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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • What I do is sort the directories and files by size and go largest to smallest. Based on the likely distribution of files sizes, 20% of your files and/or directories will account for 80% of the hard drive space. I usually then choose candidates for deletion and evaluate them, deleting them on the spot or skipping them for this time. I do this until I get the space reduction I want or until I’m sure that I want to keep what is in the largest 20%. After I reach one of the two states: top 20% of files/directories are keepers or I deleted down X GB. This method can be done with any sorting method. For example, by play count or by date added, old to new. Keep going until the top 20% are keepers. The same distribution is likely to apply across all vertical data labels so the filter is generically usable in lots of situations. For example, 20% of car drivers likely get 80% of speeding tickets. We could reduce speeding by 80% by speed limiting these drivers’ cars or by revoking their drivers licenses. Another example is memory hogs in a computer system. The top 20% of memory hogging programs likely account for 80% of used memory in a system. This distribution is called the Pareto principle. The principle is an example of a power law.







  • if is short for input file if is short for output file

    This dd command from the command line is what I use because it is built in and perfectly bare bones for my needs. I like to use the command flag --status=progress to show a status bar while duplicating the data. A word of caution: the dd, or ‘data duplicator’ program is sometimes known as the ‘destroy disk’ program because if you flash the iso file to the wrong disk/drive you can mess up the drive. Use the appropriate level of caution because there is no undo button. You can use the lsblk command to list the block devices on your machine and use the correct device. Quick instructions: use lsblk to list your block devices and locate your flash drive. If the flash drive is mounted (the /sdb/ will have something like /media/files if it is) you can unmount with $umount /path/to/sdb. Once the drive is unmounted you can use the dd program to duplicate the data (iso file) to your drive.