Free Up Room On Your Computer: Buy an External Hard Drive/Flash Drive

[pjpamchef]

P3 is taking up too much room on my computer. Can I purchase an external hard drive or maybe a large flash drive and move it over to free up some space?

 

[wadesgirl]

My first thought would be to wait - when the new web comes out it will all be online instead of on our computers. But my second thought is that we don't know how long it will be until that happens!

 

[Oracle]

Yes, you can run the P3 program on an external drive just be sure that you back up your data elsewhere for the sake of redundancy

Two things to be aware of:

- In order to have your current and complete data in the program you'll need to do a back up of the data files on your computer and then, after you download P3 onto the external drive you'll need to "restore from back up" in order to have your data.

- Once you switch remember that your original P3 data on your computer will not longer be complete/current once you start adding data on P3 on the external.

Unless you're fairly tech savvy I would recommend against doing this! P3 and the data really doesn't take up that much space but if you need room on your computer why not move something else that you don't use as often to an external drive to free up space.....

 

[NooraK]

There are a few older threads were this topic was discussed...

Here's one:

http://www.chefsuccess.com/f46/running-pampered-partner-external-67967/

Here might be more answers in some of these threads:

http://www.google.com/search?q=run+p3+external+hard+drive+site%3Achefsuccess.com&hl=en&gbv=2&gs_l=heirloom-hp.3...344.8704.0.8907.42.31.0.8.8.0.234.3858.1j21j4.26.0...0.0...1c.jsHQqmtByxI&oq=run+p3+external+hard+drive+site%3Achefsuccess.com

 

[kam]

Perhaps it's not P3 itself...but the backups taking up the space?

You could always change the location of where your backups get placed.

I always backup to 2 different locations. I backup to my local hard disk AND copy the backups to an external. In my opinion EITHER can crash at anytime.

Last year I had an external hard drive go out (wasn't a big deal since I mirror that drive to a second external). And just this past week my desktop crashed and I spent a week trying to get it back/restored and finally had to reinstall the operating system.

In each case, since my data resides in several places, it was not a big deal overall. (Well, rebuilding the computer is a pain...but I did not loose any data.)

 

[BethCooks4U]

Also delete old backups. I keep the current on the computer and on an external but every so often I delete the old ones that have accumulated. You only need the most recent.

 

[NooraK]

Also delete old backups. I keep the current on the computer and on an external but every so often I delete the old ones that have accumulated. You only need the most recent.

I keep a few when I do this kind of a purge, just in case any of the backups is corrupted.

 

[SpiritdancerIA]

I've actually found a nice option for backing up the P3 data file: I've been using an online "cloud" option. I back up the file to a specific folder on my computer, which is mirrored online - and I can access it from any computer if I need to. And the service is password protected/encrypted, so I'm not worried (much) about security. It sure beats my old method (backing up to a pair of thumb drives, and constantly worrying about losing one or both of them from my pocket).

And yes, if you've backed up a lot, clear out all but your most recent backup - the amount of space they take up sure adds up!

 

[ally44]

I cleared out all but my most recent backup and my system health improved on the computer.