Managing Your Storage
Time
55 mins
Difficulty
Advanced
Prerequisites
What's A Gigabyte Anyway?
Departments
Human Technologies
Authors
Ross Parker
Groupings
Individual
Pairs
Threes
Pairs
Threes
Minimum Year Group
None
Blurb
This unit looks at how you can manage the storage on your laptop, in order to get more out of your computer.
License
This work is shared under the following license: Creative Commons BY-SA-NC
Outline
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Cross-Curricular Links Do not try and force this. What areas of other subjects might this reflect and/discuss language. For IB, links with ToK.
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| Teacher Reflection What was successful? What needs changing? Alternative Assessments and Lesson Ideas? What other Differentiation Ideas/Plans could be used?
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15 mins
What Is Storage
Not Memory!
- Computers keep information in two main places:
- Storage
- Long term, permanent record of information.
- Generally slow, but has large capacity (e.g. 250GB)
- Either hard disk or solid state based.
- Determines how much information you can keep on your computer (e.g. 50 movies vs 100 movies)
- Memory
- Short term, volatile record of information.
- Deleted as soon as computer power is switched off.
- Fast, but limited capacity (e.g. 4GB).
- Also known as RAM.
- Determines how many applications you can run at the same time.
- To learn more about computer architecture, check out the Computer Systems Free Learning unit.
- At current there are two common types of storage on the computer market:
- Hard disk drive (HDD)
- Stores data on a magnetic disk
- Can store lots of data (2TB is typical)
- Cheap storage
- Slow
- Solid state drive (SSD)
- Stores data using solid state electronics
- Lower capacity (250GB is typical)
- More expensive
- Very fast (e.g. 4-10x faster than HDD)
- To learn to upgrade your Mac storage from HDD to SSD, check out the Upgrade Your Mac Free Learning unit.
- Whatever the size and type of your storage, you might find that you run out of space, which can slow down your computer and stop you from saving new files.
10 mins
Storage Check
Basic Software
- Mac
- To find out how much storage your computer has, go > About This Mac in your main menu, and click on the Storage tab:
- In the Storage tab you will see your total storage, how much is available, and a visual guide detailing how your storage is being used:
- You can use the Manage button to start freeing up space, however Disk Inventory X is a far more powerful tool for doing this.
- Chromebook
- Due to its use of Google's cloud systems, a Chromebook has a much smaller hard drive than a Mac
- You can check how much hard drive space you have left by clicking on the three dots in the top right of the My Files window
- Clicking on the bar that shows your remaining storage will bring you to the Storage Management menu, where you can look at what kinds of files are taking up space and start looking at what to delete
30 mins
Disk Inventory X
Advanced Software
- This block only applies to Mac users
- Disk Inventory X is a free tool for inspecting your Mac storage in order to free up space.
- It is not included with your Mac, but can be downloaded from this website.
- The software is open source, which means you don't need to pay to use it.
- The video below explains how Disk Inventory X works. Spend a little time watching the video, and using the software on your computer. Just remember that if you delete files that your computer needs to run (e.g. parts of your operating system), then your Mac may stop working! Ask your teacher if you are unsure.
- How much disk space are you able to free up using this software?
Finishing Up
Evidence
- Choose how you wish to show your learning in this unit (e.g. document, video monolog, video tutorial, video screencast, poster, web post, etc).
- Gather your evidence in your chosen form.
- Submit your evidence.
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