Pack Rat

I have a serious problem with photo storage and I need some help. As you can see, per my tech savvy screen shot, my hard drive is almost full. Recently, I've noticed that my computer has been running a little bit slower, but I hadn't given it too much thought. This morning, I accidentally clicked the My Computer icon, and I was shocked when I saw the red bar (which had always been green) indicating that I only had 7.55 GB left on my HD.

So I went to my Control Panel and started weeding out all the unnecessary programs that I download and then never use. I cleared out all my temporary files and anything that I could think might be taking up so much space. After doing all of that, I still only have 9.9 GB left!

I take a lot of pictures, so I thought I'd see how much space my Picture file was taking up on my hard drive. As you can see, I have 11, 576 pictures on my computer, for a grand total of 29.6 GB! How did this happen? Written out, that reads eleven thousand five hundred and seventy six pictures. I have a problem.

What should I do? What do y'all do with your pictures? I have a terrible fear of somehow losing my photos, so I am a paranoid backer-upper. Most of my photos are uploaded to snapfish, photobucket, and flickr and I make back up CD's- "just in case!" Even after doing all of that, I still can't bring myself to delete these pictures off my computer.

Do ya'll have an external hard drive or a drobo that you keep your pictures on? Any recommendations on how I can free up space elsewhere? Has anyone ever purchased extra space for the HD, and if so, had did that go?

I am a pack rat in real life and I guess it's now spilling into my computer space life. Hello Internet, My name is Katie and I am a computer space pack rat!


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