Harddrive Is Probably Full

#1

Post by ilreb » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 1:33 PM UTC

Harddrive Is Probably Full
marginalia.nu

Re: Harddrive Is Probably Full

#2

Post by mfro » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:50 PM UTC

I think about this problem often in life because of my tendency to procrastinate. Only the long term effects that cause me serious paranoia get any real attention (failing to meet social expectations, major health issues, large-figure finance problems). It’s absolutely necessary to define the constraints before they define you. This requires a lot of forward thinking and effort but considering how little time we get on this earth… worth it

Re: Harddrive Is Probably Full

#3

Post by ThrowawayTestr » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

I bought a 8tb drive just before prices exploded so I'm alright

Re: Harddrive Is Probably Full

#4

Post by kmoser » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 6:06 PM UTC

This is a variation of Parkinson's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law: "Data expands to fill the space available for storage."

Re: Harddrive Is Probably Full

#5

Post by komadori » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 6:18 PM UTC

I recently ran `df` and was surprised to see that I'd used more than half of the two terabyte SSD in my laptop. So, being apparently atypically proactive, my first action was delete all of the target directories in my Rust projects and was equally surprised to see that it freed up nearly 10% of my disk usage (~200 GB)!

Re: Harddrive Is Probably Full

#6

Post by AKSF_Ackermann » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 6:25 PM UTC

And i am wondering what do people even fill their storage with, and why do they need so much. In my case it is ~200-300 out of 1TB on 2 laptops, 37 out of 128gb on phone. And i don't even actively manage it.

Re: Harddrive Is Probably Full

#7

Post by victorbjorklund » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 6:27 PM UTC

My harddrive at 1tb has around the same amount of free space in % as my previous computer with just 256gb.

Re: Harddrive Is Probably Full

#8

Post by msh » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 6:30 PM UTC

AKSF_Ackermann wrote: post #6

And i am wondering what do people even fill their storage with, and why do they need so much. In my case it is ~200-300 out of 1TB on 2 laptops, 37 out of 128gb on phone. And i don't even actively manage it.

My photo library is around 700 gb.

Re: Harddrive Is Probably Full

#9

Post by throw2ih020 » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 6:35 PM UTC

AKSF_Ackermann wrote: post #6

And i am wondering what do people even fill their storage with, and why do they need so much. In my case it is ~200-300 out of 1TB on 2 laptops, 37 out of 128gb on phone. And i don't even actively manage it.

I have one single video game I play that takes up around 650GB, so I have a dedicated drive for it. And between 1 and 2 TB of movies, TV, and photos. Everything else is ephemeral/scratch space for whatever I'm working on.

I used to be into amateur movie making and editing, and back then I needed many TB of space for the stuff I pulled off my cameras before it got edited down.

Re: Harddrive Is Probably Full

#10

Post by tyleo » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 6:36 PM UTC

komadori wrote: post #5

I recently ran `df` and was surprised to see that I'd used more than half of the two terabyte SSD in my laptop. So, being apparently atypically proactive, my first action was delete all of the target directories in my Rust projects and was equally surprised to see that it freed up nearly 10% of my disk usage (~200 GB)!

I’ve also noticed this with rust. Those target directories can get huge.