2020-02-08 - Minimizing storage
-------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm trying to minimize the number of digital files i own as much as
possible. My goal is to have a maximum of 128mb of personal files
at all times. Here i'm only counting personal files such as
documents, images and programming work. I.e. files that i like to
keep, regardless of the OS i use. The OS itself is not included in
this 128mb.
Of course this self-imposed goal is completely arbitrary, and does
not make much sense in this time of abundance of data storage
media. Hard drives can easily store terabytes of files, and
therefore from a technological perspective there is no reason to
impose a limit anywhere.
However, for me it feels this abundance of data storage available
is exactly a good reason to impose such a strange limitation for
myself. The good thing about limiting myself to 128mb of personal
files is that such a limit really keeps me alert on which files are
really essential for me.
With 128mb of data storage available, i really have to make active
decisions on what to keep, and what to throw out. And this is very
hard to do (especially throwing out files).
On top of this, it keeps me involved in getting files stored as
efficiently as possible. If i want to keep an image, I keep a
relatively low-res version of it instead of a 24 megapixel raw
file. I prefer text files over any other format (although native
text PDF's can be rather small too). For programming work, i keep
just the c source files and a makefile.
Despite my efforts, i haven't reached my goal yet. Currently i
still have roughly 300mb of files. So there is still quite some
cleaning to do.
The fun thing of this silly experiment, is that it makes me rethink
how and why i use a computer. I'm still not sure if any of this is
sensible in the future. But lets see how close i can get to my own
self-imposed goal.
