[Iamanamma]

One of the Macs under my care is used by a packrat. I've had to buy a new, larger tape drive in part to back up all the stuff she stores on her hard drive. I asked her to clean out the dead weight, and she swore she did.
Well, this week her control strip disappeared, and she couldn't print anything. I got into her hard drive to troubleshoot and found Kensington Mouseworks software (she has had a Logitech cordless optical mouse for over a year) and three different versions of Adobe Photo software (Photodeluxe, Photoshop 4.0 LE, and Photoshop Elements). I could go on, but I think you get the picture. Some housecleaning job, eh?
Anyway, I think part of the problem is that she just has entirely too many files because nothing ever gets thrown away. I mean, all I had to do to get things working again is throw out a few files I know she'll never miss. I know there's a folder limit of 32,767 files. Does that count the files inside folders that are in a folder? If so, then her Desktop folder is most likely overloaded. She really has massive amounts of stuff in there.
Anyway, any suggestions as to what I can do to keep that Mac running despite that packratism?

[doggdamac]

Yep, make her burn all/most of her files to CD/DVD ect, especially the pictures.....large and/or original photos can take up a lot of space /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
For extreme hardheads, (assumming you are the admin & running OS X) set her up a partition of 10MB or so, and change the permissions on the other partitions so she can't write to them. Then just tell her......"Hey, when this gets full, thats it, empty it or else! "

[dcpics]

you can get some cleaning programs that will eliminate old pref files, etc. of programs that haven't been used in a long time to free up a little space.
Another solution is to search the drive and set the modifiers to modified before a certain date (say 3 months ago) and kind as a document. Anything that shows up means it hasn't been used in a while and you take those, burn to a DVD and trash.
If the worker really wants it, they can go back to the DVD.

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
Originally posted by doggdamac

In reply to:

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especially the pictures

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Originally posted by dcpics

In reply to:

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Another solution is to search the drive and set the modifiers to modified before a certain date (say 3 months ago) and kind as a document. Anything that shows up means it hasn't been used in a while and you take those, burn to a DVD and trash.
If the worker really wants it, they can go back to the DVD.

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These are good ideas. Burn static files, like photos, and old documents or even installers, etc to CDs/DVDs.
For this instance though I'd recommend backing up documents and than reinstalling/updating the OS and apps. That way you have a nice clean slate to just maintain instead of trying to do a scatter pickup shuffling through numerous preferences, files, etc. Than, I'd also recommend, someone else keep track of installing/updating her apps. Multiple versions is not a very good idea for many reasons.
BTW, I'm a pretty big packrat myself. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif But I do good cleaning jobs when I finally get around to it.

[WebFusion]

Brings me back to memories of my first contact with Macintosh --- Macs for Dummies was my companion and Mr Pogue gave some excellent advice to organizing the mac. To this day, my hierarchy and folder systems are based on his sage wisdom.
BTW, one day I also "lost" my Control Strip and where do you think it went?
Yep, it had been programmed for a Function Key (F11) to hide it! My son later admitted to it, but he had me going for a while trying to figure it out!

[Iamanamma]

In reply to:

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For this instance though I'd recommend backing up documents and than reinstalling/updating the OS and apps. That way you have a nice clean slate to just maintain instead of trying to do a scatter pickup shuffling through numerous preferences, files, etc. Than, I'd also recommend, someone else keep track of installing/updating her apps. Multiple versions is not a very good idea for many reasons.

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The documents get backed up nightly. I wish I could just wipe her hard drive and start over, but...it's a small company and she signs my paychecks. My hands are kind of tied.

BTW...I can't figure out why she has kept Photodeluxe and Photoshop LE: Elements will do all the things those two programs do, and do it better!

[Iamanamma]

In reply to:

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For extreme hardheads, (assumming you are the admin & running OS X) set her up a partition of 10MB or so, and change the permissions on the other partitions so she can't write to them. Then just tell her......"Hey, when this gets full, thats it, empty it or else! "

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She's still using OS 9...I've been working on the OS X issue, but there's an awful lot of expensive software (and some hardware too) that would need replaced.

[Iamanamma]

In reply to:

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Another solution is to search the drive and set the modifiers to modified before a certain date (say 3 months ago) and kind as a document. Anything that shows up means it hasn't been used in a while and you take those, burn to a DVD and trash.

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Where does one find these modifiers, and how does one go about doing this?