What Do We Do With All This Data?

I have about 800GB of storage on my desk right now*.  I’m consolidating two older external drives.  I have so much data built up on these drives that I can’t be bothered to purge or trim any of it.  I’m just copying all of it because I now have more space than I need.  A lot of the data is redundant from various ad hoc backups while reinstalling Windows or moving to a new laptop.

With all this data building up, it makes me wonder what I am ever going to do with it.  In some ways I am a digital pack rat, just storing things in case I need them again.  But the volume of data has gotten to the point where it is too much effort to sort through it.  It’s easy to spend $100 every couple of years to quadruple my storage capacity and just keep on cruising.

Similarly, I am an email pack rat.  I keep a lot of stuff, especially the mail I send.  A lot of it has minimal future value.  Really important stuff I archive into PST files anyway.  I just switched email providers and in the process I did some purging, which was a surprisingly therapeutic experience.  I cut my 470MB mailbox down to 250MB.  I have been on a two-year quest to achieve Inbox Zero.  When I started, my inbox held about 1500 messages on average.  Today I have 25 messages waiting.  I have been down to 7 messages.  I haven’t gotten down to zero yet.  :)  I will soon.

The lingering question on my brain is how are we going to deal with all this data that we are generating at a personal and family level?  Is my generation’s version of the trunk in the attic going to be not just overwhelming but impossible to sort through?

* I recently picked up a 500GB external LaCie drive from Futureshop for $119 - sweet deal