Yesterday I had the pleasure of working on my hard drive’s file system. And by ‘working’ I mean ‘hoping and praying that it doesn’t catch on fire before I can get the files off it.’ I got a nag notice telling me that I only had a few megabytes of room left on my disk. That’s a problem when, the last time I checked, I had over 80 gigabytes free.
The thought of my hard drive going to meet its maker renewed my vow to make better backups. It also reminded me that every day is precious, and we should be thankful for every day our hard drives don’t explode. It also got me thinking that I’m glad they can’t settle that whole DVD format, because I got a load of disks from my uncle that his computer can’t use!
Mixed blessings aside, yesterday I declared ‘document bankruptcy.’ I decided that, it was time that all files on my hard drive had to go. Chunk ’em all on a DVD, and start all over. As I was clearing all the files I really meant to get to, someday, I noticed all the bad habits I got into in the interest of keeping copies of all my work.
It started innocently enough, as I purchased extras for my new Power Mac G5 in 2003. I’d get an extra hard drive, and dedicate it solely to documents. What better idea than to have a backup of all your data, right there in the box? Plus, you know, large files and scratch disks.
As I started filling the thing up, and the startup disk, I noticed myself creating a lot of rat’s nests. Folders with fancy titles, conspicuously labeled for use at some time in the future. Some of those files are right where I stored them, back in 2003.
The accumulation of all those files amounts to about 30 gigabytes of wasted space. Mostly music files and movies made obsolete by YouTube. Plus there’s the nigh–upon 10–15 gigs devoted to parodies of that Howard Dean scream. And, someday I’ll get around to posting that. Someday.
Going through all those movies, pictures, and documents showed me that I really didn’t have a good system for the creation, manipulation, storage, and backup of important files. See, for instance, here’s one of the biggest bad habits I got into. This is an image of my Downloads folder.
Those sorted folders come from a Safari plugin called SafariStand. For years, I’ve thought this was an excellent way to keep my hard drive organized, since I don’t have all the little files cluttering up the first folder I open to find some downloaded file. It’s a great idea, in theory, but that sorting leads to something else not at all great.
The minute I run out of space in my Downloads folder, what do you think I do? The natural thing to do would be create another folder, then take all that stuff and mark that folder, um, “Cleaning up the downloads?” Sounds like a great idea to me!
Yes, I did this over and over again, and there my un–looked–at files sat for months and even years. Not that I’m trying to be a backup disaster story, but my system — which I believe to be the default way a lot of people think — tends to be really unsafe. Not only that, it’s messy, and really unnecessary.
I went with the catchy title for this post because it sounds cool, but I could’ve just as easily titled it ‘Hard Drive Zero’ (an homage to Inbox Zero) The idea is that, instead of creating dogpiles of data that you’ll never use, to go back to the days when you had a 100 megabyte hard drive, and you need to save your files elsewhere if you ever want to use them again. To get in the habit, you have to first break the habit of creating mountains of folders.
Just like in my earlier example, I figure the default way people think is that if they’ve got their files stuck in endless file folders, they’re more organized. My Howard Dean parody collection begs to differ, as those folders only give the illusion of organization. While going through my hard drive, trying to save my files, I realized just how many files I used once, then kept for no other reason than there was room.
There’s an easy way to combat this waste of space. Now my downloads folder isn’t a downloads folder — it’s my inbox. Whenever I have something that needs work, I put it here until I can reference it, delete it, or use it in some project. Instead of countless drone–like serialized blue folders, I’ve got stuff what needs to get itself gone and done.
This technique extends to the rest of my disk, as well. My desktop literally acts as my desktop, so I know when I’m cheating and not processing my inbox (which in this case is my Downloads folder). My Documents folder is pretty much a waiting place for files waiting to be sent to disk then deleted. Cleaner disk, safer concept, less to worry about.
Whenever I need to get an old file, I pull it off my backups DVD, and if it’s a minor edit, I won’t even save the file. If it is a major edit, I keep it there for reference until the next scheduled data harvest. Nothing goes back on my hard drive unless I need it. That’s why it’s called bankruptcy, because I lost it all.
I’m not sure how this will work with things like indexed searches, since I’ve made the point moot by storing the files offline. There’s also the problem of constantly edited files, since read–only DVD plastic is resilient to change. There will be some extraneous project–like data on my hard drive all the time.
My system isn’t perfect (yet), but it’s as future–proof (and me–proof) a system as I can make.
