Question: storing digital images

Capn Jack wrote in post #18777330
How are you connecting to the internet? Slow connections may be anything from too many people on limited WiFi channels to the ISP having issues to malware on your computer sucking up all your bandwidth! I'm not suggesting any of those are the cause, but an looking for alternative solutions that may also solve your problem.

The connection is broadband (not the fastest sort but usually good enough), small regional ISP using ATT's phone lines, which sometimes fail when they're wet. Many possibilities, including insufficient working memory on my end.

OhLook wrote in post #18777247
My purpose wasn't to reduce noise, it was to free memory. Downloading has got slow. Videos at cnn.com pause several times within a minute, although long YouTube videos play straight through. I don't know what's slowing things up.

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YouTube and Netflix are incredible at formatting their content so that it streams without interruption.

YouTube videos never get "hung up" with buffering when I watch them, yet videos streamed from almost any other source get hung up all the time. I don't know if it is because of the speed of my internet connection or my computer itself, but YouTube vids and Netflix movies are the only ones that don't slow down at some point.

NOTE: I know this post is off-topic, but that's okay with me - off-topic posts are usually the most interesting, in my opinion. . I especially like long tangents and rabbit trails, and everybody else should, too!


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OhLook wrote in post #18776261
I have a folder containing 1.33 Gb in images.

Just to make it very clear (and what others already said): Compressing / optimising your pictures won't solve your problem. 1.33 GB is not a lot of disk space and therefore there is not a lot to gain.

OhLook wrote in post #18777367
The connection is broadband (not the fastest sort but usually good enough), small regional ISP using ATT's phone lines, which sometimes fail when they're wet. Many possibilities, including insufficient working memory on my end.

Phone lines? That sounds like DSL (I'm assuming you don't have a 56K modem )

Before we all go too crazy with suggestions, what is your goal?
To make the downloads easier?
Move your pictures to your home system so you don't need to download as often?
Reduce the amount of data to upload to "the cloud"?

I've already made one suggestion about external drives that may not be consistent with your needs and goals.

The suggestion of a nearly full hard drive is a good one- as physical RAM is filled, data that isn't assumed to be immediately needed is stored as "virtual memory". If the drive is nearly full, the system can't use that option. The other possibility mentioned earlier is a "fragmented" drive; this is caused because data is saved as "blocks" on a drive and a large file may need several "blocks". As files are added and deleted, the "blocks" are no longer in optimal locations for larger files and read/write operations take longer. Your system may be doing this already (my drive is optimized weekly). Depending on how the video comes down, your hard drive may not be buffering it well, as you noted.

I hate to say this, but maybe your ISP needs changing. I had Earth Link for many years via Spectrum (nee Time Warner Cable) and data would go down in hot weather. They blamed one another and I gave both the boot earlier this year. I now use a local company with their own fiber to the house and see a great improvement. Again, I'm making assumptions about your needs and goals.

I appreciate everyone's suggestions.

Capn Jack wrote in post #18777440
Before we all go too crazy with suggestions, what is your goal?
To make the downloads easier? < This one . . .

The other possibility mentioned earlier is a "fragmented" drive. . . .

I hate to say this, but maybe your ISP needs changing.

There seems to be plenty of space:

OhLook wrote in post #18777455
I appreciate everyone's suggestions.
There seems to be plenty of space:

Hosted photo: posted by OhLook in
./showthread.php?p=187​77455&i=i241475016
forum: General Photography Talk

But maybe too much of the data is parked where it interferes with RAM. Would moving big folders from the Desktop to the hard drive help (using an alias on the Desktop instead)?

Defragging is probably needed. I just don't know where to switch it on.

I like my ISP. It gets excellent ratings from other users, too.

The "Desktop" is merely a special "folder" on the hard drive. The other "folders" are merely sub-directories of the "Desktop" directory. Those directories don't affect anything. RAM is the internal memory for the computer where actively running programs and the data they need reside, and is mostly separate from the hard drive except for the virtual memory mentioned earlier. Having many running programs could slow things down too as the CPU needs to jump between different tasks.

That does look like you have plenty of free space.

I'm not a Mac user, but the internet generally claim that that isn't needed nearly as often as on a PC due to differences in how files are written. As the modern Mac OS is based on some form of Linux UNIX, this is probably true; I have some working experience with Linux as that is the underlying OS for the instruments I use at work. Basically, both operating systems (OS) try to spread out files so there is space to grow between them.

Here's a link to test your internet speed- there are several out there but this one didn't try to sell me anything, probably because I'm already a customer: http://allo.speedtestc​ustom.com/

I read someplace you only have 1-2 gigabytes (GB) of images? If I read that correctly, you have plenty of space to keep them locally. How much are we actually talking about?

Capn Jack wrote in post #18777473
The "Desktop" is merely a special "folder" on the hard drive. The other "folders" are merely sub-directories of the "Desktop" directory. Those directories don't affect anything. RAM is the internal memory for the computer where actively running programs and the data they need reside, and is mostly separate from the hard drive except for the virtual memory mentioned earlier. Having many running programs could slow things down too as the CPU needs to jump between different tasks. . . .

Here's a link to test your internet speed- . . . http://allo.speedtestc​ustom.com/

I read someplace you only have 1-2 gigabytes (GB) of images? If I read that correctly, you have plenty of space to keep them locally. How much are we actually talking about?

So overloading the Desktop doesn't strain available RAM? An unnamed person–well, okay, the one I'm married to–said moving the folders might help.

The speed test yielded these numbers:
PING 73 ms
JITTER 1 ms
DOWNLOAD 0.9 Mbps
UPLOAD 0.7 Mbps

I'm too frugal to keep programs active when not in use. The main photo folder I'm concerned about is currently "only" 1.33 Gb because the photos are JPGs.

OhLook wrote in post #18777504
So overloading the Desktop doesn't strain available RAM? An unnamed person–well, okay, the one I'm married to–said moving the folders might help.

The speed test yielded these numbers:
PING 73 ms
JITTER 1 ms
DOWNLOAD 0.9 Mbps
UPLOAD 0.7 Mbps

I'm too frugal to keep programs active when not in use. The main photo folder I'm concerned about is currently "only" 1.33 Gb because the photos are JPGs.

No, the desktop is a directory that the OS displays differently from the others.

What are you planning to place into that photo folder?

Those speeds are fairly typical for DSL, though I suspect you can double or triple (or even more) that speed for more money.

Capn Jack wrote in post #18777517
What are you planning to place into that photo folder?

Future edited photos as I generate them. It already has the past ones that were good enough to post.

OhLook wrote in post #18777523
Future edited photos as I generate them. It already has the past ones that were good enough to post.

And you keep the photos in "the cloud" now? I'm just making sure I understand the connection about the slow download speed and your images. Thanks for your patience with my questions!

Capn Jack wrote in post #18777529
And you keep the photos in "the cloud" now? I'm just making sure I understand the connection about the slow download speed and your images. Thanks for your patience with my questions!

I keep the photos in folders in my laptop, with backups on flash drives. No cloud.

I'm asking whether having too many data-heavy items (i.e., images) burdens the computer so that it can't download videos as fast as news sites try to deliver them. Download speeds seem to have slowed for other material as well, although I don't have figures to support this.

If the files are just stored, and not being accessed, then so long as there is plenty of storage space there is no additional load on the computer at all.

Like books in a library if people dont take them off the shelves, doesn't add any work to the librarians, but if people get them out often it adds to their workload...

OhLook wrote in post #18777554
I keep the photos in folders in my laptop, with backups on flash drives. No cloud.

I'm asking whether having too many data-heavy items (i.e., images) burdens the computer so that it can't download videos as fast as news sites try to deliver them. Download speeds seem to have slowed for other material as well, although I don't have figures to support this.

What he said below...

joeseph wrote in post #18777581
If the files are just stored, and not being accessed, then so long as there is plenty of storage space there is no additional load on the computer at all.

Like books in a library if people dont take them off the shelves, doesn't add any work to the librarians, but if people get them out often it adds to their workload...

You've plenty of space on that drive for buffering, you close programs that aren't in use.

Do you have a direct connection to the DSL modem? Or are you accessing the DSL via WiFi? I ask because there are only a certain number of WiFi channels and they could get "saturated" if there are many modems about, such as in an apartment complex.

Another possibility is something downloading in the background, such as an OS update.

Merry Christmas to you!

Capn Jack wrote in post #18777665
Do you have a direct connection to the DSL modem? Or are you accessing the DSL via WiFi? I ask because there are only a certain number of WiFi channels and they could get "saturated" if there are many modems about, such as in an apartment complex.

Another possibility is something downloading in the background, such as an OS update.

Merry Christmas to you!

Merry Christmas!

WiFi connection. The pull-down menu for networks shows 14 of them, including ours. This is a single-family house. The lot is narrow, about 30 x 120 feet, so some neighbors are close. There's a condo complex across the street with about six units. Two of the 13 other networks are clearly in a house (duplex) next door; they have the name of a man who lives there.

If a system update were downloading, I'd know about it. Anyway, downloads from certain sites are slow all the time.

OhLook wrote in post #18777725
Merry Christmas!

WiFi connection. The pull-down menu for networks shows 14 of them, including ours. This is a single-family house. The lot is narrow, about 30 x 120 feet, so some neighbors are close. There's a condo complex across the street with about six units. Two of the 13 other networks are clearly in a house (duplex) next door; they have the name of a man who lives there.

If a system update were downloading, I'd know about it. Anyway, downloads from certain sites are slow all the time.

You have your WiFi protected? I'm sure you do, but I should ask. By "protected", I mean with a password so someone can't connect to your WiFi without your permission?
Can you connect via a network connection and see if speeds improve?

I have the same issue here, where certain sites are also slow, and that is with the cheap 300 Mbps connection I have. You really can't fix how other sites load as they are out of your control. They often wait for their paid advertisers to load before showing the content you want. CNN is a bit slow to load video for me as well.