What do you do with old computer files?

[HangTime]

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.

 

[HangTime]

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