Comments on: Impulsive Recycling Disorder

By: John Anderton

John Anderton — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:57:37 +0000

Shift+Deleting is an option
A hardware based solution would be reducing hard disk size I’m always open to accepting 200GB+ SATA2 drives

By: fyc

fyc — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:29:22 +0000

I’ve got a 120 gig HDD and not much crap. I chuck stuff in the bin and only empty it out every fortnight or so.

I would use Shift+Delete if it weren’t for several bad experiences a couple of years back in which I (stupidly enough) didn’t actually double-check what I was deleting. But, then again, I’m one of *those* people who’s under the impression that I really shouldn’t need to (read: I can’t be buggered double-checking).

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 06:13:16 +0000

Since I work in computer forensics I don’t just Delete or Shift-Delete stuff… I overwrite my files with the GNU-Program eraser. Here some quotes to think about:
- “We know what you did on your computer last night”
- “I read your MFT”
- “Go ahead and delete it..Make my day”
- Blade Runnerish: “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Files deleted and wiped coming back to life. I watched hard drive heads… glitter in the dark of cleanrooms. All those … data will never be lost … in time, we can get it all back.”
And my favourite: “All you disk are belong to us …”

By: ken

ken — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:40:26 +0000

Although, it is quite surprising to see how much crap I have kept over the years, especially on old cd’s. I actually cleaned out my junk bin recently and found old floppies. I have not had one in years and borrowed one from a buddy, sure enough, there was old undergrad and grad school emails and papers. 10 years old and immediately went to the trash, never will miss it! I went to being a digital packrat!

Ken

By: ikyouCrow

ikyouCrow — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:37:06 +0000

@Michael:
if you think your recycle bin is eating your space, you should run Disk Cleanup every so often. just see how many GBs of space you make.

@T Man:
you should definitely use the recycle bin for stuff you’re not sure about. VSC only goes back so far…

By: T Man

T Man — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:34:15 +0000

I’m a Shift-Deleter. Don’t like seeing things in the recycle bin. Of course, this has hurt me before when I’ve deleted things that I didn’t mean to, but I like to keep things clean.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:37:56 +0000

I usually end up emptying my recycle bin at around 6GB. I have an unhealthy habit of keeping tabs on my hard drive space, and this is usually the culprit when my space has shrunk a few gigs.

By: dj_cityboy

dj_cityboy — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:03:57 +0000

yeah i have the same issue, 2×250gb HDD’s, my recycle bin was maybe emptied 2 month ago as well!

thanx for the reminder, i’ll get right on that when i get home…mine must be jillions of gigs of crap..who knows, i may find sumthin i need?

peas
cityboy

By: ken

ken — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:57:09 +0000

I find myself being what I like to term “digital packrat”. So if you are worried you might need something, attach a cheap external harddrive and move that trash that frequently. But I will warn you, remember, you may have to go through all of it in the future and it just will be a big headache.

Love the site!

Ken

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:28:43 +0000

I go through my computer about once or every other week, deleting everything that i dont want to keep and moving what i do want to keep into a folder where it belongs, like Pictures for instance.

I have a decent amount of HDD space, around 600 in total but i still delete things such as installers and so on. I have a rather quick connection, so i figure that i can download most things again should i need it.

My recycle bin on the other hand i clear the second something lands in it. For some reason the “full” bin icon bothers me. o_O