What’s On Your Hard Drive?

Now that the hub-bub of the Consumer Electronics Show is behind us, I can get back to that daunting task I’ve been working on little-by-little: cleaning up my hard drive.

If you’re anything like me, your hard drive is your life. I’ve been saving so much on it, that I’ve found things dating back eons which in technology years, dates back to at least Y2K.

This got me thinking about what people save and how I’ve been able to categorize my hard drive contents into these buckets:

Photographs:
Unless incriminating from a wild night in college, I don’t know if a photograph should ever be deleted. I love how a simple image can capture a moment or an experience. The photograph is the lifeblood of a memory.

Music:
My music collection is old yet timeless. Well maybe not this song by one-hit wonder Trio but you get the gist.  I love the power of music and how it can shape your mode, set a tone or just provide ambience.  It’s my background noise when writing; it’s my co-pilot on the commute home.  Having all of my collection in one place makes sense.

Artwork:
I’m a comic fan. I like collecting cool art and putting it on my smartphone or computer as wallpaper. I have art from comics that aren’t even in publication anymore and creators who’ve gone onto other things.  I know I should delete them for the space but I feel like the moment I do, I’ll want to re-post it again.

Movies:
Whether I shot them myself or have purchased them online, it’s always good to have a movie handy. You never know when cable will go out or you’ll be stuck at a bus station in the seedy part of town. Having a copy of Top Gun will always draw a crowd.

(cc Oktober Black Press)

Writings & Musings:
A little known fact I don’t talk about much is that I used to write comics. A friend of mine convinced me to join with him in some small press publishing to do some creator owned projects.  It was a lifetime ago, but I still have the scripts I wrote with the intent to one day go back, dust them off, and do something with them. One day…

Graphics and Other Techno-Trinkets:
There was a period in my life where I collected a lot of dumb things on the Internet. Animated cursors, desktop themes, sound clips. I have zero reason to keep these things, but I know the moment I will delete them, I will want my Luke Skywalker lightsaber mouse pointer and may not be able to find it again.  Stranger things have happened.

Documents:
This is the boring stuff. Some spreadsheet tracking your finances, an old resume that needs updating or in my case, an inventory of Star Wars figures that I had intended to sell on eBay ten years ago. This isn’t as sexy as the inspirational PowerPoint presentations you get forwarded from your mother, but equally just as important.

As you can see, I have a long way to go before I can purge my hard drive with the unnecessary, the outdated and the just plain immature.  Or I can do what I’ve already done and upload it all to an external drive and deal with it another day until I can get my rat pack tendencies under control.

Time will tell, but I’m sure I’m not the only one collecting all things for a rainy day. Share some of your hard drive baubles in comments below or with us on Twitter.