Hi, I’m new to using IPFS, I currently IPFS Desktop 0.12.2 on Windows 10. i was attracted to IPFS because I heard that you could store large datasets on it. So I started using it and I uploaded a 1GB file. I then went to my .ipfs file and saw the blocks folder I took a look and it appears that there is data stored in individual 257KB file. Now obviously if I am to add more data these will accumulate. So is it possible that I could delete them or maybe some of them in order to save storage space in the future?
Those blocks ARE your pinned data. Unlike (the planned, but not yet fully implemented) Ethereum Swarm, IPFS doesn’t push data out to the network unless someone asks for it. So when you add stuff to IPFS, it sits on your machine until that time. Or until you pay some service to pin it for you.
IPFS is not a magic cloud service where you can just shove your data into it and expect it to be there later. You have to keep your node alive if you want access to your (pinned) data at some point in the future.