Mike Benner: Are You A Digital Pack Rat?

Are You A Digital Pack Rat?

Jul 22 by Michael Benner

So today I began what seems to have become an annual hunt for a site that gets used for 1 week every year and then gets taken down for the rest of the year and stored. Then every year I have to go on a hunt and every year during the hunt I find stuff that is OLD and I start pondering the purging of it.

In this day and age of 1TB drives and

consumer grade NAS systems it seems like the solution is buying some cheap space and archiving everything, but really do I need all this stuff? Sites developed on CF4. VB3 programs. CS 100 Pascal Programs. Then there is the collection of 20,000 MP3s that I will never realistically listen the majority of ever again. What about my wife's photo collection (she is a professional photographer that keeps EVERYTHING). This is all scattered over a multitude of hard drives, thumb drives, CD and DVDs. Should I through them away? I don't need the space right now, but I could cut my collection way down.

What do you do? Are you a Digital Pack Rat or are you minimalist in this age of ever increasing data storage? What is a good way to archive? By year? By type? Let me know.

Oh yeah and if you need a copy of NetObjects Fusion from 1997 I found a copy of that I could transfer to you...OK, I guess I do need a good purge.

Comments (3) | 317 Views | Tags: General

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I keep lot's of electronic stuff ... not the old things though ... I dump em ... I buy new gear ... anytime I can :)

# Posted By Edward Beckett | 7/22/08 1:28 AM

I've lost so much to dead digital formats (ZIP, DAT, floppy, cassette!) over the years that now I keep everything. Hard drive space is getting cheaper. Easy to just upgrade to larger drives every year or so and rotate 'em around.

# Posted By Kevin Goldsmith | 7/22/08 2:21 AM

I am totally a packrat... I took stock this weekend when I realized I was down to under 100 gigs free, and I have 1 TB of TV shows, 600 gigs of movies, and probably 1.3 TB of pictures and general crap. I wish I could get rid of some of it, but what will happen when I need it??? I'm in the same boat you are!