2143: Disk Usage

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Disk Usage

Title text: Menu -> Manage -> [Optimize space usage, Encrypt disk usage report, Convert photos to text-only, Delete temporary files, Delete permanent files, Delete all files currently in use, Optimize menu options, Download cloud, Optimize cloud , Upload unused space to cloud]

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a monstrosity of a powerpoint presentation. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

Computers save their data on memory; traditionally this was known as the hard disk drive, though it is increasingly common that it is not a literal disc and may be made of flash memory (this is traditional in computers such as smartphones). Users can ask the system for a breakdown of the usage of their hard disk, which is usually displayed as a pie chart such as this comic. As with everything else in Randall's computers in the comics, his hard disk usage is... strange.

"Photos" and "Documents" are both common things to see in a disc usage report. Randall has marked a distinction between "photos" and "good photos". The ratio between these two suggests that there is an alarming number of "bad" photos on the computer.

The fact that almost a tenth of the storage is taken up by a single powerpoint presentation made five years ago means that it is either a ridiculously long, or ridiculously detailed presentation in order to use so much storage.

"System" is another common thing to see in the graph. This contains files the user is not using but the computer needs to run, such as the operating system. Randall has put quotation marks around the word to highlight how nebulous the term actually is and how he has no idea what the system files actually are.

One more possible explanation is that folder names like "Other", "Cache", "System" refer to storing porn while trying to hide this fact by using unsuspicious folder names. Hence the quotes.

The title text references the management UI of a hypothetical disk cleaning utility. The following options are mentioned in its menu:

Optimize space usage

A common non-descript phrase often found in such tools.

Encrypt disk usage report

Often, one might want to encrypt data on the disk, not reports about said data.

Convert photos to text-only

Plain-text documents take less space than pictures. Scanned documents can be automatically transcribed (OCR). However, applying such an algorithm to photos will result in garbage.

Delete temporary files

Another real option. Temporary files are often not deleted automatically, so deleting them can safe a significant amount of disk space.

Delete permanent files

A made-up term, that might refer to the user's documents, pictures, etc. You would not want to delete them.

Delete all files currently in use

Deleting files that are in use might result in data loss or program crashes.

Optimize menu options

Those options could really do with some optimization. (a reference to the first entry?)

Download cloud, Optimize cloud

Here, the cloud probably refers to cloud storage (online storage). Cloud storage would be too large by many orders of magnitude to fit, let alone download onto a desktop computer.

"Optimize cloud" might again be a reference to "optimize disk usage".

Upload unused space to cloud

"Uploading empty space" is a) impossible and b) would result in less space being available, which is the opposite of what a disk cleaner utility is supposed to do.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[This comic shows a pie chart with 10 slices, each with a label and a line pointing to these ten different sized slices. There is a caption above the chart:]

Disk Space Usage Report

[The labels on each slice is given in clockwise order starting from the top middle. The percentages are estimated from the image and are noted in the square brackets before the transcript:]

[8%]: Why are there two full backups of my phone from 2015 deep in a settings folder?

[23%]: "Other"

[9%]: "Cache"

[2%]: Unused

[21%]: "System"

[9%]: A single five-year-old PowerPoint presentation

[6%]: Everything you've streamed since 2017

[3%]: Documents

[1%] Good Photos

[18%] Photos

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Discussion

Seems fine to me! 172.69.62.40 20:54, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Finally managed to contribute something again! It's 00:00 now, so I'll pick this up tomorrow if noone else has by then -- //gir.st/ (talk) 21:56, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't see what's alarming on ratio between good and bad photos. With digital cameras, actually choosing which photos are good takes more time than taking them in first place, so its often skipped. -- Hkmaly (talk) 22:47, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

Why do I feel so seen?!? Explain THAT! 162.158.255.88 23:52, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

I think the menu option about "Download Cloud" in the title text is referring to the general concept of the cloud - in other words, downloading the "entire" cloud, not their own personal cloud storage! Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 00:36, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Why is there an IP editor bolding random letters? RandomIsocahedron (talk) 02:13, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Look at the bolded letters. It's the guy who plasters 'soon the truth will be revealed' everywhere again. 162.158.114.94 09:58, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

I totally missed the message contained in the bold letters! I guess the truth was not revealed to me! Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 12:55, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

I've replaced the table with a description list, as per the Editor FAQ. It's obvious that one is the "item" and the other its "explanation." -- //gir.st/ (talk) 17:04, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, I was just thinking I should probably do that :) Hawthorn (talk) 17:09, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

I think that "Optimize menu options" relates to the facility in older MS Office whereby it "hid" menu options that you hadn't used for "a while"; in theory "optimising" the menu and only showing you the options you used recently but in reality if you didn't use one of the programs for a long time you could open it and, so helpfully, find all your menu options gone. Not sure what to word in the explanation tho'. Nobby (talk) 07:15, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

FYI about the "Convert photos to text-only" part: Sometimes, when downloading pictures from internet the file is somehow saved as .txt and double click will successfully open as such (although it will look like gibberish as-is). If opened with a photo-viewing program that detects files with wrong extensions (IrfanView for example) the file can be renamed and opened as the photo file (.jpg usually) without loss of information. This can be used to hide photos not intended to be seen by other people.

"Convert photos to text-only" What about UUEncoding & UUDecoding? When newsgroups were much bigger, it was a popular way to transmit images. These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For (talk) 04:36, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

that's an encoding, not a conversion. (this section, imo, already has way too many things. i'd trim it down to 1) ascii-art and 2) captionbot-like services) -- //gir.st/ (talk) 22:10, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

I mean he's got more free space than I do and I've got no videos, no documents, less than 5MB of photos, only about 1MB of which is actually on my computer's internal storage, and less than 2GB of applications, when you're using a laptop with 29.1GB max storage and no capability to format drives as internal for some reason or to increase said storage, you really start to hate system, and you wish that your internal storage could be replaced with that one SD you have that has more than 10 times the storage of your entire computer. 10:46, 26 June 2019 (UTC+12)

Randall has been known to use Mac computers (see comics referencing OS X "say" command, "Trash" folder, etc.) and the default MacOS disk storage display ( menu -> About This Mac -> Storage) is notorious for displaying huge wodges of used storage space with only the vague labels "System" or "Other", which can end up being infuriating when trying to clear out a hard drive. I'm pretty sure that's where this comic comes from. 172.68.66.63 11:10, 9 June 2022 (UTC)