Filed under: Business, Photo, Security, Text, Video, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, E-mail, Productivity
Data impermanence - how much old data are you carrying around, and why?
by Jason Clarke Jan 10th 2007
At some time or another, we all upgrade our computers. And when the time comes, most people meticulously back up every bit of data they possibly can - often to load directly onto the new computer. But in many cases, for whatever reason it just doesn't get there. This is the situation I found myself in about 9 months ago when I moved onto the current laptop I use. I have a ton of data that just never seemed to make it to this machine. And while I thought I'd really miss it, save for only two or three instances, I really haven't.
I asked around, and many of my friends report similar experiences.
So what does all of this mean? Are we all just digital packrats, carrying around way more data than we need to, even more than we can conceivably keep track of? Or is this one of the wonderful parts of this new digital world that we live in? Maybe we should treat all data like Google tells us to treat email - never deleting anything, simply archiving it so that it can be searched later if necessary. But I'm starting to wonder how valuable that old data really is.
Over the past number of years, I have at least 5 GB of PST files of my email archives. I haven't looked at them since I backed them up to make room on my hard drive. Okay, let's be honest; I haven't used them since I started using Gmail. I suppose there could be some interesting nuggets of information in them, but realistically my likelihood of finding anything useful in that haystack of useless data is next to nil. It's like keeping an archive of every personal conversation you've ever had - just trying to remember where the good stuff is would be impossible.
But I also can't subscribe to the extreme notion of treating email like voicemail. There's a contingent (this is particularly popular amongst the capital P Productivity crowd) that believes we should read an email once, determine whether it needs an action to be taken, and delete the email. I garner way too much value from being able to search my relevant old email, particularly in my daily business, to consider this drastic measure.
So how do we find the balance? What to keep, what to get rid of? Is anything over 3 years old even worth worrying about anymore? Give give us your thoughts.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Peter said 11:52AM on 1-10-2007
If I don't delete something immediately, it usually just sticks around forever. With the cost of storage dropping it's not worth the time and effort to purge old data.
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Dave said 11:56AM on 1-10-2007
I tend not to delete a great deal of my data, just incase I might need it again at some point in the future - however to be honnest, I'll probably never need it again. But when hard disks cost so little, and while I've got hundreds of gigabytes of free space, theres little point worrying about erasing old data just yet.
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Diddle said 12:12PM on 1-10-2007
For my business files, anything older than 7 years is turfed (the tax man dictates that I keep records for the last 7 years of business operations).
Email, I follow the "Read it, reply to it, delete it or file it" mantra. If I seriously never need to re-visit the email, it's tanked. Anything older than 6 months is AutoArchived and anything in the archive for more than 2 years is deleted.
General files I try to cull at least twice a year. I run a nightly backup of my drive so it ends up keeping things I've deleted from the main drive (it seems to need more care than the main does) and I also have CD and DVD backups. I dump backups more than 3 years old or any file on my drive I don't deem worthy of keeping if it hasn't been used in 3 years.
It's a hard decision sometimes but hey, I'm not going to store TBs worth of useless files.
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Dave Baker said 2:20PM on 1-10-2007
I hardly save anything anymore. Why search my desktop when I can search the web? Everything is out there; so I'll let Google store it for me. Of course some things are personal, and that I either deal with right away or put in my "later" folder, but really, once it goes there I hardly ever get back to . Anything over 6 months old goes in the trash. What I like about email is that it records conversations. When my boss says "Why did you do x?" I can show him his own Email, describing "x". THAT I save!
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Andrew Schrock said 3:06PM on 1-10-2007
I just moved across the country, and sure enough, several boxes marked "misc." made the journey with me. By the end I was wondering what exactly this junk was that made it worthy of thousands of miles of lugging. Old power strips, magazines, cables.... refuse and completely non-essential as it turns out.
Last year I invested in a sleek MacBook. One thing I noticed right away is it has a paltry 60-gig hard drive. The upside of this is files simply cannot accumulate. Anything non-essential is dead weight, and impedes my attempted easy-breezy lifestyle. Although I still have a few "misc" folders, I'm trying to trim them down. Large files from work projects (software development) get backed up and removed from my main HD. Writing is archived soon after submission.
On the other hand, there's no down side to keeping gigabytes of useless data, other than running out of hard drive space. Or, is there a digital equivalent of the crazy guy down the street who has walled himself in with decades of old newspapers and tin cans?
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Leszek Pawlowicz said 6:18PM on 1-10-2007
With data storage costs so cheap, and dropping even further all the time, space isn't the issue. And you never know when a particular piece of data might become important in the future; if you delete it without backup, it's gone for good, and you may be sorry some day.
I think the fundamental questions you need to ask yourself are: Does all this old saved data get in the way of me finding what I need? And does it interfere with my ability to get my work done on a daily basis? If yes to either one, you need to do either do some serious pruning, or figure out a better way to organize and archive the older stuff. If no, then life is too short to worry about it.
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Stuart said 5:26AM on 1-11-2007
I also had hundreds of megabytes of "data", email, old installs and documents lying on old cd's and dvd's that I have not looked at to date.
Now I hardly save anything - I keep a master list of software I need if my computer crashes, an encrypted truecrypt document container for important documents (I keep this on my USB key) and use gmail to archive information I want to keep.
A good idea is to have a "Death row" (not my choice of description) folder everywhere you keep your data (email and documents). If you are not sure whether you need it but want to keep it for a bit put it in this folder. Check the folder from time to time deleting or properly assigning the information contained therein.
My life has far less clutter now.
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david said 2:12PM on 1-11-2007
#1 is spot on.
Building on that, with Google Desktop Search, there is no need to spend time and effort filing anything. Your mailbox (inbox and sent items) is the container for all files.
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Paul said 10:20PM on 1-11-2007
Jason, great timing on the question. I just ocmpleted a purge of old papers (did you know that you can get banker's boxes shredded for under $10 a box?) and was contemplating the electronic equivalent. I have data on my ancient PB that I always meant to transfer to my G3 - and more on the G3 that that never transitioned to my PCs. This is in addition to the 100s of GBs of PC data archived on CD, DVDs and external hard drives. Laziness will likely prevail.
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LaughingTooHard said 11:27PM on 1-12-2007
Sorry just had to add my 2 cents - or 2TB. Hi, my name is PackRat and I am a data monger. When i fill a hard drive up, if I have another one, I just put that one on a shelf. I have about 6-10 hard drives sitting in old IBM ThinkPad CD-ROM soft cases. It is fun to fire them up and see what I was doing 5 or (eeek!) 10 years ago.
What do I carry with me everyday to work? 1GB in my phone, two 1GB flash cards, a 20 DVD case full of work files, my 40GB mp3 player and two 80GB laptop drives in USB cases.
Um, yeah I only delete things when the drive dies (is that really deleting?) or things like drivers, update files and old copies of my resume. Everything else I am keeping for the Time Capsule.
Yes I know I have a problem...thank you for listening.
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jookieapc said 3:08AM on 1-16-2007
Keeping all your email is not at all costly and I find it extremely useful. I don't look through it all that often but when I do it's very important. Suppose I want to know the last time I travelled to a particular country - I'll have an archived email mentioning it along with other comments which revive memories like photos do. And there's numerous other events you will later want to know the date and details of - when you met your girlfriend, where you went on your first date, when you bought your iPod how much it cost, how much has it cost you per year based on the usage you got before it died.
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