I've been buying personal computers since the mid-1980s. Most of the time each new system included much more storage than the one it replaced. To make things easy I usually just copied the entire contents of the old machine's drive(s) to a backup folder or partition on the new machine -- all my personal data of course, but also the entire operating system including its caches and temporary files -- everything! Sometimes I just pulled the hard drive from the old machine and stuck it into a drive bay in the new system.
As time passed and the storage on the "new" system filled up I'd rummage through the stuff from the old machine(s) and delete everything that I could from the material archived from the old system. Eventually even that doesn't give me enough space and its time to get a new system with a faster, more powerful processor and plenty of storage space. Repeat that process a few times. Eventually it wasn't just one desktop computer, there might be another off in a different part of the house. By and by I acquired a laptop or two and a series of smartphones. All these devices have storage, and the most important and current documents are stored on and synchronized among each of them.
Oh, and then there are the offline backups of all that data! It is no wonder that I was very sympathetic with @stack's post about managing backups.
=> Linux: Managing Backups and Damaged Copies
I recently purchased a large new drive for my main desktop system. This time I don't want to just do a massive dump of all those old archived files from the past three decades in their chaotic disarray. As I was sifting and sorting I found a couple of entries in a diary that I realized I wanted to post on my blog. Here thay are:
The first is a reflection about how reclusive I've become and how it came to be that way.
=> 2018-09-16 21:41 ๐ What I Missed In Life
The second is a brief essay regarding the duty of functioning as the custodian of the data that I've collected.
=> 2018-09-17 09:33 ๐ Custodian
=> ๐ค jdcard
Jan 04 ยท 4 weeks ago
=> ๐ป darkghost ยท Jan 05 at 00:37:
The diary entry "What I missed in life" feels like it really hit home here. I'm not as far in my years but I'm far enough in the journey to be missing so much. Having young children and holding down a full time job leaves precious little time for the trivialities of life, but I miss the big stuff too. I'm detached from popular culture since canceling cable TV, moving to the bottom of a hill, while staying away from mainstream social media. I don't have face-to-face contact outside the home except at work, the kinds of fungible relationships that exist by proximity. I can see the hallmarks of a life shaping into a life lived regretfully as each samey day slips away unnoticed and unappreciated.
=> ๐ค jdcard [OP] ยท Jan 05 at 03:20:
I'm not really feeling much regret. I lived each day as it came, and pretty much got to do whatever I wanted to do. As a teen I had a plan for what I wanted to do in life, but that fell apart before I reached my 24th birthday. Ever since then I moved from one job to another, one house to another, taking whatever path seemed the best option at the moment. Maintained good relationships with the wife and kids and extended family throughout the journey. Never got rich and famous but I am still living happily ever after.
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