Digital information should be packed away neatly when not in regular use, I feel. Not only does it mean the disk space is better utiliised the contents are easier to navigate.
A method for doing this is to use software to compress files. The one I use, and recommend as part of the Life hack series, is 7-Zip.
It is open source (for the most part) and entirely free to use. It has great compression ratios compared to other similar software, and is one of the first programs I install on a personal computer (PC).
As well as saving space on the hard disk, it also greatly saves bandwidth when transferring files, so indirectly lowering the users carbon footprint.
