You know all those discs (three and a quarter or three and a half I never did work that out) you’ve got in the back of the cupboard…the ones marked ‘final thesis – guard with your life’ and ‘backup 2002’…the ones you made when you changed computers…the ones with so many crossings out you’ve got no idea what they actually are…
…chuck them out. I am going to repeat that, because it is good advice which may later save you a frustrating hour – or even two – looking for the one thing you thought to yourself now whatever happened to…chuck them out
Just take them all out of the space in the cupboard they are currently wasting and put them in your hard rubbish or whatever it is you should do to responsibily dispose of such things. Don’t worry though about trying to make sure none of your sensitive or important or useful files are there. They are not. At least not in any recoverable form.
“Recoverable” is the pertinent word there. I still stuff from my honours thesis on a Macintosh Classic that I have no hope of transferring unless I feel like retyping it. Lucky I don’t need anything on Janette Turner Hospital at the moment…
Don’t bother having your husband bring home the incredibly expensive and complicated ‘restore files’ program home from work either, okay?
Although it will ‘restore’ 49,292 files, you won’t recognize any of them anyway –
and most of them will be jpegs.
too late!
you are so, so very right
Funny, I just looked at my disk with ‘Kate’s Thesis!!!!’ written on it in red pen and decided not to chuck it today, if only because I want to be able to show my children what a floppy disk looked like.
Yeah, well, I talk tough. Actually, I’ve put them all back in the cupboard. I only give advice, I don’t take it.
Earlier this year, someone asked me if I’d write an academic article for a particular journal issue. Anyway, I thought, ‘If only I still have that draft article from my MA thesis that I tried to write 17 years ago, it would be the perfect subject matter for that issue.’ I went thru my floppyy disk collection, found a few potential suspects, took them to the IT boys, who found a program that could read my old disks. And lo and behold, the draft article was still there, along with a lot of other useful stuff.
Don’t chuck it, the hoarder said; you never know!
Still haven’t finished the article, tho…