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I can give you the tips I used to free enough space to send the book and print it; my problem was I had limited C:\space in an already optimized the machine so it’s unlikely you can free more. It worked for me but was time consuming and annoying to say the least. But I send the book, it came out nice and I was satisfied (though I will wait for new releases with data on D:\). Read it, in the new version there might be a smarter way or you may find a smarter one; howver understanding how I did can give you better ideas , I just went for brute force. So, let me say how I think blurb uses the disk space, You know it uses C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR_PROFILE_NAME\\My Documents in the blurb directory. I notice blurb creates in your repository the followings: 1. a copy of EACH and EVERY picture you put into the library REGARDLESS the fact you really use it in the final book or just let them stay in the lib to decide. If just somebody told me before starting the book !!!!!!!!!!!!!! One issue is that blurb changes the name and extension of such original pictures (mine were on the external disk) during the copy. These are copied onto the dir and their name becomes long name such as "XYWZ4ksq323…" etc. so that you don’t recognize them anymore nor you can see the thumbnails cause of the change of extension (although they are still JPGs!!!). 2. When you actually use one picture in the book, blurb create another coy of that picture which it uses to optimize the pic. when you crop or zoom the picture in the book, blurb actually works on this second copy. So if you change the picture, blurb takes the first instant copy and redo the optimize version but stores them both. Why? because it will only send on DSL to print the optimized but you still have originals for working or reworking. This second copy has the same long name
"XYWZ4ksq323…" but a different extension (say .zoom). If you consider this is a huge amount of space. The first suggestion is … when you do a book only copy in the blurb library only the pics you’ll really use in the book. Don’t copy them all to choose from if you don’t use, because blurb actually make a physical copy of everythiing you logically put into the library if before you actually use them (a button "purge unused pictures from libs before sending" would di the trick sigh). If you already did (like I did) by purging manually pics used not used in the final book but added to the library you free a lot of space on C: to compile the book before sending. How ? First go into the directory with the cash. WHen you have files with the same name but two extesnion, well THOSE are the PICS for sure USED in the book. The rest should be unsed pics added to the lib. How can you say for sure? I did this… I sorted by name. Then I copied the files with only file with the same name in another disk. I changed (manually or with a rename program) only the extension to JPG to display the thumbnails keeping the file name. I checked from thumbnails that that file was actually one I was not using in the book but I added in the libreary. THen read the name and go to the original library on C:\ You can now safely delete that from blurb directory on C: (backup on external drive if you have before doing). You will see the blurb progeam doesn’t change the book but it signal in your lib that the picture is not present anymore in the lib. Keep on till you got rid of them all but those in the book. If like I did I used 100 pics in the book (say 10M for pic, but I added 250 pics to choose from … at the end I throw away 150 unused pics for 10 MB =1,5 GB ! So i compiled and sent the book without unistalling any program. Again I will wait for next release with possibility of data on an extrernal drive. But this way I published the book done.
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