If you are building a new computer, or looking for a great way to upgrade the performance of your current machine, many people recommend picking up a Solid State Drive instead of a spinning Hard Disk Drive. SSD's have several advantages of their spinning counterparts, including faster read and write times, and better reliability in environments where shocks and drops are common (like laptop computers).  However, they do require some management that you might not be familiar with.

Writen  by: Chad

Screenshots by: Chad

Introduction

With the recent wrath of natural disasters, HDD prices have skyrocketed, which make SSDs seemingly more affordable. But there are a couple of glaring downsides to SSDs. The one that affects the most people is the size to cost limitation. My iMac, which I will use as a reference in this article, came from the manufacturer with a 1TB Seagate drive. That is plenty of space for gaming, video editing, and general everyday computer use. However, I upgraded to an Intel 320 Series SSD with 160GB of storage space. That is a significant reduction in usable space for an increase in performance and decrease in boot times.

Now I have to do something that I hadn't had to do in a long time; manage my disk space. It is important to know what is taking up the most space, and be able to clean out old files quickly and effectively to maximize the usable space that the drive has available.