Many times it’s a surprise to people that their hard drives are filling up, in part because they don’t realize that some types of files (such as movies, photos, music, etc.) take up a lot of storage space compared to, say, a Word document. In some cases, much of the hard drive is taken up with personal files, particularly music, photos, and movies.
While our agency policies and procedures allow for limited personal use of agency computers, we need to make sure you have adequate room on your computer for your operating system, your applications (such as Firefox, Chrome, Office, Boardmaker, etc.) and your work files. There also needs to be “extra” space left over so that you can run updates to your software. With that in mind, we recommend no more than 50 GB of personal data be stored on your agency computer.
To help you from getting to the point where your computer is too full, Internal Technology staff will notify you when your hard drive has reached 80% or more of capacity. At that point, we recommend you reduce the amount of data on your drive. For example, you may choose to delete unneeded files, empty the Trash after you delete files and/or move files into Google Drive. While it’s acceptable to put some personal files in Google Drive, we would like to keep that limited as well since the Agency pays to back up our Google Drive files.
If you want to know how much space you are using and how much you have available on your hard drive, you can go to the Apple menu in the upper left hand corner, choose “About this Mac” then click on the “More Info” button, and you will see a screen similar to this:
Choose Storage, and you will get a screen like this, showing the space that is used and the space that is available on your hard drive.
These same general guidelines are true for agency iPads, as well. There will be additional guidelines and reminders about iPad storage in upcoming issues of The Connection.
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