Digital Spring Cleaning

At the time of writing, Spring is coming to close, the weather is glorious outside and we’re still under lockdown. Traditionally, one may consider this part of the year to be a good time to do house cleaning, by disposing of those possessions that have served their purpose and are no longer needed. In this day and age, a lot of that is digital and the filing cabinet, bookshop and record collection may actually reside on an external hard drive.

 Drives sold nowadays tend to offer much larger amounts of storage for lower prices than those sold a decade ago.

Therefore, it is often better to move the contents onto a larger device before passing on the older drive to somebody else in need, so that one isn’t forced to carry so much equipment when travelling. Two external HDDs are my limit, the third one has to go.



When a drive has mostly been ignored for long periods of time, revisiting it may serve the purpose of a time capsule; where one’s documents relating to former jobs have been stored, one can also get an insight into how their tastes in music and films has changed over the years. It can bring up a mixture of emotions; some of those are happy memories, but past pain and suffering may be brought back to the surface, or you may feel a sense of embarrassment with regards to what you once found amusing and funny as you mature with age.

 One cannot always be sure what they really wish to achieve by doing this; hence the task is subject to procrastination.

As somebody who has recently switched from PCs to Macs, there will be a lot of old, small applications and iso files that are no longer going to be of use. Many of the folders will be backups of Windows user folders and thus contain every last small thing you may have downloaded such as those driver files, and filtering through all those can make you wonder if it is worth the effort.



It was definitely worth keeping hold of many a file for potential legal or reference purposes and may still be so. However, there also comes a time to leave the past in the past. Photos with friends or ex-girlfriends that you have may bring back bittersweet memories and pressing the delete button may seem like a ceremonious way of officially banishing their last remaining presence in your life. Not to mention that I still found the odd small porno video, even though I had believed that I had deleted them all a few years back when I decided that pornography should not be a vice that I should indulge in. Besides, even if you don’t agree with my stance on that; everything is streamed for your cooming pleasure now.



Sometimes, real treasure can be found. Old, high bitrate MP3s of decent tunes purchased from independent, online stores that are no longer operating may serve to be modern equivalent of searching through your parent’s attic for classic vinyls. Some of the stuff that you disapprove of may not only cause one to cringe, but also may also serve to remind one about how far they have come in life.



The time consuming process serves to remind you that your time on earth is limited and that one cannot afford to waste it by holding onto what is no longer needed for too long. While one would not like to ever jump to conclusions, decisions need to be made.

As a hobbyist DJ, tunes that I had simply kept to play to please other people were something that had to go; if I didn’t genuinely want to keep them, there’s no point keeping it for anybody else. While a library with more books than you can ever read is potentially an asset (if you have the physical or digital means to store it); excessive amounts of music that you literally don’t have the required amount of time to actually ever listen to, might not be.



Most of my hip-hop collection was removed as I can no longer tolerate many of the themes casually discussed within the lyrics of many tracks. The glorification of criminality and degeneracy is not baggage to keep on holding. The same applies to a lot of commercial pop music and punk rock music. Certain comedy shows that I previously enjoyed may now be viewed differently with age; those also went the way of deletion.



Although there was no heavy lifting, dusting or cleaning required, it was still somehow a strenuous and tiring job; probably more so than traditional spring cleaning, due to the sheer boredom encountered when combing through all those files. It will teach me not to hoard anything digital to avoid repeating this process in the same way that I may avoid acquiring too many physical possessions to allow me to move at will without having to call a removal company or arrange shipping.