I have a simple approach to data management: rather than actually cleaning up my personal documents once in a while, I just buy a new external hard drive whenever I run out of space, and copy everything from the existing drive over.
I’m currently up to a 5TB drive. It has 400 000 files on it. The oldest one that still has a valid “last modified” timestamp reads September 1992.
I’ve basically reached the point where attempting to organise this mess is actually, literally impossible, and I could never bring myself to just pitch the lot out and start over, so I have no choice but to keep going like this until I die.
Notable denizens of the most deeply nested folders:
- a collection of desktop wallpapers featuring Robot Masters from Mega Man 3 and Mega Man 4, in 640×480 resolution
- a pirated copy of Sierra’s The Castle of Dr. Brain, plus a BMP file that appears to have been hand-drawn in MS Paint containing the copy-protection key from the game’s printed manual
- overcompressed AVI files of fansubbed Dragon Ball episodes downloaded from binary Usenet groups (average resolution: 160×120)
- poorly aligned greyscale scans of Venus Press’s 1994 dead-tree localisation of Bondage Fairies (note: don’t Google that at work)
- a small collection of CD audio tracks in WAV format, evidently because the MP3 standard had not yet been published when they were ripped
Published
Mooncustafer 