It's A Digital Disease!

The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/Crazy_Dubs_Cartoons on 2025-02-08 20:23:13.

So, there is a LOT of stuff out there, but what is it that you deem worthy to be archived and copied on multiple external HDD or data tapes for super long-term conservation?

And how do you do it? I really want to know :)

TLDR: I optimize as much as possible so that what I see worthy among music, movies, books\manga\comics, games. own works, for what I discover to be shitty, I keep for each category a TXT file with the names of those shitty products. I purchase new external HDDs each 2 years and labeling each one with a year label, each HDD having a full copy of the previous ones, updating each as required. When I'll be dead, those will be my heritage, if no offspring of my own, a notary will have to find an heir with specific requirements to be worthy of the content.

I deem worthy the following (not in any specific order of importance):

1. music by real musicians (any genre, from jazz fusion to trash metal, never caring about notoriety of the artist\ensembles but how good the tracks are, if I like only 1 song of a certain artist\ensemble, so be it), exception is jazz fusion albums... quality has to be at least 160kbps Opus equivalent, Lossless I don't really care about but I analyze each music track with Audacity to check if the spectrum is above a certain threshold of quality
2. books\comic books\manga that are NOT mainstream slop that is passed as masterpieces (the only "mainstream" I archive are the really good classics, like Punisher Max for instance)... quality has to be readable, the more compressed but still neat the better
3. Movies of any year and any genre, but NO LONG LASTING TV SHOWS, expect for selected episodes of anthology shows (example: "1950s Twilight Zone) or very short series that are 6 episodes max... my sweet spot is 720p x265, great compression\quality ratio
4. selected artworks by online artists but no galeries, lot of erotica too, very little drawn\painted porn (exeption: I really like a certain character so I'll have a folder with the best of artwork featuring that one character)
5. my own digital paintings (folders by year, since 2020), I keep them both on TIFF for possible reworking\conservation, both on JPG to share those on the web
6. offline wikipedia and wikitaxi to browse it, updating yearly
7. my own voice actings of originally non-english or muted original animation videos, I recut them to make new plot out of the video footage, using AI to change my voice to other characters (results are damn good), I keep them at 480p x264 for compatibility reasons
8. My "movie recuts" of animated series (like Samurai 7, Elfen Leid etc...) or the few live action episodical, non-anthology series where I meticolously removed all the filler (even those 3-4 seconds of pointless lingering during a scene) to create what I deem "viewer's time-respecting recuts")...
9. videogames of any era, for any console, indie games too, even hentai games I recently downloaded en-masse from a certain forum (some of those XXX games are as good or even better as official games, you know you grew when you rate XXX games regarding gameplay, story, art style, involvement etc... instead for the mere act of sex lol... and funny thing is, the less a game weights, the better it is regarding art style and gameplay, amazing pixel-art arcade-style games)
10. my own personal "writer's vocabularies" I have been writing since back when I was 16 years old (33 in of Aprile 2025)... did you know there are about 120 synonyms for the word "slow" in English 0_0

My way to archive is like this:

1. On 4\8 terabyte external HDDS, each kept in a zipped pouch and then stored inside a dampless drawer
2. Main folder for each category (games, movies, books etc...)
3. Subfolders specific to year, console, genre etc... (some examples of folder structure: games > PC > 1999 or games > Emuatlion > PS2, Movies > Masterpieces regardless of age, Movies > Pre 2000s > Folder for Year before 2000s)
4. If something I archive I will eventually watch\read it\play it etc... and if that SUCKS, to save space for the really worthy stuff, I keep a txt file in each main type folder called "Shit that Sucks" and write the titles of those there (ex, why the hell would I keep a 40 gygabyte game that happens to be is a waste of data due to how objectively shitty it is... I'll just drop the title of it in the txt file while deleting those 40 gygabytes of space)

I use Crystal Disk Info to monitor my HDD life.

My view is to keep the HDDs as heritage for the latter generation, buying new HDDs each 2 years and labeling each HDD with date of purchase.

if I die with no offspring, I'll have a notary to keep them and give them only to someone that has specific qualities I ask about in my testament.