Pulling a thread - Clean up on Drive D

[bill_schubert]

I've got an entire installation copy of Windows XP stored in my Google Drive. Software installations for customers we had in 2010, backup Quickbook files, videos of promos and laptop repairs, and a SQL Management Studio install file.

All this on my Google drive not only in the cloud but on my PC.  It means that I've got all that backed up on another drive that images my PC.  

I disparage people who hoard stuff all the time and am embarrassed that I've not better cleaned up my own PC.  I've fixed that now.  I've deleted about 30GB of files, actually more.  All of it is backed up and accessible but is no longer on my PC and no longer in the Google Cloud.  I've gone from 70% full to 42% full on my Google Drive.

All of this because I started looking at my computer situation after talking with my sister about how passwords are handled for the people who will inherit our stuff.

The whole data and security thing is a mess and will only get worse as people move into the 'senior' stage of life who have complex cyber estates.  I'm trying to clean mine up some and still have it secure.

Not easy.  But I'm making progress.  Archiving all the company stuff is a huge start.

Comments

[msconduct]

Good to get that done. I 100% agree with you in principle that it's best to have a clean machine, but I've discovered that with some data it's not worth the time it takes. I came back from a Botswana safari with more than 5,000 photos - I spent some time thinking about how best to deal with them and in the end I concluded the best thing to do was to dump them on the hard drive and leave them there. Anything else would have taken weeks and a vast amount of decision making. Which of these fifty equally attractive but slightly different shots of a giraffe do I keep? Argh. I do pull out the best ones for making calendars, but otherwise they just sit there and I click through them occasionally. I always upgrade the size of the hard drives when I buy a new PC just for this situation.

[bill_schubert]

I agree about the pix. Other than the ones I put on Dreamwidth I hardly ever look at my Google Pictures and only have most of them as they are saved automatically. What was taking up most of the room was old company stuff. .mov files from training and such. Lots of it. Easy to delete once I realized I've got it backed up on a huge USB drive.

This is my last PC. It will be replaced by a Chromebook laptop so the USB drives will be necessary. Long as I don't fill up my Google Drive (which is now under 45% I'm good.

A huge benefit of not working is I don't much fear losing stuff.

[msconduct]

My company is so tiny that twenty-three years' worth of records fits into less than 3.5 GB. That goes into my free Dropbox as my offsite backup. Otherwise, all the backups go on external drives and I just pray the house doesn't catch fire. I think it's probably from being on so many sites as a contractor and seeing endless problems of one kind or another with cloud stuff that I'm very old-timey in my approach to storage. Not that I think your Google Drive stuff is in danger. I just know I've had far fewer problems with my own drives than the cloud does.