Digital Declutter – March and April!

I know I’m a bit late to the party, posting my March sum-up being we’re in May and all… but here it is anyways 😉

As my shoulder wouldn’t allow me much time on the computer since the last March update, there isn’t really all that much to tell. So this one will be short and sweet 😉

E-mails:
Even though March decluttering was mostly about cleaning up my hard-drives. I couldn’t quite leave the e-mails alone 🙂

05.03.18 – 26.03.18 – Outlook file no 13 – From 10228 to 0 = 10228.

10 228 deleted e-mails – minus the emails that have ended up “permanently” in File no 1 (yeah, you have to read February’s update for this) which are 1527 added e-mails. That makes March/April = 8 701 decluttered e-mails

Hard-drive declutter:
Since my mid March update, I haven’t done much on the hard-drives either. You might remember I started out with about 1,001,766 files and 2,20 TB of data!

Today this is what my hard’drive is at:

That’ s 620 GB and 339 140 files deleted so far 🙂 Still way’s to go – but it’s gonna have to wait for a while.

Adding it up with this years total and we get:

Bookmarks – 1625
E-mails – 44 496
Files – 339 140 (620 GB)

That should make the total so far this year = 385 261 digital “items out-the-door”.

Yup, that’s it for this time.. told you it would be short 😉

Data Devices galore!

As you all know – or at least some of you know – I’m working my way through my digital life.

After having deleted 35 360 e-mails in February, I decided to put the e-mail decluttering on hold for the month of March.

At the beginning of the year I wrote a little piece about ALL the data I have 😦 Stored on 8 external hard drive’s, 11 memory sticks, Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud, computers etc.

Since a lot of the data are backups and backups of backups… I know a lot of the information is the same.

I needed a game plan: So I decided to put most of the data onto one hard drive. I’m thinking that this might make it easier to consolidate and find duplicates.

And this is what I did earlier this month. I consolidated data from all my memory sticks, 6 of my external hard drives + my Dropbox and iCloud photo storage.

This is what I ended up with – one drive with:

Oh boy! That’s 1,001,766 files and 2,20 TB of data – and that isn’t even everything!!!! I think I need to lie down

You might notice I only consolidated 6 out of 8 hard drives.. the reason?

One of the extra hard drive which has about 201 774 files and 95 Gb of data – will in it’s entirely be deleted – so no reason to add it to everything else 😉
The other one has my 2 computers Factory Resets + Image backup from when I installed windows 10. So these files will stay… this is non generational as I will need them if anything (God forbid) should happen to my computers.

Over the last couple of weeks.. Iv’e been chugging along, deleting a little here and there… and I’m currently at:

That’ s 600 GB and 330 748 files deleted so far 🙂 But as you can see.. I have a long way yet to go, before I’m done (sad face).

At this pace it might be months before I’m done.. but hey! This is my ONE big project this year, to get my digital life somewhat in check 😉

How are you dealing with your digital life?

Hello 2018!

It’s amazing how fast time goes… 2017 went by in a whirl… and here we are, 2018!

I know a lot of people make elaborate new years resolutions, and they make a long list of plans for what they will be filling the new year with. Me, I have only a few things on my list;

Outside of my health, my goals are to travel and get my digital “life” under control!

My health I seem to have absolutely no control over! Even so.. I’m forever trying to figure it all out, and off course, that won’t stop, regardless of what year we are in!

Since I got sick, I’ve had to put a lot of my travel wish list, on hold. This year (health permitted) I am planning on checking off a couple of boxes on that list. More on this later 😉

The one task I probably have the most control over, is sorting out my digital life/clutter.

In today’s society there is so much that is going on in a digital form. There are social medias, emails, internet banking, different memberships, blogs, you name it.. it’s there!

A lot of us store files in some sorts of Cloud storage and some of us have a lot of data stored at home on physical media.

Over the next weeks and months, I will talk about the different digital areas, that some of us might want to minimize.

Today however I want to talk about the data I have stored at home… I have a mountain of it!

Between two (or really three, old one I don’t use anymore) PCs, eight external hard drive’s, 11 memory sticks, Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud and three different email accounts, I have tons, and tons of files.

Not only are there thousands of files, but I have backups and backups of backups, I’m sure there are even backups of backups of backups… you get the drift.

I have several hundred thousand different files like; software programs, videos, photos, documents, emails and more. I did a count… you won’t believe me.. but there are around 1.155.825 files, and that’s only my external hard drives. I’m not even taking into account what’s on my computers, in my cloud storage’s and individual emails… I think I’m gonna cry 😢

I have singles, duplicates, triplicates and I’m sure, even some quadruplicate versions of files, documents, photos, videos, you name it, floating around.

I think it’s time to get it all under control 😉

On those before mentioned hard drives, the ones that totaled up 1.155.825 individual files…. there are 2217 GB (gigabyte) of data. Now add my PC’s, memory sticks and cloud storage’s – we are talking something around the border of 2350 GB, and I’m sure something else I forgot is gonna pop up somewhere.

I have a large goal for this clean up.. and I’m almost hesitant to tell you all about it, because I’m not even sure it’s achievable, considering I have a lot of music, videos and photos I want to keep… but I’m gonna throw it out there anyways.

OK.. here goes…

Hang on a minute…

“Taking a deep breath..”

OK…

No wait!

OK.. I’m ready…

My goal is to get down to 500 GB or less.

I know for some this doesn’t sound like it should be hard at all.. but for me.. this is huge.. I have decluttered my data before and removed a lot of stuff, so this is not my first time around.

And I can’t be heavy handed either, when deleting stuff, as I have to be careful about not throwing out important documents that I need to keep, like files related to my health, insurances, work ++

The thing, I think will be the most tedious part, is when I start consolidating files, to make sure I only have one copy instead of a gazillion copies.. it’s going to take forever! But this I’m sure you will hear more about when I get to it.

So there we have it.. reduce my digital stuff down to 1/5 of what I have today!

Oh boy.. this is gonna be hard.. good thing I have a full year 😉

And guess when I’ll be starting this? Yep.. there is no time like tomorrow!

See you then… 🙂

Backup of data – is one enough?

One computer out-the-door 🙂 Remember I told you my weekend task was to clear out a computer, well it’s done and tomorrow morning it’s leaving the house with me.

I’ve removed all the software I installed, and all the documents I created. I used it for a video project of mine, and it turned out there was about 66 GB of data, to transfer. Since my new computer only have a 128 GB solid state disk, there wasn’t really room for all my video projects. So to make sure I have “redundancy”, I stored the files from the borrowed computer on two external hard-drives.

Why two? Well, I want to make sure, that if something happens with one of the hard-drives, I have one more chance 😉 I know this sounds excessive, but having been around computers for a few years, I know that hard-drives can go “belly up”. There are, after all, moving parts in most of them.

A lot of people, do save backups of pictures, video and documents, on a CD/DVD, memory stick or an external hard-drive. And this is a good thing to do, you never know what’s going to happen to you computer, and having a backup is great.

But if you have that picture, video or document you don’t want to loose, on only one device, I would recommend that you consider making one more copy, on a separate unit. Wouldn’t you just hate, if something happened to your device, and you no longer could access that priceless picture of a family member, that are no longer here, or that video, of your child walking for the first time…

I know I would!

What about you – do you have backup of your “would-hate-to-loose” documents?

My item out the door:

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