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'Lo, all... Yesterday (10 July), a (recent) listmember posted a rather-lengthy plea for restraint in message traffic (a plea for listmembers to "hew to the line" of "business only" in their submissions. The member further stated that his hard disk was becoming VERY heavily-occupied with with list traffic - and that his ISP-account space was, too. [Now, this isn't the first time the same plea's been made by listmembers. it's a periodically-recurring one - with much the same argument.] Against this background, may I make a cogent suggestion? There's an easy (and novel) solution to this matter. And it comes in a form quite familiar to all of us - the "floppy" disk. (It's portable and comes in at several forms - 3-1/2" and 5-1/4" -- and, for some of you REALLY old-timers, 8". Data-densities range from 360k to ~1.8M per disk -- with a new drive offering ~2.8M.) Technique to use? Simply file-off, a: discrete messages to suitable disk-directories (of your own design), or b: Digest-subscribers can simply save to floppy with file-names reflecting the "issue"-date. If such a scheme's used, any (almost any) tracking-method you use now would remain useable. [For suitably-capable users, you might create databases - on floppy, of course - to maintain "threads", while asuring ready access. The REAL objective is, of course, to remove archived-mssages (not current) from your hard disc (or ISP-account), freeing it for more- productive uses (executable software, for example.) NB: As long as I've been a computer user (almost 17 years), disc- management's ALWAYS a problem (especially before desk-top PGC even had hard-disks - then 10M, 20M, 40M, et al). It CERTAINLY didn't begin with advent of 100m/200M/500M/1+GB disks. Hope this calms the fears of some listmembers.... Rgds, Don (CG for Jeanie, 62/7)