Dilemma on podcast downloads

[litlfrog]

Because I didn't think much about the default settings I know have quite a few podcast episodes taking up space on my hard drive. I don't plan to listen to them anytime soon. But here's the thing--I don't want MM to forget that the episode exists, just delete the file from my disk (undownload?). I'm nervous about doing that in case that means I can never get back to that episode again. What's my best move here?

[Lowlander]

Many provides only have episodes available temporarily, so there is no guarantee that it will be available for download in the future.

[MMFrLife]

If you feel there is a chance you might want to reference any in the future, your safest bet is to just keep them.
In the interest of space, whittle your podcast collection down to those you feel you are most likely to reference again.
You can take the ones that are left and down convert them to as small a size/quality as you can stand (quality is not as big a deal
with spoken/voice only stuff - although, with bitrates under 64, it can get into that tunnely vacuumy higher pitched swirling sound).

In the interest of cleaning up/organizing your podcast folder, I created a couple of folders inside of it called "past" and "current"
(the latter of which the download setting is set to), but you could create something like "most interested, least interested, future reference", etc.

Or, combine the two ideas for space and organization.

The other thing is to Move the least interested in one's to another drive.

[Monco]

Hello litlfrog,

You may want to consider backing up/moving the podcasts to an external drive via USB. 1TB drives are pretty cheap now. You can use it for backing up other media too like videos.

It would be a good idea to use MM to add appropriate notes and tags for episodes you want to keep. You can configure MM to recognize the drive when you plug it in.

As Lowlander said many podcasts don't stay around for long at their source. Many community radio stations, for instance, only keep episodes available for a month then they're gone.

Monco