Confessions Of A Digital Packrat

If there's one thing I genuinely dread about Windows XP, it has to be that little balloon message that pops up to warn me that I'm running out of hard drive space.

If there's one thing that annoys me more about Windows XP, it has to be that little balloon message that pops up to warn me that I'm running out of hard drive space.

Sakura, my laptop, has been in service since my late college years. She's stood by me through a lot of crap, has been the victim of numerous late-night sessions playing Baldur's Gate II, and has endured about as much software-related abuse as I could be bothered to think of. But she has never, ever warned me that I was running out of hard drive space to dump all my files in. Until recently.

Her poor, overloaded 40GB hard drive is almost full, mostly from downloaded anime and various pieces of software that I only rarely use to their full functionality. I've got about 10MB to 30MB worth of space remaining. So, with the help of my 80GB external hard drive, Mint, I decided to alleviate some of Sakura's burden. I moved my installers, my files, my personal projects, and whatever else I could afford to into Mint's space. I left only the downloaded anime, which still eats up more space than I'd like. Incidentally, that would explain my willingness to purchase DVDs of the series on my disk, even if I'd already watched them.

So much space was being taken up that I needed to move my collection of pictures (all 5.something GB worth) into a separate 8GB flash drive, and my work-related files to a 1GB flash drive. The bigger of the two is newer, and I haven't decided whether or not to name her Milan or Venice, after the cities in Italy. As for the 1GB, Tsukasa is chugging along just fine since she doesn't have too much stored in her. None of it is even really critical to me.

But this process of moving files from one end to another, and trying to make sense of it all, has prompted me to explore the inner recesses of my laptop, my external hard drive, and my three flash drives. It turns out that Sakura, Mint, 8GB, Tsukasa, and Haruhi (my 512MB MP3 player/flash drive) all contained random files that I've left lying around for a long, long, long time. One of them even had a copy of my first resume from way back in my pre-Sakura college days, when my PC was a desktop I so remorselessly named Madoka. I wasn't too shocked by finding files that are older than Sakura herself on my computer, but I was rather surprised that I didn't delete any of said files - even the ones that could not possibly have been of any use to me then, let alone now.

I have a distinct inability to let go of files once they've made it to my computer. Things from work, random notes, weird pictures, and whatnot. I let them all slowly pile up until they become a massive folder worth of digital clutter. Even then I can't bring myself to get rid of it. Sure, my desktop only has two columns of icons and they're mostly shortcuts, but don't let that fool you. Inside Mint are several folders, with folders within those folders, and folders within those folders. My collection of data can easily be considered the digital equivalent of one of those Russian doll things. The way the files inside (apart from the pictures) are organized makes about as much sense as a game of Mao.

My inability to get rid of my files means that, even if I have a lot of external storage media now, it is only a matter of time before I end up needing more. Even at this stage, with a total of around 21 or so GB of free space across all of my storage media, I'm planning to purchase a 250GB hard drive to serve as my primary storage.

I give it 20 years before I need even more space than that, but I can't be too sure.