How often do you spring clean your hard drive?

[Andrea Gourley]

I have spent the afternoon curled up on the sofa with my laptop and both EHDs spring cleaning. I have deleted stacks and stacks of older kits and I have been very strict with what I've kept and have only kept what I know I will use again. Some of the stuff I had was 5 years old and looking very dated.

So, how often do you have a clear out? and how ruthless are you?

[ColleenSwerb]

I'm doing this very same thing next week!!
I try and keep things organized by cleaning things up every few weeks. But a big purge? Twice a year if I'm lucky. I'm pretty sure I still have every kit I got when I was on Traci's CT and I think that was in 2008(?), lol.

[NeverendingJen]

I do a quarterly major purge and backup, and clean up once a month as I transfer all new kits and photos over as well.

[*Celeste*]

I've only been digi scrapping seriously for 10 months. I purged all of the freebie stuff I downloaded that I had collected over the years a few months ago. My challenge is keeping up with tagging in ACDSee - which is super helpful for me when I'm creating as it so easy to find things. I'm picking up an EHD this weekend too so I can back up my kits and layouts more regularly.

I also need to figure out a system for saving completed layouts. Right now they are all in one big folder.

[heathergw]

twice a year, though I need to do it more often... just did a huge spring clean yesterday... but I want to go back and do more...

my photos are where I really need to spend some time cleaning, oye...

[Gemma]

Not very often, I don't like deleting lol.

I did lose quite a bit when my EHD died in November but I haven't deleted anything since then! I keep all my CT stuff on the laptop and my bought stuff on the EHD but it's full now so I really do need to go through and delete, there's loads of non SSD stuff that I know I will NEVER use which I really should get rid of!!

[Gemma]

Ok so I was inspired after replying to this and my EHD is now plugged in and things are being deleted as I type!

[mummytothree]

I delete monthly so I never really need to do "big" purges. But I wan't always like that, the first time I decided to clean things out I think I deleted almost 40GB of stuff!!! since then I do the monthly thing... much more manageble and I can do it in like 15 to 20 minutes!!!

[MamaBee]

Let's see... I've been digi scrapping now for 3 years... and this past week would be... 1st time cleaning! I've decided that since I am a theme scrapper, it just make sense to me to organize my folders that way... so I have gone through every single designer and store folder... well almost, SSD is taking me the longest and I haven't even touched the CT folders... I spent pretty much all day Sat and Sun on it. Oy! Should have done it way sooner... next I will tackle my layouts and start deleting the psd's and then it is the photos... and I thought my scrapping folder was bad...

[adrianka]

I'd say every 3 months, more or less. Not every "spring cleaning" ends up with deleting stuff (sometimes it's just sorting files), but most of them do.

[JulieB146]

I've only JUST begun biting the bullet and deleting freebie kits/stuff that I picked up when I first started (back in June of last year). I'm loathe to delete kits that I bought, though, because even though I haven't used them yet, I WILL use them. I kinda like having my own personal store to pick and choose through. However, I may start deleting plain papers with kits that are redundant, or that I won't ever use. I mean, how many blues am I really ever going to use?

[Susan Bartolini]

Hiding head in shame....my hard drives are a mess.

[Nettio]

Originally Posted by adrianka

I'd say every 3 months, more or less. Not every "spring cleaning" ends up with deleting stuff (sometimes it's just sorting files), but most of them do.

This is totally true. I just did a big spring cleaning project and while I did delete quite a bit of stuff (30GB), I moved even more.

I would say I tend to do a big organization about once a year. I'm pretty good about deleting old digifiles. I don't tend to get that attached to them so almost anytime I got into one of my scrap goodies folders, I end up deleting something I don't want anymore.

Photos are a different story though. I'm terrible about deleting photos. I really just need to be better about paring them down when I upload them rather than saying I'll do it later knowing full well that I won't, haha.

[jaylensmom]

My external hard drive is a horrible mess...I have stuff from years that I know I won't ever use but I have the hardest time deleting anything...Maybe I will brave enough to delete stuff one day

[KateD]

I just finished my first purge/organization project. I deleted just about everything that wasn't from SSD and converted most of the PSD templates to TIFF's. I still need to go through my SSD folders, but it will be mostly just to delete the little "extra" files and convert the last few PSD templates. I just started buying at SSD in July last year, so I don't have a ton of stuff from here yet. All in all, I reduced from 73GB to 48GB. Next up are my layouts - I'm finally going to get rid of the layered files - and my photos (shudder).

The really scary project, though, is going through all of my non-photo/scrap files and getting them organized. I still have files from our first computer when we got married 14 years ago. Do I really need scanned receipts for stuff that I don't own anymore? Ugh!!

[mrshobbes]

The last time I did this was January--but I'm thinking I need to be ruthless with deleting as I have kits I bought from 2008 that I've NEVER used.

[KateD]

Originally Posted by mrshobbes

The last time I did this was January--but I'm thinking I need to be ruthless with deleting as I have kits I bought from 2008 that I've NEVER used.

I really need to go through and delete a few things that I probably won't use. I bought a couple of kits at the last GGG sale that weren't quite what I expected from the previews. I think I'll use Aaron's suggestion and delete them if I haven't used them in a year. I hate the thought of deleting kits that I haven't used, though

I will say that doing my purge has made me a lot more careful about what I buy. Hopefully I won't end up with kits I don't use anymore.

[rach3975]

I don't really have a schedule. I do some photo organizing and deleting as I go. Ideally it would be every time I upload photos, but I'm not quite that good. When I'm suffering from lack of mojo, I usually take a night or two to organize my downloads folder or sort and delete photos. I do that maybe every 2-3 months.

When I had smaller HDs, I was great about purging. Now I do it less frequently, just when I start to feel like I've got too much that I'll never use again. I think I'm due for a purge soon. I recently deleted almost all of my non-SSD, non-CT kits from my laptop. (I still have them on a backup EHD, just in case. They're still good supplies, but I don't use them since they can't count toward the Portfolios.) I'm not that ruthless-I'm careful about what I buy and probably only add about 8 things a month (mostly kits and template sets, including CT stuff), which makes cleaning out a lot easier.

[Tracie Stroud]

I keep mine pretty clean on a consistent basis. I'm a purging junkie. :P I am getting a new bigger harddrive for my lappie tomorrow though, so I've been purging a little more than usual lately so I don't have as much to transfer.

[cbettua]

I went so long without doing it, then last month I put my but in gear and reorganized everything. Now I do it once a month.

I am still trying to figure out how to do a backup on my ehd to another ehd without dragging the files over and replacing them.

[Andrea Gourley]

Crystal I had the same problem yesterday. In the end I sorted out my red EHD and got it all organised with everything I wanted to keep all in the right folders and then once that was in order I deleted everything from my black EHD and then copied everything from the red one onto it. It took a while but at least everything is organised and backed up too.

[SweetMelissa]

I try to do it every three to four months. Some times I'll do it sooner if I have nothing better to do (like house chores.. I mean they'll be there tomorrow right?)