Use Your Tools - Starting Fresh

by Kera McHugh

Here's an idea…

Get rid of all the junk clogging up your hard drive!!

Yeah, yeah, I know… "but I might need that some day"… trust me… you won't. And if you do, all you'll have to do is pull out your well labeled CD and copy it back to your harddrive. Meanwhile, you won't have to sort through it and the 10,000 other old docs while trying to stay up to date with your current projects.

People - myself included - have just as much trouble parting with old files as they do parting with old cans of soup… I mean come on… how long do you need to hold onto that draft1 doc from the project that you finished 8 months ago that ended up taking 12 drafts to complete??? Get REAL!

Now, I'm not saying you have to be completely ruthless. You don't have to send it to the Recycle Bin… yet… You can keep it as long as you want, JUST NOT ON YOUR HARDDRIVE.

So what are your options?

If you have a CD burner (aka CDR-RW drive) you can simply drag and drop your entire MY DOCUMENTS folder (or whatever named folder you have) into the menu window for your burner software and click WRITE (or copy, or burn, or go or whatever). Then, take the CD out of the drive and LABEL IT - "My Docs - January 2, 2002". Then, tuck it into a nice slim little jewel case and file it!

If you don't have a CD burner, get one. They're cheap these days. And if that's still a challenge (believe me, I know how much of a challenge that can be), there are some great online storage sites that are cheap or even FREE where you can upload your most precious files and get them off your harddrive. (see below for a few urls)

The latter option is actually a really good idea for storing VERY IMPORTANT files too… well, back up copies of said VERY IMPORTANT files. That way they are safe if you ever get a virus, or you have a fatal crash and have to reformat, or your cpu bursts into flame (it's happened).

You can do it the old fashioned way too… floppy disks were invented for a purpose. Sure, you may need 3 boxes of them, but they work.

Before burning, or disking, I recommend spending an hour or so with Windows Explorer, and going through every folder you have documents in and DITCHING the ones you really don't need: multiple drafts, unused drafts, pdf copies, gif/jpg/tiff copies of original png, ai or psd files. Get rid of stuff you never ended up submitting for a project (or if you think it's valuable archive material, zip it up with WinZip or similar compression tool before you burn it).

The beginning of a new year is a great time to do this… new beginnings, fresh starts, all those clichés… Start your 2002 clean and fresh (and with a really good cup of coffee, of course)… clean up your hard drive, unclutter your document files, reorganize your folders and make it a profitable, productive and peaceful new year.

Happy burning!

Online Storage Sites - free and fee:
http://www.freedrive.com/FDHome.htm
http://www.mydocsonline.com/
http://www.freewebspace.net/guide/diskstorage.shtml
http://www.swiftdesk.com/
* NB: these were simply found via a google search for "online file storage"… I have not investigated them fully, and cannot vouch for any of their services or reliability. I do not get anything out of sharing these url's with you. As of Jan 2, 2002, they were valid urls.