[vip_students] Re: Mini Tutorial:Hard drive space usage
- From: "Edel Carey" <careyedel@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <vip_students@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 00:47:42 +0100
Hi Paul
Thank You for that.
I think I will be embarking on a very big deleting session shortly...
Edel
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Traynor" <paul.traynor@xxxxxxx>
To: <vip_students@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2007 9:13 PM
Subject: [vip_students] Mini Tutorial:Hard drive space usage
Here is I hope a simple breakdown of what gigabytes, megabytes, kilobytes
and terabytes are which should give you some idea of how to look at your
disk
space in some sort of logical manner.
First we have;
Gigabytes:
here is a definition of the size of 1 gigabyte;
. 1024 Megabytes.
(That is 1 thousand and twenty four megabytes of hard disk space,
approximately one billion bytes, or About 1,000 megabytes (MB) of data.)
Megabyte:
. An amount of computer memory consisting of about one million bytes. The
actual value is 1,048,576 bytes.
Kilobyte:
. A unit of measure equaling 1,000 bytes.
In this unit of measurement a kilobyte tells us that our file size is only
"one thousand characters in size".
Byte:
A byte is just that one byte. A byte contains "8 bits". Bits are the
components of a byte. You could compare a byte to a character of the
alphabet such as the letter "A", thus a byte = the letter A or one character
of the alphabet.
BIT:
. A bit (abbreviated b) is the most basic information unit used in computing
and information theory. A single bit is a one or a zero, a true or a false,
It is difficult to explain a precise description for a bit. It is a piece of
a larger unit. Remember that we have eight bits in a byte, eight characters
if you like then consider a bit just one of those overall eight characters.
The definition says that a bit is either true or false. Think of each of the
bits in a byte being like switches, each bit is either "on or off". this is
how our computers determine what a byte of information means. It sees
certain bits in the byte turned on and some turned off. This is a little
advanced
for this tutorial so just don't make it anymore complicated in your head
than this okay.
Now let me break down what bytes and megabytes are for you.
* 1 byte of data = 1 piece of a character of the alphabet if you like. It
takes 8 bits to make up one complete character of the alphabet.
Note: 1 byte of data = 8 bits.
So every byte of data on the computers hard drive is equal to one letter of
the alphabet. for example;
"a b c d e f g h" = 1 byte.
So one gigabyte of computer memory is = to one billion bytes of characters.
Computers are really very stupid machines so need to have their information
given to them in a very simplistic form. I would say that while the above
seems
confusing to you it is actually very simple and unfortunately our minds due
to conditioning over the years have made this whole explanation seem
difficult
when it is not.
(Determining the hard drive size)
How to find out the size of documents or hard disks on your computer:
In order to find out the size of your hard drive do the following exercise;
1. While on the desktop, press the letter "M" till you hear jaws say "my
computer".
2. Press the enter key or for magnification users, double click on the my
computer icon.
3. Use your arrow keys to move either up, down, left or right till you hear
jaws say something like "local drive C". You are now sitting on the hard
drive
icon.
4. While n the hard drive icon simply press and hold down the left alt key
and then hit the enter key. This will open up the properties of the hard
drive.
The properties of something give information about the item and its size
etc.
5. Now for screen reader users, jaws users, press the jaws cursor key which
is the "minus key" on the top right side of the number pad then press the
numpad
"9" key to go to the top of the properties screen and using the "numpad 2"
come down a line at a time to read all about your hard drive and eventually
its size.
Window eyes users, press the "WE cursor" again the minus key on the top
right of the numpad and again use the numpad 2 key to come down the
screen.
Below is a screen shot from the hard drive on my laptop for you to look at.
This will indicate to you what you need to look for and what it is all
about.
Local Disk (C:) Properties
General Tools Hardware Sharing Quota
Type: Local Disk
File system: NTFS
* Used space: 32,505,106,432 bytes 30.2 GB
* Free space: 8,177,094,656 bytes 7.61 GB
Capacity: 40,682,201,088 bytes 37.8 GB
Disk Cleanup Drive C
Compress drive to save disk space
Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching
OK Cancel Apply
End of diagram)
Above I have prefixed two of the lines which were important to me with a
"star". Those lines indicate to me the size of the hard drive and what is
used
and what is remaining for me to work with. Check these out on your computers
and see what you have.
So now for a little research on a users computer to try and understand how
to determine the overall size first of all of their computer and then break
down into simple terms sizes and what is used and what is left.
Edels computer I calculate when she first got it contained an "80 gigabyte
hard drive".
This means that the computer contained about "80 thousand million bytes of
information space for her to use."
Of this space the operating system takes up about four gigabytes of space,
now we are down to approx "76 thousand million bytes or 76 gigabytes of hard
disk space." If we were going to install something like windows vista then
we would have to allow 15 gigabytes of space Microsoft tells us.
The next part is hard to define. Installation of programs such as Microsoft
Office will most likely take up another "3 to 5 hundred megabytes of space"
not to mention games etc on top of that so really we can't really determine
how much space the collection of applications and games will have taken up
on her computer, I personally never concern myself with this because it
would just give me a headache and while 80 gigabytes of disk isn't
considered large
by today's standards it is certainly capable of holding all of Edels needs.
Now we move onto the files and folders that Edel wishes to have in her "My
Documents" folder. Again we have no way of really breaking down how much
space
these items will consume in terms of hard disk space as you can begin to
write up a file about something such as a letter to your friend. At the time
the
letter was started it may only be something like "80 kilobytes" but later on
you decide to write in more and more information and suddenly it becomes a
book of about "2 megabytes" Now look and compare using the definitions of
sizes at the beginning of this document and contemplate in your mind what
the
size was like when you first started and what it is like now in terms of
size and try to understand what you have created here!!, some would say "a
monster".
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