a good place to start.

Back on topic, I think my photo folder is >400Gb. That includes a lot of scans (bigger than equivalent raws) going back to 2000. Every three years or so I buy a 2x bigger hard drive and switch the old one to backup. SSD C:/ has been a big boost to system speed.

[slackline]

Are you going to keep your current camera for 20 years though? Better not buy one of those 40mp nokia phones.

No, but I don't see me upgrading my body for about 5-10 years unless I have a huge cash windfall, and would I really need 40mp, I'm not about to stick a billboard poster on the side of my house.  But if I do end up with larger data needs, then hopefully by that stage atmoic scale memory will be viable option.

Appreciate Linux makes this more hassle, but spending £70 for a Windows license plus £70 for Lightroom, (or £25? OS for MAC plus £55 for Aperture) strikes me as about the best bargain under £150 you'll ever get in photography. LR4 added a lot of bloat, so LR3 would be a good place to start.

Possibly, I just find using VM's a ballache (I have it installed at work and home as I could get XP for free from work, fire it up at work about twice a year and never at home) and would rather make a donation to the projects I already use so that their development can be continued and features improved than paying for a new OS and software package (likely need upgrading or at the very least reinstalling it and the software when I build a new computer).  If there was a native version I might try it out and consider purchasing it as I've no aversion to paying for software at all and it would negate the need to buy an OS at the same time.

[Johnny Brown]

I don't see me upgrading my body for about 5-10 years

Assuming the thing keeps working I don't blame you. My D300 is pretty ancient tech now but it remains extremely capable and the output is plenty good enough for books and magazines etc.

Possibly, I just find using VM's a ballache

Agree, I've got Parallels on my Mac and although its brilliantly implemented I'd rather not use it if I can avoid it. It does amuse me that it outsells all of Apple's own software though! Hopefully one day there will be more/ total freedom with hardware vs OS.