D203: Disk Purge

DVD’s, CD’s, Zip Disks, Floppy Disks and Cassette Tapes

Seven years ago I copied all of my valuable drawing files and personal files onto zip drives, five years ago I got rid of all my videos, five years before that I found a great metal box to store all of my cassette tapes from 20 years in the past. I recently gave my only DVD movie to my son. This pile is all there is left.

Now don't laugh at me, but I need to make a confession. I have only purchased 1 music CD in my life. I bought Deep Forest in the early '90's to give to someone. I never bought a CD player and have never been interested. Okay, I'm done with the confession. The happy part is I don't have a pile of those to purge too (or the CD player, Equipment Purge coming next week).

Okay I lied. Some of the CD’s are computer software I need to keep as back up along with my CD backup of files. I have 2 DVD’s, one for yoga and one for belly dancing. Don’t ask me why I keep them. Maybe I will gift them to someone – or figure out what is needed on my computer to play DVD’s – without spending any money. Otherwise it is all techno trash I think. I haven’t seen any reuse projects that appeal to me, so it is trash. Or do people take these to thrift stores? Feel free to educate me in the comments.

Did I leave out a step? I think so. I believe I should look through this pile. There may be some important files on the zip drive disks. And, I think I need to play the cassette tapes and decide if they should be tossed. I do have this handy metal box after all. It is from a past era when a kid would mail his laundry to his mother from prep school for $.59 and she would mail it back. Well, that is what I surmise from the postage and the addresses on the label.

This might take some time, and possibly some tears. *Sigh* Music does that to me.

Update: Just read about the demise of the cassette tape in the publishing business in an article, Say So Long to an Old Companion: Cassette Tapes. This is where I got this apt quote.

“I bet you would be hard pressed to find a household in the U.S. that doesn’t have at least a couple cassette tapes hanging around,” said Shawn DuBravac, an economist with the Consumer Electronics Association. Even if publishers of music and audio books stopped using cassettes entirely, people would still shop for tape players because of “the huge libraries of legacy content consumers have kept,” he said.

As long as people keep mix tapes from a high-school sweetheart up in the attic, Mr. DuBravac said, there will still be the urge to hear them. “People have a tremendous amount of installed content and an innate curiosity when coming across a box of tapes to say, ‘Hey, what’s on these?’ ” he said.