 the inverse of "make sure you have working backups of what's important" is "give yourself permission to delete digital detritus that no longer has any value to your life" you do not need every email you've received for the last decade. you do not need three copies of every photo you've ever taken with your phone. you do not need the downloads folder for each of your previous twelve laptops. you can delete some stuff. 17 comments
@maple then you are likely the unfortunate victim of a Time Bubble and should consult with the nearest temporal specialist.  @djsundog I'm not done yet and I've gone from about 3TB to under 1TB.  @djsundog Here is a post I wrote for my day job a while back. I have done this on every Mac and Linux computer I have used for the last 8 years. It solves the problem of having a Downloads directory full of 10% mission critical can't lose stuff and 90% garbage that you are inexplicably saving. https://developer.servicenow.com/blog.do?p=/post/ot-transient-mac-directory/ @geniodiabolico @djsundog Ooo I'm immediately doing this for my ~/junk dir that has mysteriously become mission critical.  But how do we know what to delete? The drive (pardon the pun) to keep it all, is compelling vs the mental effort and time to sort and select. I mean, I agree with you, but it's like the one time in 5 years when you have just the right cable in your electronics junk box. Random Reinforcement is tough to break. Always thought it would be useful to set up some sort of rolling window to delete anything from Downloads after 7 days or something. Knowing that would force curation.  Haha no. Old emails are 90% of how I keep track of things. I look up old emails nearly every day.  @djsundog i also find it healthy to get rid of some personal communication and other stuff that can lead me to rumination. people in the past were fine without having every conversation to read again when they felt bad about something!  Disagree. My email packrattery has saved me major trouble at least once and has been extremely helpful several other times. And lost literal thousands of dollars to some deleted records I really should have scanned and saved. Storage is cheap enough that you really only need one instance to make it all worthwhile. @suetanvil covered by the "that no longer has value" clause. I can't value your stuff for you.  while true.... I am not going to cull my phone images like I do my photography images. I just save them all. However... having a phone camera that only saves in massive resolution, with an effective resolution half that size is very annoying.
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Gregory's Server
@djsundog but what if i need my computer science 241 final for something...????