Latest news with #digitalstorage
CNET
7 days ago
- CNET
Running Out of Google Drive Space? Try These Expert Hacks to Boost Your Storage
It's summer, so that means you might take a bunch of pictures and videos of your sun-soaked days and other adventures. But if you use Google Drive for digital storage, your photos, videos and other random documents can eat up the 15GB of free storage faster than you can say "summer vacation." If you run out of storage, you'll see a message asking you to upgrade to a Google One plan, but that doesn't mean you have to buy digital storage. If you're willing to create another Google account, you can transfer all your old email and files for free. But if that sounds like a hassle, here are some other tricks to easily clear space in your digital filing cabinet. We recommend trying these tips on your laptop rather than a phone, as you'll have an easier time sorting through and managing files. We'll walk you through both processes if you have access only to a mobile device. 1. Easily find and delete large files If you want to keep the majority of your items in Google Drive and Gmail, you can free up space by sorting each service by file size and deleting only one or two large files instead of a few dozen smaller items. Deleting one or two videos that take up multiple megabytes of space is easier than sorting through hundreds of old documents of similar file size to decide which can be deleted. Delete files by size in Google Drive Here's how to delete files by size on your desktop. 1. Log into your Google Drive account. 2. Click Storage in the menu on the left side of the screen. 3. The Storage page should list your files from largest to smallest, but if not, click Storage used on the right side of the screen. The files should now be ordered from largest to smallest. 4. Click on the large files you want to delete to select them. You can select multiple files by holding the Shift key on your keyboard. 5. After selecting the files for deletion, click either the trash bin that appears near the top of the screen or click and drag the large files to Trash on the left side of the screen. You're not finished when the items are in the Trash. From there, click Trash on the left side of the screen to go to the Trash menu. Then, click Empty Trash on the right side of the screen, and then click Empty forever. You can also delete files by size on your mobile device. Here's how. 1. Open your Google Drive app and log into your account. 2. Tap Files in the bottom-right corner of the screen. 3. Tap Name underneath My Drive near the top of the screen. 4. Tap Storage used. This will arrange your files from largest to smallest. You can select My Drive and then Storage used again to list your files by smallest to largest. 5. Tap the three dots (...) next to the item you want to delete. 6. Tap Remove then Move to trash. Google says in the app that Items in your Trash are deleted forever automatically after 30 days. If you want to speed things up and empty your trash now, here's how. 1. Tap the hamburger icon (three stacked lines) in the top-left corner of the screen next to Search in Drive. 2. Tap Trash. 3. Tap the three dots (...) in the top-right corner of the screen. 4. Tap Empty trash. Whether you need to make more space or just want to keep your Gmail tidy, it's easy to make room for storage in the service. James Martin/CNET Delete files by size in Gmail You can also delete your files by size in Gmail. Here's how on desktop. 1. Log into your Gmail account. 2. Type has:attachment larger:10MB into the search bar and hit Search. This will show you all emails that have attachments larger than 10MB, from largest to smallest. You can use this format to filter by other size files, not just 10MB files. 3. Check the boxes to the left of each email you want to delete, then click the Trash icon across the top of your screen. It should be under Conversations. 4. Click Trash on the left side of the screento go to the Trash menu. If you don't see Trash, click More and Trash should be in the expanded menu. 5. Click Empty trash now at the top of the screen. You can delete files in the Gmail app similarly too. Here's how. 1. Open your Gmail app and log in to your account. 2. Type has:attachment larger:10MB into the search bar and hit Search. This will show you all emails that have attachments larger than 10MB, from largest to smallest. You can use this format to filter by other size files, not just 10MB files. 3. Tap into the email you want to delete. 4. Tap the trash bin icon across the top of your screen. 5. Tap < in the top-left corner of your screen. 6. Tap the hamburger icon in the top-left corner of the screen next to Search in mail. 7. Tap Trash. 8. Tap Empty trash now. Note that once a file goes to Trash, it'll automatically delete after 30 days. 2. Empty your spam folder It's easy to forget about emptying your spam folder, and it can take up unnecessary data in your Gmail account. Emptying your spam folder — and your social or promotions folders — is another way to make space. Here's how to empty your Spam folder on your desktop. 1. Log into your Gmail account. 2. Once you're logged in, click Spam on the left side of the screen. If you don't see Spam, click More and Spam should be in the expanded menu. 3. In your Spam folder, click Delete all spam messages now. 4. Click OK in the pop-up. Here's how to empty your Spam folder in the mobile app. 1. Open the Gmail app and log into your account. 2. Tap the hamburger icon in the top-left corner of the screen next to Search in mail. 3. Tap Spam. 4. Tap Delete all spam messages now or Empty spam now. Don't let spam bog down your Gmail. Getty Images 3. Delete old or duplicate photos in Google Photos Google also includes Google Photos in the 15GB of free storage it gives its users. Photos and videos can take up more space than text-based files, especially higher-quality ones, so it's a good idea to go through and delete old and duplicate photos and videos to make room. There's no option to arrange your photos and videos from largest to smallest like in Google Drive and Gmail, so you'll have to go through and delete items manually. You can check how much space a file is taking up by selecting it and clicking the "i" for information from the top menu. Here's how to delete photos and videos from Google Photos on your desktop. 1. Open and log into Google Photos. 2. Scroll your mouse over photos and videos you want to delete and click the gray checkmark icon in the top-left corner of the photo or video. Do this to as many photos and videos as you want. 3. Click the trash icon in the top-right corner of the screen. 4. Click Move to trash. 5. Click Trash on the left side of the screen. 6. Click Empty trash near the top-right corner of your screen. 7. Click Empty trash again, and you're set. Here's how to delete photos and videos from the Google Photos mobile app. A note for Apple users: If your Gmail is linked to your iCloud account, the two digital storage spaces may also be linked. This means that when enabling the Backup & Sync feature on Google Photos, all your local photos on your iPhone will be displayed on Google Photos. If you delete a photo on Google Photos, then the local photo on your iPhone will also be removed. When the local photo is removed, it won't show up on iCloud. You'll be able to tell if this is you when you try to delete an image on Google Photos; a pop-up window will let you know you're about to delete from both places. 1. Open and log into Google Photos. 2. Tap the photo or video you want to delete. 3. Tap the trash can icon in the bottom-right corner of the screen. 4. Tap Delete. 5. Tap Library in the bottom-right corner of the screen. 6. Tap Trash. 7. Tap the three dots (...) in the top-right corner of the screen. 8. Tap Empty trash. 9. Tap Delete. If you don't click or tap Empty trash on either desktop or mobile, the photos and videos you've deleted will automatically be deleted after 60 days. Bonus tip: You can reduce the file size of some photos and videos in Google Photos. Doing so will allow you to regain some space, but it will reduce the quality of your media. You can learn more about this from Google Support here. Photos and videos in Google Photos can take up a lot of storage. Sarah Tew/CNET 4. When all else fails, download your files to your desktop If your storage is still almost full and you can't part with any more items from your Google Drive, Gmail or Google Photos, you can download your items and store them directly on your computer. Here's how to download all your Google files for storage on another hard drive. 1. Open and log into your Google Drive or Google Photos account on your desktop. 2. Select the files or photos you want to download. 3. Click the three stacked dots in the upper-right corner of your screen. 4. Click Download. Note that Gmail will download messages as a .eml file. 5. Once the items are downloaded and moved onto your hard drive, feel free to delete them from your account and empty your trash bins. You can download emails from Gmail in much the same way, but you have to download your emails one at a time. While this makes downloading your emails more tedious, it's still possible. Here's how to download your emails from Gmail. 1. Open and log into your Gmail account on your desktop. 2. Click on the email you want to download. 3. Click the three stacked dots in the upper-right corner of your screen. 4. Click Download. Your emails will download as a .eml file. 5. Once your emails are downloaded and moved onto your hard drive, feel free to delete them from your account and empty your trash bins. For more on Google, here's everything the company announced at its I/O 2025 presentation. You can also check out CNET's impressions of Google's Android XR glasses.
The Verge
06-06-2025
- Business
- The Verge
The best ways to digitize your documents
When you're preparing to move, you can find yourself faced with a lot of paper documents. Holiday cards, leases, letters, tax documents, notes, doodles – whatever – can really stack up over time. If your choices are only 'keep' or 'trash,' it can be hard to let go, even if you choose one of the more responsible ways to get rid of your stuff. Digitization makes these decisions easier by adding a third option: create a virtual version for safekeeping and say goodbye to the physical paper. These days, digitization only requires a smartphone or a tablet, but you'll want to optimize the process while reducing the risk of data loss. Decide what to do with your papers In my experience – and I've been digitizing boxes upon boxes of documents for the past six months – there are only a few types of records worth keeping on hand after creating a digital version. These are original government documents, legal agreements such as a will or a current lease, items that might lose their form or meaning when reduced to images on a screen, and anything you may want to display in your home. Of course, there will be exceptions. Maybe you decide to toss every birthday card but keep the one your grandmother sent before she died. Or maybe you just feel better retaining hard copies of every tax document, even though the IRS says it's generally okay to scrap them after three years. You do you. What you'll need to start After you've decided your documents' fate, you can get to work. At minimum, you'll need a mobile device and a flat, clean surface like a tabletop. While that's technically enough to do the job, I recommend also having a computer, a way to transfer files between your devices (like a cable, AirDrop, or cloud storage), image editing software, and at least one backup drive. If you have a truly overwhelming stack of papers, you may want to consider buying or borrowing a scanner to help. A scanner that comes with a feeder can quickly scan a bunch of documents at once rather than doing one at a time, and most scanners can save images directly to your computer or to your cloud storage. Home scanners that are meant mostly for documents can run about $100 to $500, depending on their features and capacity. Scanners that handle high-quality images may cost considerably more. Personally, having used scanners in domestic, professional, and academic settings, I think they're great for archival work, but are overkill for most people's digitization needs. I've used my phone for my own digitization project and have no regrets. Digitizing with your phone camera There are three easy ways to capture a digital image of any paper using your phone: with your camera app, a built-in scanning app, or a third-party scanning app. I use whatever is most appropriate, depending on what my plans are for the digitized copy. While you're likely most familiar with your camera app, it's not great for text documents and particularly cumbersome for multi-page ones. That said, I like to use my usual camera app for cards and art because it creates editable image files that I can organize with tags. Scanning apps, meanwhile, usually only output PDFs. I use this method for text-heavy documents like leases and financial records. Both iOS and Android include built-in scanning tools that are quite capable of turning any document into a PDF. On an Android phone, you use the Drive app; with an iPhone, you can use either the Files or the Notes app. All of these allow you to simply hold your phone over the paper and wait; the app outlines the page and automatically creates a file. There are also a number of third-party apps that offer additional features for capturing, editing, and storing PDFs. If you want more options than Drive, Notes, or Files can provide, it may be useful to check out what's out there. Best way to digitize images Lay your document flat in a well-lit space with no shadows. Weight it down if necessary, but try not to block anything important. An encyclopedic knowledge of camera angles won't matter here. Hold your phone flat and level over your document, without casting shadows onto the page. I also recommend cropping your pics immediately to save time and make the images easier to see in previews when you're organizing. If you're capturing cards, you can photograph the cover and interior separately, then use image editing software to combine them into a single file. Backup your files If you've built a repository of digitized documents on your phone and are thinking of leaving them there — don't. That's like stashing your birth certificate in a folder at an open window and trusting it won't blow away. To mitigate risk, transfer your digitized documents to a computer, a backup drive, and / or cloud storage. Despite advancements in storage technology, data loss still happens, and it's safer to keep your important files in at least two locations in case something happens to one of them. If you use Google Drive to scan your documents, you've already automatically backed them up to the cloud. To send those documents to another device that doesn't have access to your Google Drive, you can download them using Google Takeout. If you use Files or Notes on iOS, you can check to make sure that your files are being backed up to iCloud by going to Settings > [ your name ] > iCloud. If you're using Files and want to send those files elsewhere, tap the three dots in the top right, hit Select, pick the files you want to transfer, and touch the share icon in the bottom left (a box with an upward-pointing arrow). If you use Notes, tap the note you want to transfer and select Share Note. Then choose your preferred sharing method and ship 'em out. Organize your documents No matter where your files are — a computer, mobile device, or cloud storage — you really should organize them so you can find them later. If you have a system that works for you already, great. But if you need a strategy, I recommend creating top-level folders like 'cards' and 'records' that describe the broadest categories within your collection. Within these, make more specific folders, like 'leases' and 'identification.' When you get to the bottom-level folders where the actual files live, try to name them consistently. If you really want to go hard, you can add tags and other metadata to your files. It's important to understand that the goal here is not to completely eliminate anything that could be considered clutter — it's to find an efficient solution to managing the items we accumulate as we live our lives. It's okay to hold onto meaningful items and make a measured assessment of their value from time to time. After all, drowning in a sea of paperwork might be bad, but living a life devoid of meaning and mementos might be even worse.
Gizmodo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Gizmodo
Seagate 20TB External Hard Drive Just $0.01 Per GB, Amazon Rushes to Empty Inventory
The amount of photos, videos and files that we have on our devices makes traditional storage options obsolete. If you have a hard drive that has 2, 3, 4, or even 5TB of space, it is almost useless when a single vacation's worth of high-res photos and video can take up ample space. That's why smart people are looking for big, reliable external drives, and what better time to upgrade to an external drive? Seagate's long history of reliability and durability makes them a great brand to go with: Amazon has the Seagate expansion 22TB external hard drive at a record low (and all time low) price now of $249, over 50% off of the launch price of $599. Both 20TB and 24TB are way more expensive, make sure you get the 22TB before it's gone. See at Amazon Lifetime (Safe) Storage Why take someone's word when here is a drive that could last a lifetime? The Seagate Expansion 22TB is a 'long term investment' in your digital life. If you're a creative professional or just someone who wants to keep every precious memory safe, this drive could last you years of content. Add to that Seagate's reputation for reliability means, you can rest assured that your data will be safe and secure for ages. In comparison to cloud storage, which will run a minimum of $10 a month (and often much higher for larger capacities), this one-time payment option is a bargain. The process of opening the box to setup the Seagate 22TB HDD is fantastically easy: The drive is designed to be very simple to use and you just plug in the included power adapter and USB 3.0 cable and you are all set. USB 3.0 has the added benefit of helping to move files quickly and efficiently with minimal time wasted for large files. Also, it will seamlessly work on either your Windows computer or Mac. What we really liked about this drive is the included Rescue Data Recovery Services. Accidents can happen to anyone, and when they do, having a safety net can be critical. Seagate's data recovery service takes the worry out of it by knowing if something goes wrong, experts could recover your files. Unfortunately, many external drives don't offer you any data recovery protection, so this is a real plus for Seagate. Since Seagate Expansion 22TB is a desktop-type external hard, it works perfectly in a home office, home studio space, and to help anyone centralize their digital file storage. The 3.5-inch size will also provide better performance and reliability than the small-portable external options. Plus, the shape and size of this product looks really nice and easy to manage. If you were going to upgrade your method of backup and storage options, now is the time to do so. See at Amazon
