Another information technology problemo in the world order. This time my hard drive filled up and almost all of my disk space was being used without my knowledge. An application by the name of LBRY desktop client used up around sixty gigabytes of disk space.
Anyways, I was able to track down the culprit by using a tool already installed in MX Linux which is a Debian derivation Linux distribution. This tool is named appropriately Disk Usage Analyzer. This tool I think is a default package when you install MX Linux operating system.
When you first open up this computer software application, you will notice a "Scan Folder" button in the top left corner. This will allow you to browse your Linux computer hardware and choose a folder that you want this tool to scan. Disk Usage Analyzer helps you analyze the disk usage of your hard drive.
I think this tool may or may not work with compact disc, digital versatile disc, universal serial bus drives, secure digital cards, etc. In MX Linux my home folder was listed at the top. Also, my three hard drives were listed.
You can choose your home folder and any of your disc drives listed. When you choose a device or location by clicking on it, this disk usage analyzer computer software program, will begin scanning your location or hard drive of choice. This program uses color coded graphs to help you analyze and or diagnose your hard disk usage.
White means little to no disk usage. Red means that that folder, location, hard drive, etc. is being heavily used. Disk usage analyzer shows your file folders on the left hand side of this computer program.
The graphs are shown on the right hand side. You can choose between a "Rings Chart" or "Treemap Chart" on the right hand side graphs. There are small icons on the bottom of the right hand side.
On the left hand side of this disk usage analyzer tool, you can click on a folder to highlight it. There are small arrows to the left of each folder, that when clicked on, will expand and show sub folders. On the left hand side you click on a location in one of the "Rings Chart" or "Treemap Chart" to browse your file folders.
Also, if you hover your mouse over these charts, this program will display the folder name and how much disk space is being used. The left hand side has a four columns labeled "Folder", "Size", "Contents", and "Modified". You can sort each individual column by clicking on each tab.
The "Size" tab column displays how much disk space is being used per folder. You can keep browsing each folder by exanding them until you find the folder and or file that is causing your problem. This tool helped my diagnose the fact that LBRY desktop software application literally filled up my hard drive.
You can obviously just use this tool to keep any eye, so to speak, on your hard drive usage. With this tool I was able to find out which folder LBRY application was storing over twenty thousand files that eventually filled up my hard drive. I deleted these files in a command line terminal window and solved my problem.
Disk Usage Analyzer Tool For Linux - Video Transcript
00:07
disk usage analyzer i recorded a recent
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video pertaining to mx linux cleanup and
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mx linux cleanup
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has a option to use disk usage
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analyzer
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now i'm using mx linux which is a
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debian derivation linux distribution
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it was installed by default
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i do not know if this program
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is available for all distributions of
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linux but perhaps the debian derivations
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you can go to your start and then
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programs and look for disk usage
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analyzer if your linux distribution has
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a search utility you just type in
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disk usage analyzer and look for it you
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may also be able to install it but this
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is not an installation video
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as you can see on screen it's open you
01:01
just
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open up disk usage analyzer and you
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should see a screen similar to this if
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you look up in the upper left hand
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corner there is a scan folder button
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click on that and it will allow you to
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browse your
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hard drive or
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if you have multiple hard drives you
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should be able to choose your
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hard drive of choice that you want to
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use this tool for so basically disks
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usage analyzer is self-explanatory
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hence the term disk usage analyzer it
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just allows you to find out how much
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disk space is being used
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it it has graphical
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color codes
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it will tell you and then if you and
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then i'm going to demonstrate kind of
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how to use it
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i'm assuming that if you have a
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universal serial bus flash drive
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connected to your computer
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it will show up i do not have a
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universal serial bus flash drive
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connected but i'm assuming it should
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detect it
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and i think it will it may also detect a
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let's see it may or may not detect like
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a cd-rom driver or dvd drive although i
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don't know why you would
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you know i don't i'm not sure what you
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could do although well if it was a
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re-writable a rewritable anyways
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i do have a
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dvd
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drive and it's not listed so i'm not a
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hundred percent sure if it supports
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cd-rom compact disk read-only memory or
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even compact disk rewritable or dvd
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rewritable or dvd
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read-only memory i'm not sure all right
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so what you would do then is either use
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the scan folder tool or you could also
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select your hard drive that you want to
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analyze
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so i'm going to choose the home folder
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and that is going to show me a graphical
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interface
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now these are color coded if you notice
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and then the red is
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alert alert alert red just means that
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these folders
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are
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using quite a bit more memory than
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orange and then what even yellow and
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green
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and then on the left hand side it shows
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you a list of folders and it they are
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color coded white
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basically means very little
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and
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data
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but that those folders do exist and if
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you notice there's a arrow
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kind of a right arrow
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if you click on that it will expand that
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folder now you'll notice some folders
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that have a dot config
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in linux
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a folder that is named with a dot before
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the name of the folder for example dot
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config
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that
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signifies that that folder is
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a hidden system folder
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i'm not can you hide other folders i'm
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not sure about that one
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linux has some system folders that are
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hidden and that makes logical sense
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because you do not necessarily want to
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delete them and you may not want to
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access them so
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for example
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what is it thunar is a file manager in
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linux
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by default that
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file manager program
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all hidden folders are hidden
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you have to enable it
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now this tool i'm not sure why it shows
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them
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is that because in my thundar are saying
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i don't think it has anything to do with
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tsunar but i'm not a hundred percent
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it does show you hidden folders so
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that's a caveat inventory here's a tip
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and i'm going to you know use adult
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language because i do not believe in
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censorship
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just be careful when you around
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with system files and especially hidden
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system files because they can cause a
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problem you know i'm saying all right
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there's my warning for the at least one
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warning in this video now if you notice
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the user folder which is slash home
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slash user
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that is the user account that i'm
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actually logged into on this mx linux
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dabion distribution derivation
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it's red that tells me that what i'm not
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sure what the metrics are if the
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folder or hard disk is 50
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or more full
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being used then does the graphic turn
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red i'm not 100 sure but it is a warning
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sign
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that's red now
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and that could be
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you know i have some data now and it
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will tell you the size the contents the
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ma the modified date
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i think you could probably click on
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yes you can click on these
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separate tabs and it will sort them
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so now i sorted it to
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the least
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to
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greatest
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and then i can click on it again and
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it'll show from greatest to least
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so
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the user folder slash home size user is
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using 6.4 gigabytes
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and that is considered red although the
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hard i know you're gonna laugh i don't
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give a
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[Laughter]
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this is an old hard drive that still
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works
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it's only 80 gigabytes
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but it's only the hard drive for my
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operating system i have multiple other
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hard drives installed for my important
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data well here's a possible gold tip
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to me it does not matter necessarily
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what operating system microcrap
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microship micro
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soft wind blows operating system or
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apple mac and crap operating system
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you may want to only
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use your default hard drive that the
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operating system is installed for only
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for the operating system if you have any
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really important data that you
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absolutely cannot lose or if you lose
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it's going to cause a quagmire in your
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life account information
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maybe you have important files whatever
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you maybe you have a business and you
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cannot lose certain data
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here's a
07:26
recommended tip
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have an external hard drive it does not
07:34
necessarily matter it could be a
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universal serial bus it could be a
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external universal zero bus drive or
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excuse me or a flash drive or maybe a
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sata drive
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or a
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ssd drive
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your important data place that on that
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other drive that is separate just in
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case your operating system
07:59
i'm at the eight minute mark
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becomes corrupted or fails
08:05
you know i'm saying
08:07
that is my tip
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you know what i'm saying
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but it's certainly up to you
08:13
all right
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now your ex your second hard drive might
08:16
fail too but my point is that if that
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hard drive fails it has your data your
08:22
operating system would still function
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and vice versa you know i'm saying if
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your
08:28
secondary drive fails excuse me if your
08:31
operating system drive fails you'll
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still have your important data anyways
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and then here's another quick lecture
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i don't care what operating system
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you're using google android chromebook
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mac and crap
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os
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wind blows always back up your data
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always back up your data always back up
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your data because you just never know
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when you're going to run into a problem
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all right
08:55
and the this the all that aforementioned
08:58
details do
09:00
have something to do with this uses
09:01
analyzer because this user analyzer will
09:03
help you analyze
09:05
why your hard drive is filling up like
09:07
in this example here 6.4 gigabytes
09:11
now
09:13
recently i recorded a video pertaining
09:15
to lbry also known as libre also known
09:18
as library also known as odyssey
09:21
their client
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software program
09:24
unbeknownst to me i had no idea all of a
09:27
sudden one day i noticed using this tool
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because i noticed my computer was acting
09:32
flaky
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it was slower and also i was getting
09:36
warnings about you know running out of
09:38
disk space and i was completely
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perplexed
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i was thinking how is that possible
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i don't i only have my operating system
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and a few programs on this you know 80
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gigabyte hard drive well i used disk
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uses analyzer
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and i found out that that
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program library desktop client
10:00
uses blob files i think when you use
10:02
that client to view video content
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it saves these blob files and it does
10:09
not clean itself up it does not clean up
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those files they just keep accumulating
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and they can be quite large a lot of
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them are two megabytes per file
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and you can have thousands what did i
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have i think i had over twenty thousand
10:24
of those blog files and it eventually
10:26
filled up my hard disk space to the
10:29
point that i couldn't
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i couldn't save any other data and so i
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use this tool and i tracked it down so
10:36
here's a quick demonstration and i need
10:38
to run
10:39
now what you would do is you would click
10:41
on one of these folders
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and then
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if it's red it's warning you that it's
10:46
using a lot of disk space
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you know what i'm saying and then you
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would just keep doing that keep
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go down each folder
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each directory
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until you note and then if you hover
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over these
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folders in this what this is kind of
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like a pie chart
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i'm not sure if my encoder will capture
11:12
this or not when i clicked on this
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partial circle half circle right here
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which is android studio i actually
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downloaded android studio to try to
11:22
learn how to use that that's a another
11:25
that could be a future
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video i do plan on recording video
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pertaining to android studio and how you
11:31
can install it
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it allows you to
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anyways i don't want to digress about
11:35
that that's a future possible video
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possibly it says downloads folder is 3.5
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gigabytes so it can help you diagnose
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what folder or what files is using a lot
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of data now android studio is using 1.8
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gigabytes plugins
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1.3 gigabytes android and then it just
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keeps filtering down
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that is exactly
12:00
how i use this tool to diagnose the fact
12:03
that the library desktop client software
12:06
kept filling up my hard disk up to the
12:09
point that
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it became full
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and how many how much was it
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i don't know 50 gigabytes 60 gigabytes
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whatever whatever the number was all i
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did was i went in and cleaned up that
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directory so that's what you would do
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is once you use this tool then keep
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going down directory until you find the
12:31
culprit it could be a major directory it
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could be the slash home user slash
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downloads you have a lot of movies
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videos that are filling up or like in my
12:40
scenario you have a
12:43
program unbeknownst to you that is out
12:45
of control
12:46
and saving all kinds of files or log
12:49
files or whatever you know what i'm
12:50
saying or data files
12:55
it could be a
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folder that's way down the directory
13:00
tree or it could just be you know maybe
13:03
one
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i don't it shouldn't be the root but it
13:06
could be slash home user
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or like in
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you know the scenario slash home slash
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downloads so that's that's how you use
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this now i think you can i think you can
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click on the chart over here and it will
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browse too so that that's how you use
13:21
this tool
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disk usage analyzer adios