What do you do with old computer files?

HangTime

HangTime

HangTime

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I was having a bit of a cleanup on my PC earlier today, going through various old set of documents from previous Windows installations, IRC logs, online order receipts, downloaded files, random notes and ideas, old copies of my CV, photos, game recordings etc etc. A lot of these files are pretty old (5-10 years) and some of them are 'unique'.

And it got me thinking, I've been sat here for an hour and still don't really feel like I'm getting anywhere, it's a bit like if you sort out an old cupboard in terms of geting nostalgic, looking through old things and it ends up taking ages with a lot of indecision as to whether hoarde or dispose of certain items.

So what do you guys do - simply delete all your old stuff you aren't sure you need since chances are you'll never make use of it? Keep everything "just in case"? Keep everything neat and tidy or just bung it all in a folder (the equivalent of cramming boxes into cupboards) so you don't have to sift through it all? Unlike physical items, old computer files don't take up much space but it would still be nice to de-clutter.
 
Leave them tbh. I have multiple terabytes, so a few meg of files really does not bother me in any way. Its not like its boxes and boxes of stuff gathering dust on top of the wardrobe and in the loft.
 
I just archive most of it.... Short of the current blip space is cheap. Even if it is all just in a folder named archive somewhere :p

Pretty sure I have a folder somewhere called 'archive' on an external that has a bunch of stuff on it :p

kd
 
I will look through the photos/pictures to see if there are any funny gifs and etc I've saved over the years.

Apart from that, the important documents and photos are saved on backup drive, rest of it is deleted.
 
The majority of my old files will be kept on a backup drive and most of the time I'll never look at them again but just occasionally it's worth it to be able to dig out a file that proves something or other. There's also the nostalgia point as mentioned, sometimes it's nice to see what you've previously done or thought and since space is generally pretty cheap it doesn't seem worth worrying about to me or to put it another way the occasional use I get from the old files is worth more to me than £50 or whatever it has cost me to store them.
 
Always, always retain personal logs, photos, and docs whatever. Storage is cheap and no matter what the memory or the event that that particular file/image captures it is _always_ worth retaining.
 
I have a hard drive somewhere that just has an archive folder within an archive folder within archive within archive, very organised backup system for old computer systems. :D
 
I delete them. If it's old it's useless, If it has a use it isn't old and thus I wouldn't delete it.

but then I suppose some people do productive things on their pc's
 
I think part of the problem is that I don't really know where to start in terms of archiving. There's all kinda of stuff which is very hard to categorise, sometimes it'll be like a text doc with random notes in it like old usernames and passwords, cdkeys etc, then there's the IRC chat logs just too many to sort through (~4000) etc. There's probably 1% genuinely interesting logs there but it takes so long to check each one.

One habit at least I've managed to get out of is keeping a local copy of stuff I download that can be easily replaced (drivers, apps, game patches etc), I guess because I was used to using dialup I got in habit of saving everything whereas these days it is easy to replace common files. Still got a lot of old crap lying around though.... 3dfx card drivers for an old version of Windows, yeah that's gonna come in handy for sure :)
 
Got files as far back as 1999 when I had my first PC. I move them to the hard drive of my next PC which is always bigger than the previous, and I just keep adding to it. Always as drive D. Folders:

Mydocs
Games
MP3
Personal
Music career
Scanned
Portable programs
Tape/digital recordings
Email
Temp

...and so it continues - keep adding files to above folders.
 
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