Make data on hard drives smaller?

Yucca · 25 Apr 2008 at 20:57

Hi all,

Ok i have 1 1TB hard drive and 3 500GB hard drives and there all almost full. I have loads and loads of video files, avi's divx's and even some HD stuff.

All this video stuff is taking up loads of room, understandably. I want to keep it all on my pc, burning it is not an option as i like to have all my media at the touch of a button.

My question is is there any way for me to compress all my videos or make them smaller but retain the quality and still be able to either play them straight off or easily and quickly after uncompressing them?

I know zipping them would be a waste of time as i think im correct in saying that for eg a 25 GB folder would probibly be compressed to 24GB or something.

So any ideas, besides buying some F1 drives!

Yucca · 25 Apr 2008 at 23:33

JBuk said:
2.5 tb of files is a serious amount for a home user

are you starting your own archive or something?

anyways isnt there an option in windows to compress your drives?

I keep all my files on my pc. I want to have all my media at my finger tips.

There must be another way besides buying more space.

Yucca · 25 Apr 2008 at 23:35

Oh and one more question, if i buy another TB Hard drive and want to set it up in a raid 0 with the one that i have thats already full, is there any way to do it without moving all the data?

Yucca · 26 Apr 2008 at 15:25

Well if it helps anyone at all to know, especially helmutcheese, i want/need more space because my pc goes everywhere i go, ie when im at uni its here with me, when im home for the holidays its home with me. And i am getting a flat in the summer and again, my pc will be with me. I dont like having to carry around 20 tv series box sets, 100 odd dvd's and 100's of cds. It wastes space and its annoying.

And as mentioned by someone above, its nice to have everything online (meaning on your pc) rather than having to search through loads of cds.

To be honest maybe it would have been a good idea for my to keep more stuff on back up dvd's and burn stuff as i aquire it but the problem now is that i have so much data that even at 4GB a pop dvd burns, burning about 2TB will take a while!! And again it defeats the above object of having it in fingers reach.

I think i might have to buy a couple of F1's. I brought my 1TB drive only weeks ago (2 months max) and at the time i paid £140 odd, it was the cheapest TB drive with 32meg cache. At the time the F1 was a similar price. Im shocked that F1's are now only £100! I wonder why they are so much cheaper than the rest...