Editing 2143: Disk Usage
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| title = Disk Usage | | title = Disk Usage | ||
| image = disk_usage.png | | image = disk_usage.png | ||
− | | titletext = 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] | + | | titletext = 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== | ==Explanation== | ||
+ | {{incomplete|Created by a monstrosity of a powerpoint presentation. Added a table for the pie chart items, needs filling in. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} | ||
Many personal computers provide a way to obtain a graphical breakdown of how their storage space is being used, most commonly by representing the filesystem as a pie chart in which each slice represents the proportion of the total storage space being taken up by a particular item. | Many personal computers provide a way to obtain a graphical breakdown of how their storage space is being used, most commonly by representing the filesystem as a pie chart in which each slice represents the proportion of the total storage space being taken up by a particular item. | ||
− | In this comic, Randall has illustrated the usage of his hard disk drive in | + | In this comic, Randall has illustrated the usage of his hard disk drive in a similar manner, although as is common for him, the items in his hard drive start off seemingly normal and become increasingly strange: |
− | {| class="wikitable" | + | {|class="wikitable" |
− | ! Item | + | !Item |
+ | !Explanation | ||
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|width=20%|'''Photos''' | |width=20%|'''Photos''' | ||
− | + | |Digital photographs are a common item to be stored on a hard disk; many people take lots of photographs with their smartphone and will commonly transfer them to a disk drive for safekeeping, editing, or organizing. With the high resolution of modern cameras and the ease of taking photos, it is common for photo collections to consume a significant amount of disk space. | |
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|'''Good photos''' | |'''Good photos''' | ||
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|'''Everything you've streamed since 2017''' | |'''Everything you've streamed since 2017''' | ||
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|'''A single five-year old PowerPoint presentation''' | |'''A single five-year old PowerPoint presentation''' | ||
|Almost a tenth of the entire disk space is taken up by a single file, a presentation made five years ago in {{w|Microsoft PowerPoint}}. It's unclear why Randall has kept this file or why it is so huge - possibly it is important to him for some reason, or perhaps he can't bear the thought of throwing information away, regardless of how much storage it requires. | |Almost a tenth of the entire disk space is taken up by a single file, a presentation made five years ago in {{w|Microsoft PowerPoint}}. It's unclear why Randall has kept this file or why it is so huge - possibly it is important to him for some reason, or perhaps he can't bear the thought of throwing information away, regardless of how much storage it requires. | ||
− | While it's possible that the file may genuinely be long or detailed enough to require so much space, it could also be that the file is bloated due to PowerPoint's strategy of [http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00062_Why_are_my_PowerPoint_files_so_big-_What_can_I_do_about_it-.htm converting compressed graphics to full-resolution bitmaps for historical cross-platform compatibility]. This has been known to result in PowerPoint decks that are much larger than the sum of their component files. | + | While it's possible that the file may genuinely be long or detailed enough to require so much space, it could also be that the file is bloated due to PowerPoint's strategy of [http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00062_Why_are_my_PowerPoint_files_so_big-_What_can_I_do_about_it-.htm converting compressed graphics to full-resolution bitmaps for historical cross-platform compatibility]. This has been known to result in result in PowerPoint decks that are much larger than the sum of their component files. |
|- | |- | ||
|'''"System"''' | |'''"System"''' | ||
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|'''"Other"''' | |'''"Other"''' | ||
− | |People attempting to organize their files will often end up creating a directory called "Other" or "Misc" for any files that they could not categorize. On Randall's hard disk, this "Other" directory takes up a significant amount of disk space, indicating that either his categorization system isn't working very well, or he doesn't have the discipline to properly maintain his file organization | + | |People attempting to organize their files will often end up creating a directory called "Other" or "Misc" for any files that they could not categorize. On Randall's hard disk, this "Other" directory takes up a significant amount of disk space, indicating that either his categorization system isn't working very well, or he doesn't have the discipline to properly maintain his file organization. |
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|'''Why are there two full backups of my phone from 2015 deep in a settings folder?''' | |'''Why are there two full backups of my phone from 2015 deep in a settings folder?''' | ||
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|} | |} | ||
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+ | Full backups of an old phone may have been stored to "settings" by a version of backup or {{w|file synchronization}} software which wanted to keep the resulting backup images in a location away from user control so they would be less likely to modify any of their component files, which might, for example, tend to clobber new versions with the modified old versions. Renaming a device under such circumstances might lead to duplicate backup images. | ||
+ | |||
+ | "Everything you've streamed since 2017" is likely referring to temporary media files that were stored on the disk while it was being "streamed" for viewing or listening from the Internet and never deleted when done. Streaming is a term that refers to accessing audio or video content on the Internet without downloading the entire media file first - it is instead played while it's being retrieved. An example of streaming is watching a YouTube video. | ||
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+ | 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. | ||
Alarmingly, the "Unused" portion of the pie chart is extremely small, which means the disk is nearly full with very little remaining capacity. Users don't usually worry about what is using space on their computer disk until they get an alert about the disk running out of space - this is likely when a user would resort to viewing this type of graph to figure out what they can delete to free up disk space. | Alarmingly, the "Unused" portion of the pie chart is extremely small, which means the disk is nearly full with very little remaining capacity. Users don't usually worry about what is using space on their computer disk until they get an alert about the disk running out of space - this is likely when a user would resort to viewing this type of graph to figure out what they can delete to free up disk space. | ||
The title text references the management UI of a hypothetical disk cleaning utility. The following options are mentioned in its menu: | 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. This may suggest that the unusual disk usage is embarrassing enough that the user may want to encrypt the usage report, preventing other people from reading it. | |
− | + | ;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. One alternative, could be that the tool turns image files into text files by changing the extension to .txt. This would not save any space, and would only make the files more difficult to open. Another alternative would be converting the images into so called {{w|ASCII art}}, by converting regularly sampled blocks of pixels to ASCII characters that closely approximate the general shape and at times color of those pixels, potentially saving a general impression of the content of the images while significantly reducing file size. | |
− | + | ;Delete temporary files | |
− | + | :Another real option. Temporary files are often not deleted automatically, so deleting them can save 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 would most definitely result in data loss or program crashes, including perhaps even the program doing the deleting, making it effectively single-use. If the program were capable of deleting all files in use anywhere on the planet, it would probably mean catastrophe for most of the world. | |
− | + | ;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, but in [[908: The Cloud]], the cloud is depicted as (ultimately) running on a single desktop-sized server in [[Black Hat]]'s house. Perhaps the "Optimize cloud" option would be used to enable such an arrangement. | |
− | + | ;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. | |
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==Transcript== | ==Transcript== | ||
+ | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} | ||
:[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:] | :[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 | + | :Disk Space Usage Report |
− | :[The labels on each slice is given in | + | :[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 | :[18%] Photos | ||
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+ | SOON THE TRUTH WILL BE REVEALED | ||
{{comic discussion}} | {{comic discussion}} | ||
[[Category:Computers]] | [[Category:Computers]] | ||
[[Category:Pie charts]] | [[Category:Pie charts]] |