How Can I Hang On To My Digital Life?

Key Points:

• The author reflects on the growing anxiety of managing digital storage across multiple platforms and the importance of personal archiving to preserve digital life beyond their lifetime.
• Archivist Margot Note highlights the fragility of digital media, emphasizing the need for active maintenance through refreshing (transferring data to new media) and migration (updating files to current formats) to prevent data loss.
• The author adopts the 3-2-1 archiving rule—keeping three copies of data on at least two types of media with one copy stored separately—and begins consolidating files from multiple cloud services and external hard drives onto a single 8TB hard drive.
• The archiving process reveals the emotional impact of revisiting old digital files and the importance of selective preservation, focusing on meaningful personal and professional documents rather than everything accumulated.
• The author concludes that archiving should be an ongoing practice rather than a one-time event and acknowledges that while this effort may not be necessary for everyone, it provides a sense of purpose and continuity in documenting a life lived.