Answer these twelve questions to determine if you’re a bit pack rat or a bit hoarder, someone who needlessly holds onto digital information, sometimes obsessively more than what’s considered normal.
1. Is your computer’s system drive over 90% capacity?
2. Do you have more than one hard drive on your computer just for storage?
3. Did you have to upgrade the hard drive on your computer just for more storage space?
4. Do you have any CDs that you received for free, that contain software that you’ve never used?
5. Do you still own floppy disks that contain data that you haven’t accessed in more than seven years?
6. When copying over photos from your digital camera, do you keep the pictures that didn’t come out very well?
7. Do you have every single e-mail that you ever sent or received, including spam?
8. Do you own more than one AOL software CD?
9. Do you own any hard drives laying around from old computers or from upgrading a hard drive?
10. Have you ever saved the contents of a Web page instead of just bookmarking it?
11. Do you have a collection of animated gifs?
12. After you’ve completed a digital project, do you keep all of the previous versions of the final document that you had saved?
Results
Please score yourself using the following chart and the number of questions that you answered “Yes” to:
| Score | Your Result |
|---|---|
| 0 | You’re good to go |
| 1-3 | You’re a bit pack rat |
| 4-6 | You’re a bit hoarder |
| 7-12 | You’re beyond help (sorry) |
Please comment to let us know how you scored, or if you need help. Thanks!
When we were rolling out an e-mail archiving product at the last place I worked, research had shown that many attorneys recommend destroying records as soon as legally possible. The damage caused by having old documents discovered for evidence in law suits has been proven to be significanly more costly than any damage done by not having access to old documents.