You would think it would be a simple job.

All I want to do is get rid of some files.

You see, I have an old desktop computer that I haven’t used in a while.  It used to be my work computer but since I don’t work any more, I don’t need to switch it on.   However, there are a lot of files on it that I want to keep, so I have to be careful not to erase them.

Some time ago, I decided I would be better off keeping all my files in a separate place, so I went into one of those computer shops and asked their advice.  They ended up selling me a little black box which I can tack onto any machine.  I asked how much it could hold and they said it was massive and that I would never fill it.  They said it was a Terrapin, or some word like that, which struck me as strange, as Terrapins are usually quite small.

When I got this Terrapin home, I copied all the files from my computer onto it.  No problem.  I felt a bit safer.

With one thing and another, I have managed to get through a couple of laptops since then.  I also got into the habit of copying everything onto my Terrapin.

Now the fucking thing is nearly full.

I decided yesterday to clean it out a bit, as there is a load of duplicate information on it.  I ran a check on it, and sure enough there are multiple copies of the same information scattered around. 

You would imagine it would be a simple enough job, just deleting duplicates, but it is a fucking nightmare.  Every time I kick of a batch of erasures, the fucking yoke tells me how long it’s going to take.  We ain’t talking minutes here.  We ain’t even talking hours.  No.  The fucking thing keeps telling me that it is going to take days to shift one lot of files to some other place.  It is really pissing me off.

Because I was deleting a load of stuff, I thought I had better empty the rubbish bin.  It sat for a while thinking about things, and then told me that there was 37 gigasomethings in there and it would take another couple of days to clean it out.  Fuck me, but our binmen are nearly more efficient that that.

I’m beginning to get really pissed off with it.  I’m looking for some way to speed things up.

I think I’ll just buy another Terrapin.