To Trash Or Not To Trash: What to do with 5 years of Music

or, 1200 words about hard drives, videos and way too much music

So I've reached a bit of a crossroads: my storage demands are being stretched to their limits, and every one of my HDs is beginning to fill up. I'm a bit strapped for cash at the moment, so simply upgrading to a bigger and badder HD isn't an option thats really on the table, and the temptation to just delete all that music that I don't listen to anymore is becoming more and more of a palatable option. And anyway, its not like any of this stuff is *that* important. I mean its just media, right?

In a time when we are becoming increasingly defined by our tastes and consumption of mass media (just look at anyone's facebook or myspace profiles--most offer a laundry list of music and movies that are they're favorites), what does it mean if you simply don't care enough to keep all of those old files anymore? Maybe its just because I'm behind the times in terms of drive storage: 120gb internal on both my laptop and desktop, then 200gb and 80gb externals, it seems like a little over 500 gb is paltry compared to the multi-terabyte rigs that are en vouge. I'm no stranger to multi-gigabyte project workflows (I work with digital video) and the necessity for massive amounts of storage, but it just seems like 500gb is still a lot of data for me as a personal user.

So here's how my data usage breaks down: about 30 gb on each computer is music, some of which overlaps between the two systems; OS and software take up about 40-50gb on my laptop and about 20-30 on my desktop; most of the rest of the space is taken up by video, mostly mp4 or avi, leaving about 15gb free on my laptop (this changes alot though because I use it for work and need at least that much free space) and less than 10gb on my desktop. The externals hold video and music exclusively, and are as full as the internal drives on both of my computers.

Essentially, I would only have to pay about $100 for a decent 500gb hard drive, but I just have this nagging feeling that I'm wasting money to do that primarily because I really don't listen to all of my music anymore, nor by any means do I watch all of my videos.

It turns out that most of my videos on my HD are now streaming on my Netflix Player, too. I think the real reason for not deleting my movies is because they are all high quality dvd rips that I made myself, over years of buying and borrowing. I have a dvd player and hundreds of dvds, but I prefer to upscale them through my computer via the ripped files. Still, I don't think that I could ever have enough space to do what I wanted to properly without running into a database problem and crashing the drive.

So ultimately, the movies stay with a few exceptions here and there for things I know I just don't need to have lying around.

Now my music is another beast entirely. I was 13 years old when Napster came out and it was one of the single defining moments in my growth as a music listener. Suddenly, every song, album, and band were at my disposal to download at about 5kbps, at least until my family got cable internet. By the time I was a senior in high school, I had discovered newsgroups as well, and now my music collection was in two main parts: the single song folder of MP3s culled from Napster, Bearshare, iMesh, Gnutella, Limewire, Kazza and every other fad piece of software (most of which came packed with spyware & malware) that defined the early years of P2P filesharing; and a meticulously well kept folder heiarchy of bands and albums made by hand before iTunes made it easy for you. That was when things were easy, when I only had one computer and one ipod (which I still have, btw), and generally listened to music in 2 main locations: my car and my computer. It also must be noted that I had lots and lots of CDs, mostly burned, which have since been abandoned at my parents house, where they will probably stay forever.

Then I moved away to college and my music collection started the chrysalis its still currently in. I was forced to pick and choose from about 80gb of music because that's exactly how big the HD on my first powerbook was. I ended up with only the newest and most beloved of my music collection, leaving behind the archives of my music that so defined me as a teen.

As I went through college, my music tasted changed more rapidly then they ever had before, and I eventually made the switch and started to collect vinyl--both new any used. Now my vinyl collection is well into the hundreds and its the primary way that I listen to music besides my ipod. Ipods are another part of the story, too: all in all, I think I've had about 5 different iPods over the past decade, most of which either crashed or were stolen. But averaging about 20gb, they were perpetually full and used constantly. I also DJ'ed parties using my computer for about a year, so having everything that I wanted to play stored on my computer was essential.

The problem was that eventually I ran out of space. I started deleting frantically so my computer to slink along on a day to day basis until I justified needing an external drive for editing at school. I went big, and thats the 200gb HD I use at the heart of my media center. But what happened was that I couldn't save anything and it eventually led to the fragmenting of my music over multiple computers and hard drives. I eventually went back to my parents house and collected the internal HD with all the music on it, so some of that was thrown into the mix too.

So as it stands, I feel like I have multiple copies of my music in a couple different places but I don't have the time or energy to sort through it all and try and compile it into a single location. At some point in the near future, I'm doomed to add a 500gb (or larger) HD to my collection of storage devices, thus confusing things even more. On the bright side, the some file system improvements in linux now allow me to merge folders, copying only new files and not asking me the dreaded question, "keep or replace," for entire directories.