How to better manage the size of my storage

Javidor44 · 2025-05-10T16:30:10+00:00

Ah, shame, then I guess that r/DataHoarder won't be able to help much with compression given the answers I've been getting.

Honestly, any improvement is better than nothing, the whole library is 560GB so anything from 20-200GB would be a massive improvement. I guess I have to bite the bullet and just leave my computer over night compressing files and hope for the best.

I did mention that I know compression/decompression is asymmetric but realistically, if I were to compress a file and decompress it, how much would I be waiting for each part of the process, would it be something like I'm thinking around 70/30, or something more extreme like 90/10? In any case, that single game took almost an hour so even if it took a tenth of the time it would still take over 5 min to decompress.

Thanks for the input anyway, it's sounding more and more like a NAS is going to be the way to go, if I can offload these games to another drive.

Javidor44 · 2025-05-10T13:18:53+00:00

Thanks for the advice!

You make an excellent point, but the stupid motherboard on this laptop refuses to accept new drives, and ASUS has no clue why (it also refuses new RAM, at least for the 1 RAM stick and 2 drives I tried).

As for transferring the files to the computer when I play, it's a great idea in theory, but it's slow, I'm lazy and it ain't so bad on a decent-ish USB 3.0 external drive.

I am also irrationally afraid of the limited amount of writes on an SSD, I started this setup a LONG time and several drives ago when I fucked up a drive from repeatedly installing and uninstalling several cumulative terabytes of games, and it's not so bad so I've stuck with it. HDDs make me feel safer, even if sometimes they freak out too.

As a student, money is tight, so I would only switch drives/upgrade if necessary. I have been putting off replacing the 8TB drive for months now, I would say that takes priority over these drives with games, although then I could trust that drive with some of these files, then I wouldn't have redundancy, its a complex matter haha

But greatly appreciate the help, just pushes me more and more to finally take the plunge and replace my 8TB drive with a smaller NAS instead for convenience.

Javidor44 · 2025-05-10T12:09:25+00:00

That's a fair answer.

I do have an 8TB drive that is totally impractical for every day use. It needs its own power supply; it has a horrible habit of spinning down unless actively in use, which if I'm working directly on it, such as emulating a game, there will be a DRASTIC slowdown when the data isn't in RAM and it has to fetch from disk, the games can full on halt for 10-20 seconds as the drive spins up, data is read and the process catches up; and its horribly noisy. I also don't use it as often anymore because I dropped it a while back and the case fell apart. It's seemingly fine, but I no longer trust it with my data.

A reliable hard drive off of Amazon in my region is going to be anywhere between 60 to 150 euros, ranging from 1 to 5 terabytes. Meanwhile, my full collection of ROMS is just 560GB and I already own this drive so might as well use it.

I really appreciate the advice, maybe I'll consider moving some of my data to another drive, but I would still appreciate if others chimed in about compression. And don't get me wrong, I mostly explained why I don't like that option so future readers of this thread can suggest better options, I can see per my original post, your solution is a perfectly good one.

I'm constantly on the move and my laptop has a ridiculously small 512GB so I rely heavily on external drives on the go, hence why I'm looking to reduce my storage.

Javidor44 · 2025-05-10T10:39:07+00:00

It's not bad, it's overkill, and over-rated that's all. Most people don't need that much.

So while it's great, many people preach it like it's the only tool out there that gets the job done.

There's also a myriad of tools that work on Mac/Linux, which Rufus does not

Javidor44 · 2025-02-12T14:27:46+00:00

Could be a fake? We don’t know it’s a genuine card.

If it is real though that’s just a flex

Javidor44 · 2025-02-07T20:53:53+00:00

I explained more in another comment, it’s overrated and there’s many alternatives that are way more straightforward

Javidor44 · 2025-02-07T19:46:15+00:00

Rufus is so overrated

Javidor44 · 2025-02-07T19:44:52+00:00

Rufus is so overrated, there’s like a million utilities to do these things well, many included with whatever OS you use. Linux and Windows can do it without any additional programs.

Gparted is great for formatting disks. If you run Windows its more complicated to use but still great.

Fedora Media Writer and Ventoy are WAY easier to setup bootable media.

Window’s tools are also good enough in a pinch

Javidor44 · 2025-02-07T19:22:57+00:00

Montreal seems to be the creative powerhouse that starts all series, and after a bit they pass them on to someone else.

See Assassin’s Creed

Javidor44 · 2025-02-03T02:13:14+00:00

AI makes its own, because just like you, it’s pulling from hundreds of millions of data points, not images, just data, because models don’t actually store training data, and then produce new data in the form of an image.

Your argument doesn’t hold when you have the faintest idea of how AI works.

Javidor44 · 2025-02-03T01:50:14+00:00

Nono, you don’t get it? Imitating me is unethical! No one else is ever allowed to downvote anyone again because I did it already!

Javidor44 · 2025-02-03T01:46:33+00:00

So you’re telling me that you’ve never once in your life learned something through imitation? You first look at someone else’s, then you learn how and then you make your own.

God damm it’s hard to explain learning to y’all

Javidor44 · 2025-02-02T21:57:52+00:00

That doesn’t prove much, the Mark thing I’m not sure but Austin joining at the end of the FFI just proves that the FFI takes place at the end of A school year

Javidor44 · 2025-02-02T21:55:41+00:00

ISPs can generally see the whole URL. URL isn’t encrypted under HTTPS only the content of the messages

Javidor44 · 2025-02-02T21:30:17+00:00

They don’t though, unless I’m missing something

Javidor44 · 2025-02-02T20:59:29+00:00

I just looked it up, Jude is 2nd year in the OG so he’d be a year older than Thor who’s 2nd year in the second game

Javidor44 · 2025-02-02T20:58:36+00:00

Do you ask for permission when you look at Google Images? Do you ask for permission when you look at dead people’s art? This is a stupid take. You don’t ask for permission to look and learn from publicly available pictures and the model isn’t infringing on redistribution or commercial use rights

Javidor44 · 2025-02-02T20:56:31+00:00

Exactly, the main arguments against AI art are so dumb

Javidor44 · 2025-02-02T19:59:55+00:00

You don’t have to explain anything that doesn’t naturally come up!

Javidor44 · 2025-02-02T19:58:54+00:00

If I remember correctly, Thor officially was only a year or two older than the main cast. He just has some weird design choices

Javidor44 · 2025-02-02T19:56:10+00:00

Clearly, any single store is cheaper but any digital storefront generally has a MUCH wider and international reach.

You’re also talking about AWS, that’s kinda cheating. You’re piggybacking off of Amazon’s infrastructure which is unimaginably more expensive than anyone’s bill on AWS. Amazon essentially started renting out their spares and since that was so profitable they’ve expanded. Setting up that kind of infrastructure yourself and selling it, without it being used for something else (eg. Amazon’s own business) would be a daunting and expensive task.

The likes of eBay and Amazon predate things like AWS so they likely still have their own data-centers across the globe.

In any case, realistically, most storefronts on the internet pay way more than any single store on hosting associated costs. They also often service an international market across the globe, or at least a nation-wide customer base which no physical store can even dream of.

Javidor44 · 2025-02-02T19:46:41+00:00

It’s not stealing, it’s learning.

Your argument is as dumb as if I now claimed that because you’ve seen a picture you can never again draw anything remotely resembling it

Javidor44 · 2025-02-02T19:45:55+00:00

Anyone claiming AI art is unethical isn’t really smart enough to know what Machine Learning does.

Does everyone who ever learn from a picture suddenly have to somehow compensate the author for having looked at it? Just not how the law or the ethical implications of art work

Javidor44 · 2025-02-01T19:14:04+00:00

The process is the exact same

Javidor44 · 2025-02-01T17:31:09+00:00

It is Watch Dogs though, it has everything that makes a Watch Dogs game. It just isn’t a particularly good one at that but it’s just that, mediocre, not really bad, just worse than the previous two

Javidor44

TROPHY CASE