Saturday, February 06, 2010

Too Many Monkeys In My Hard Drive

There is nothing like that little message that pops up to tell me that my hard drive is almost full to make me clean out my computer clutter.  I thought there must be some reason that my computer is conspiring against me, so I took Polly to the Apple store.  They informed me that my music and pictures were taking up one-third of my space.  Even though I have a back-up hard drive, I poised myself for some hard-line discipline and resolved to clean things out.

I started around Christmas with cleaning out emails and managed to clean out about 500 or so.  Isn't it hard to delete emails from friends?  They are long catch-up type messages and they make me laugh every time, so I'm avoiding those for now.  What really happens more than not is just time going by and forgetting to delete the junk so it keeps accumulating. Normally I wouldn't care but I have serious computer issues so I must push forward.

In order to prevent this massive build-up again, I have been ruthlessly unsubscribing from companies.  Some of them are sending emails so often that I'm not really reading them.  Williams Sonoma has started really creeping me out with their emails.  If I go visit their site to look at something, they will send me an email a couple of days later saying, "Thank you for looking at our Cuisinart Food Processor."  What?  I really don't like being internet stalked.  Talk about nosy!

Photos were my next line of attack and they give the most satisfaction in creating more hard drive space.  I didn't know how massive these photo and video files were.  If you are having this issue too, go straight for the jugular, the photos.  On first pass through over 6000 photos, I've managed to delete almost 1000!  I've come to realize that I need to practice responsible photography in the future.  How many pictures of a monkey's face in Costa Rica do I need?

What about you guys?  Are you email and photo hoarding like me?  I'm mostly just too lazy to take the time to go through these things until it's too late.  What do you need to sort through before you run out of space in your computer or elsewhere?

5 comments:

Stephanie said...

I've been photo hoarding and need to clear them out. Thanks for the reminder.

Sara said...

Oh I don't even want to go there with the pictures...I'll just buy a bigger computer with more hard drive space!

The Closet Therapist said...

Bonjour Madame, You too? I love to take the pictures but editing them and deleting is not so fun. Good luck with yours!

The Closet Therapist said...

Sara, That's one way to approach it! I'm getting a new computer in September when they have the teacher's special at Apple. Gustavo is patiently waiting for my current one. :)

casey t said...

Just a reminder to back up your photos (and any other irreplaceable stuff). Preferably to disk. A friend of mine had her hard drive completely crash. ALL the photos of her 4-year-old child (from birth on) were on there. She and her husband wound up spending $800 to have the files recovered. Really expensive but worth it to them. Backing up is a pain but worth it.
Hope things are going well in Texas. It's freakishly cold here in Greenville. We are wearing more clothes indoors because we can't afford to turn up the heat. :-)

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