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Why Electronics Never Seem to Have Enough Storage

Thanks to technology, people enjoy the utility of a wide range of electronic devices, starting from powerful PCs to easily accessible and cheap smartphones. Zhejiang Jieda Technology is good place to get the best of technology solutions for your company.

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The common thread among these electronic devices is that they all require virtual or physical storage to operate. And some of the most common problems with these devices also involve this particular issue.

If you own multiple electronic devices and constantly ask yourself why your devices always seem to run out of storage space, here are some of the most common culprits responsible!

Continuous Download of Applications and Programs

While most electronic devices are subject to downloads, PC and laptop users are more likely to continuously download multiple programs and multimedia files like movies, songs, video games, and more. Considering the download speeds and spaciousness of an empty storage drive, users often fall into the trap of downloading files intended for future use.

Phone users are also prone to frequently downloading stuff, but not on the same level as PC and desktop users due to the lower capacity storage space of smartphones, tablets, and other smart devices. Keeping your download habits in check is the best solution to this problem.

Infection of Electronic Device by Viruses

Since the beginning of computers, viruses and malware have been around and are here to say for the foreseeable future. Storage devices are the primary targets of these viruses and malware since important data and files are stored there. Viruses and malware can affect hard disks and other storage devices in various ways, starting from slowing it down to corrupting parts of it.

Not depending on the default antivirus software that accompanies operating systems is a smart idea. Check the offerings from some of the most dependable antivirus solution providers such as Norton, Kaspersky, Avira, and more to find one suitable for your device’s physical and virtual storage. Most of them offer trial runs for you to evaluate whether it’s a good fit for your device and needs.

Auto-update of Apps and Programs

Modern operating systems, apps, and programs depend on continual updates to function correctly, which unfortunately results in increasing folder sizes as time goes on. This happens so subtly that most users don’t tend to even realize it, especially with smartphones. This can leave you at a loss when installing new files or programs. 

The easiest way to counteract this problem is to turn off all updates and manually update your OS and programs as you see fit. In all honesty, keeping your storage device free of unused or unnecessary devices can be the best solution to minimize update and storage issues.

Absence of External Storage Facility

The absence of external storage of data for an electronic device can result in an unnecessary clogging of its memory and the consequent reduction in the device’s storage space. A couple of years back, PC and laptop users had a general trend to buy external hard drives to store secondary files and documents. But these days, the practice has fallen out of favor.

Buying an external hard drive is not the only solution to keep your storage drive decluttered and at optimal efficiency. You can also store your valuable files and information in cloud storage drives offered by many digital market leaders like Google, Dropbox, and more. These cloud services offer free trials or limited free usage, making them useful even if you don’t pay for full versions.

Lack of Routine Maintenance

Routine maintenance is necessary to fix the underlying issues plaguing a device, no matter how big or small. The reduction of storage spaces could result from any of those mentioned above. The straightforward approach to mitigating such circumstances is contacting an expert. If you think your device needs an in-depth checkup, you can search for a computer repair shop near you online.

If not, you should learn the basics of routine storage device maintenance, especially for computers and laptops. You can’t tinker much with smartphones, but desktops and laptops storage drives can be optimized, tweaked, and modified by users with little risk of damaging the OS or the storage device by itself. 

Now You Know What To Do

Now that you know all the major culprits responsible for eating up all the storage drive space for your electronic devices, you should now have an easier time maintaining and optimizing your device hard drives. Note that your storage drives will end up getting filled over time despite your best efforts. But by taking the proper precautions, you can significantly delay that point in time.

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Shoot High-Quality Videos with more efficiency

Have you ever run out of space that captures some of your cherished moments? Isn’t it annoying? No more hassles, after long research, now you’ll be able to record high-quality 8K videos and 360 degrees videos too. It’s estimated that 90 minutes equivalent to your favorite football match in 4K quality video takes up around ten gigs of space, but with the new technology, you can half it down to 5 gigs only.

A boy watching his photos and videos captured on a camera.

Suppose you know that Netflix and YouTube have restrictions over streaming videos, not more than 480p resolution. It has been more than three months now in India; still, the capping exists, although some internet providers did remove it slowly. The social isolation has made people binge more than regular days, seeing an increase of 20 to 30 percent in subscription and user base. More people are now connected, increasing the bandwidth. Hence you may observe slow speeds in this period. Netflix is switching to AV1 codec to save data while watching the show when it delivers its content over the internet. This new research may be able to save more data.

A man binges for on-demand streaming shows.

Initially, the digital video started with H.120 encoding but wasn’t practical until H.261 came up based on the DCT (discrete cosine transform) compression. In 1991, MPEG-1 revolutionized the video sector with higher resolutions, which reached us in the form of VCDs and DVDs. In the late 90s and onset of the 21st century, we saw the currently used MPEG-4 or the most widely used H.264 video encoding. You may know this if you’re familiar with video editing.

After the H.265/HEVC encoding, now steps in H.266/MPEG-I Part 3/VVC (Versatile Video Codec) presented by Fraunhofer HHI with other partners including the significant-tech leading brands like Apple, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Sony, and Intel, with vivid HDR and better support for 360 degrees video. As earlier mentioned, AV1 codec, 30 percent better than H.265, which is adopted by Netflix, is royalty-free. Now, to support H.266 major hardware updates may be required to handle such heavy compressions and will take time for its actual implementation. Like for example, when H.265 was finalized at the beginning of 2013, Apple lately adopted it in the year 2017 as a part of the iOS 11 mobile operating system.

The VVC logo

The 500 pages specification document finalized this month on 6th July 2020, but actual usage in the video industry might take about an estimated 7-8 years. Why do we need such compression? By 2022, more than 80 percent will be part of video streaming, which may increase on more content based on 4K video quality as well as growing numbers of 360 degrees videos. The existing widely used browsers support AV1 codec, but H.266 to properly patent may lately delay web surfing too. Twitch and YouTube may become one of the first firms to implement as they’ve already implanted VP9, again a royalty-free codec by Google itself.

Along with this, MPEG-5 Part 1 or EVC (Essential Video Coding), and MPEG-5 Part 2 or LCEVC (Low Complexity Enhancement VC) is set to launch out. For us, a non-geeky person may visualize it after watching the following graph below.

Average bit rate savings graph. Courtesy: BBC Research

I hope you could know some of the new ways to encode a video. You can read more about it from their official website: https://www.hhi.fraunhofer.de/en/departments/vca/technologies-and-solutions/h266-vvc.html