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Digital clutter: Learning to let go and stop hoarding terabytes

paulstamatiou.com

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Re: Digital clutter: Learning to let go and stop hoarding terabytes

#51

Post by jeffbee »

megous wrote: post #4

Not sure how are these nvme enclosures supposed to work. The problem is right in the picture. Samsung SSD bla bla 3.3V/3.3A = 11W and that's just for the SSD itself, the controller chip in the enclosure will also consume a lot of power at the advertised speeds. So you're looking at say 13W or so peak power consumption of the whole deal. Normal USB 3.0 port can do 4.5W. So sticking that contraption into such port will…

The thing in the picture won't work at all if you plug it into a USB 3.0 port so that problem solves itself. I believe Thunderbolt ports are required to provide a minimum of 15W. But overall you might be right, there is not an end-to-end negotiation that would avoid a worst-case brownout of you had a very power-hungry SSD. The SSD in the article has a high-power active mode of 7.5W max (I am not sure why it says 3.3v*3.3A on the sticker[1]) and the TB controller in the enclosure claims 1.2W, so in this case it seems fine.

It's possible to configure NVMe devices with power caps, but the 970 Evo in the article loses 95% of its performance if you cap it to 3.6W, which is its lowest operational power state.

1: Edited to say this is because mine is a 970 Evo Plus apparently the original really did draw that much current.

Re: Digital clutter: Learning to let go and stop hoarding terabytes

#52

Post by kmoser »

While it's admirable to hoard everything, and future historians (read: most likely inquisitive relatives) might be lucky enough to inherit one of your archives that hasn't succumbed to bit rot (which, even with proper storage, may be well under 10 years), don't overlook the relatively simple way to maximize the chances of your images being enjoyed by people in the future and today: make prints!

The best way I've found is to make photo books. Most companies use print technology that lasts upwards of 200 years https://your-digital-life.com/long-will-photo-books-last/. Print a few books, give them to a few relatives, and you can be assured that the best of your photos will be viewed for decades to come. This way you can share your best while still hoarding that archive of every. last. photo.

Re: Digital clutter: Learning to let go and stop hoarding terabytes

#53

Post by nobody9999 »

lucb1e wrote: post #40
xmddmx wrote: post #25

Regarding Arq backup: if you are worried about using a proprietary (enrypted) and closed-source backup format in case the company were to go under, they have an open source command-line restore tool: https://github.com/arqbackup/arq_restore I've been using Arq for years, but I need to look into the "Glacier Deep Archive" format which is about 1/20th the cost of the fastest storage class.

I always find it interesting to compare 4TB/month pricing against buying N 4TB hard drives yourself, where N is the desired redundancy. Typically, you could buy a fresh set of hard drives 2-3x per year for the "standard" (they don't even call it "premium") storage tier. A normal drive lasts 5 years: go figure. (The markup was about double ten years ago, so it has gotten more competitive already.) Of course, that's no…

>I did have 2 die at the same time: same make and model, nearly identical serial numbers, surprise: same crash date and crash behavior

Out of curiosity, were those Seagate drives?

I bought a couple of Seagate 3TB (spinning rust) SAS drives some years ago, and they both died within a couple weeks of each other after only a few months.

Re: Digital clutter: Learning to let go and stop hoarding terabytes

#54

Post by mysterydip »

Faark wrote: post #31
mavu wrote: post #6

NO! I will keep adding an /archive folder to every PC I own and copy the complete contents of my previous /home/ folder into it, including an endless amount of recursive /archive folders. I will never look at any of those again. But Archeologists in the far future will find my data and it will revolutionize their understanding of our time.

I do look at mine. Rarely for something special / useful. Sure, i won't ever again need the drivers for that dell c600 that died 15 years ago. But just seeing that installer brought back fond memories! Randomly looking in there is fun every once in a while. And with storage still growing decently, why should i delete anything? It's not like physical boxes of photos/etc that would take up more and more space every yea…

Probably not in the case of a popular brand like Dell, but there are retro computing enthusiasts scouring the internet for any trace of a driver for some piece of hardware they have, and it might be in someone's backup files right now. Wouldn't hurt to add an iso to the internet archive if one isn't there.

Re: Digital clutter: Learning to let go and stop hoarding terabytes

#55

Post by ufo »

mavu wrote: post #6

NO! I will keep adding an /archive folder to every PC I own and copy the complete contents of my previous /home/ folder into it, including an endless amount of recursive /archive folders. I will never look at any of those again. But Archeologists in the far future will find my data and it will revolutionize their understanding of our time.

And of course there's a XKCD for it: https://xkcd.com/1360/

Re: Digital clutter: Learning to let go and stop hoarding terabytes

#56

Post by galfarragem »

What about “tree shaking” the stuff you don’t care anymore?

It’s not easy to know what to delete on the present day but some years later it is. I never regreted having deleted anything!

What about deleting the worse photos from that hike 10 years ago? If you don’t like them now, most likely you never will… and nobody wants to rewatch hundreds of photos from that hike. Not even you.

Re: Digital clutter: Learning to let go and stop hoarding terabytes

#57

Post by patchymcnoodles »

nobody9999 wrote: post #53
lucb1e wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find it interesting to compare 4TB/month pricing against buying N 4TB hard drives yourself, where N is the desired redundancy. Typically, you could buy a fresh set of hard drives 2-3x per year for the "standard" (they don't even call it "premium") storage tier. A normal drive lasts 5 years: go figure. (The markup was about double ten years ago, so it has gotten more competitive already.) Of course, that's no…

>I did have 2 die at the same time: same make and model, nearly identical serial numbers, surprise: same crash date and crash behavior Out of curiosity, were those Seagate drives? I bought a couple of Seagate 3TB (spinning rust) SAS drives some years ago, and they both died within a couple weeks of each other after only a few months.

Not the author, but I use the very common (for storage) Seagate Ironwolf series.

Re: Digital clutter: Learning to let go and stop hoarding terabytes

#58

Post by Aeolun »

leviathan wrote: post #35
Aeolun wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very pleasant to look through these folders and hope I’ve got everything this time. Cleaning it all up has been on my to-do list for the past 5 years or so :/

> Cleaning it all up has been on my to-do list for the past 5 years 13 years and counting. But I’m sure I’ll eventually clean mine up

I just have to keep it all until I retire. I’m sure I’ll get around to it then.

Re: Digital clutter: Learning to let go and stop hoarding terabytes

#59

Post by kerkeslager »

> I ended up deciding to get a small, simple external Thunderbolt SSD enclosure.

See this is the problem with the whole minimalism/decluttering/etc. movements: half the time they are so entrenched in consumerism that they authentically believe that buying this new thing will solve their clutter problem. The author goes on to buy a new cloud storage service that is "a backup power tool for advanced users". And spends all this time doing all this migrating and reorganizing activity that seems an awful lot like work.

People in this trap will talk about how minimalism and decluttering are about making their lives easier and simpler, but that's not what I'm seeing happening. This seems harder and more complicated. I don't want to have to be an "advanced user".

I fell for this for a while myself, but no longer. I want to be a dumb user. There are other things I want, like security and privacy, and control of my own data, and to his credit the author does mention that, but if that's your goal be focused on that, not this not-quite-sensible form of decluttering I keep seeing popping up.

Re: Digital clutter: Learning to let go and stop hoarding terabytes

#60

Post by kitsunesoba »

Faark wrote: post #31
mavu wrote: post #6

NO! I will keep adding an /archive folder to every PC I own and copy the complete contents of my previous /home/ folder into it, including an endless amount of recursive /archive folders. I will never look at any of those again. But Archeologists in the far future will find my data and it will revolutionize their understanding of our time.

I do look at mine. Rarely for something special / useful. Sure, i won't ever again need the drivers for that dell c600 that died 15 years ago. But just seeing that installer brought back fond memories! Randomly looking in there is fun every once in a while. And with storage still growing decently, why should i delete anything? It's not like physical boxes of photos/etc that would take up more and more space every yea…

When I look back through mine, it tends to be for projects I worked on ages ago or to find some obscure app or file I know I had a copy of at one point and has good chance of sitting somewhere in my labyrinth of old system backups.

Not strictly useful I guess, I think there's value in being able to engage in one's old projects more deeply than screenshots can allow. It can be a bit of a trip to look at code I wrote 5-10+ years ago.

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