Today I noticed I was down to 28GB of free space on my primary 500GB hard drive… and mildy panicked (can you mildly panic? I’ll say yes). I remember when the thought of a 28GB hard drive was ludicrous. And now I find when that’s all the free space I have, its not enough.

In the real world (the world outside my computer) I am anything but a pack-rat. I have a “if it hasn’t been used in 24 hours 1 month, it’s garbage” attitude. So why the difference when using it on a computer? I literally have files that are ancient that I still keep on there just in case. Now granted, I’m talking about work-related or personal files, not music, movies, etc. I see why you need to keep those around, obviously. On top of that I back it all up on a Time Machine back drive. Do I really need all this stuff? Probably not. Now that computer storage is so cheap, its easier not to think about it and just pack it away.

Perhaps I would be a pack-rat in the real world if I just had the space for it. Maybe this is why physical storage centers are so popular now. They’re the hard drives for the real-world pack-rats… except they cost more and take up a lot of room.

For now I’ll stick to being a virtual pack-rat. I’ll never know when my resume from 1998 will come in handy.