Storage Management on the Mac With DaisyDisk

I’m always on the lookout for great software that makes my life easier as a photographer and digital content creator. One application in particular that I really like is DaisyDisk, which I’ve written about before, but with the new release of version 3, is worth a revisit. This new version has lots of nice updates including faster performance, looks better (especially on a Retina display), 64-bit support, and many others.

What is DaisyDisk and why do I think you should use it? Lets find out…

[symple_box color=”yellow” text_align=”left” width=”100%” float=”none”] DaisyDisk is Mac only, so apologies to my Windows friends :)
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One of the challenges we all face as photographers and computer users in general is managing all of our storage, and making sure it’s being used wisely and efficiently. Yes it’s true that the cost of disk drive storage has fallen dramatically in recent years, but we’re also making more images than ever before, and using higher resolution cameras that also shoot video. I’m also slowly transitioning to SSD drives (solid state), which are much faster and efficient than disk based drives. But they’re still relatively expensive, so storage is a premium.

For example I recently upgraded the hard drive in my 2011 Macbook Pro to an Crucial 256GB SSD drive, and the performance increase is dramatic to say the least. However, at 256GB I need to watch my storage usage much more carefully to avoid running out of room! (I will say that the increase in performance is well worth the size limitation – I went from a 512GB to 256GB, but the speed increase is amazing. I you’re looking for a way to breath new life into an older laptop, an SSD is the way to go. I love this Crucial drive and it makes everything feel much more responsive and snappy.)

Regardless of what type of drives you have, if you’re like me, you’re filling up your hard drives faster than ever before. And all hard drives will slow down as they fill up, so getting rid of unnecessary files will improve performance.

For me finding and deleting old files was a drag, assuming I even knew what was taking up lots of room – so I avoided it until it became a problem. I know there are other apps to do this, but DaisyDisk was the first I found that made it really easy. It has an amazing graphical interface, and has saved me from buying a new hard drive on several occasions.

In Action

Did I say easy? I love easy because it means I don’t have to avoid the drive maintenance I need to do from time to time. Below are a few screen shots showing how it works.

2013-09-14_16-57-26 — The main window where you can select a drive to scan. Notice I keep my Raw files separate from my system drive. This makes it easier to manage and backup.

2013-09-14_17-03-51 — Showing my home folder on my system drive. The graphics are great and I can easily drill down into any subfolder to see where my storage is being used.

2013-09-14_17-07-21 — Potential items for deletion can be inspected in the Filder, and then added to the “Collector” where they can then be deleted within the app. Very convenient.

I don’t review many applications in general, unless I find them incredibly useful and worth the cost. At $9.99, DaisyDisk is a must have in my opinion to keep tabs on your storage use. I have to deal with this regularly with all the content I manage- Raw files, tiff and psd files, video files, etc. I hope it’s something you’re managing regularly as well, at the least it can keep your system running faster and leaner.