Cleaning an Old Computer

For the past several years I have had an unused computer sitting under my desk at work. The power supply failed and I never bothered to replace it. Instead my company just got me a new Linux desktop and my change in responsibilities meant that I didn't need anything off the old one. This week I finally got tired of having a useless computer and so I had our IT department take the old computer away. I also asked them to pull the hard drive out and see if we could pull anything off it. They couldn't and so I resigned myself to have lost anything of importance off that computer. As a last-ditch effort, we put the drive in a new computer and tried to boot it. Guess what? That worked.

Going through the files on the old computer disk felt like traveling back in time. It reminded me of how my current work is so different from the work I originally got hired to do. My old disk had about 57 Gigabytes of files. I sorted through it rather quickly and copied import stuff to my relatively new Linux box. Anything that I knew I didn't need, I deleted. Then just to be safe, I saved everything else and will put it in a safe place in case I need it again.

Cleaning off an old computer is something I usual when I get a new one. I often find that I place more value in stuff I won't actually need. Having my useless computer sitting under my desk helped me realize that I should be a lot more discerning the next time I have to clean up an old computer. After all, if I have not needed something in a 2-year period, chances are I won't need it any time soon.