I need space....

Hard disk space that is.

I have a total of 2 GB of Network-attached storage, consisting of a Linksys NAS200 with two 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 SATA drives, and a 1 TB Seagate FreeAgent Desk connected to the NAS200 via USB.

It isn't enough.

Photobucket
Linksys NAS200.

Photobucket
Seagate FreeAgent Desk.

I bought the NAS200 with its two drives about a year and a half ago. The FreeAgent is only about four months old. Between the two of them I only have about 200 GB of space free, and at the rate I'm downloading stuff, I'd probably fill my drives to capacity in a few weeks' time.

Two terabytes of movies, TV series, animes, documentaries, comic books, e-books, MP3s, and what not.

When I first started with computers in the 80s, (yes I'm old, I know) I thought the 143 KB capacity of a single-sided 5.25" floppy on my Apple II Plus was a godsend, especially when compared to the meager capacity and inconvenience of storing data on cassette tapes, which were popular at the time. Today in 2010, I have 7 million times the capacity of those 143 KB discs, and it still isn't enough.

Nowadays, it seems the best way to store your data is on a hard drive. I've been backing up and storing programs and data on various media over the past three decades, but eventually you end up with a pile of storage media in various formats and no drive to read them.

PhotobucketStored in my closets, cabinets and shelves are hundreds of neatly filed 160 KB 5.25" discs from my long dead Apple II, 360 KB 5.25" floppies from my old PC, 1.2 MB HD 5.25" floppies for an AT high density drive, 720 KB and 1.44 MB 3.5" microfloppies, dozens of 100 MB Zip Disks, and a few 1 GB Jaz Disks, most of which are chock full of data, but for all intents and purposes, useless. In a few years CD-ROMs, CD-Rs and CD-RWs will be obsolete as well, and I also have hundreds of them. A few more years after that, the vast collection of DVDs I have will also be obsolete. The moral of the story is that any storage medium, no matter how high-tech it may seem when you first use them, is destined to be obsolete, so don't bother accumulating much of them.

At present, I rely mostly on network attached drives, USB drives, and flash drives, aside from the internal drives of my various PCs. No doubt after a while these will be obsolete as well. I haven't gotten around to getting any of those new-fangled solid-state drives (SSDs), I still can't afford them.

For now I guess, it's either I cut down on the downloads, or get more storage space.

Okay. I'll get more storage space. :-)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Commonwealth Ave. lot for Lease

Image
For lease, 261 sqm commercial lot near east-bound lane (going to Fairview) of Commonwealth Ave. Quezon City, between Tandang Sora and Ever Gotesco, directly opposite PNB . Accessible via 50m access road. No improvements on said property. For inquiries call 09228692272 or email ronallandottk@yahoo.com
Read more

Is aspartame safe?

Image
Do you know what aspartame is? Well, even if you don't, given its ubiquitous nature, its a virtual certainty that you have already crossed paths with it in your life at one time or another. For the uninitiated, aspartame is a low-calorie sugar substitute most often used in carbonated beverages, you know, the diet or lite variety. Here in the Philippines, it is commonly known by the brand names NutraSweet and Equal . The reason why it has significantly fewer calories is because its not carbohydrate based. Its a methyl (methane derivative) ester (organic compound) dipeptide (two amino acids joined by a single peptide bond) consisting of aspartic acid as the first amino acid, and phenylalanine as the second. Its about 180 times sweeter than typical table sugar, and as such, a little goes a long way. A single pellet of Equal (18 mg of aspartame) has about the same sweetening strength as a teaspoon of ordinary white sugar (about 5 ml). Do the math. It was first discovered in 19...
Read more

Peddling Snake Oil - The Khaos Super Turbo Charger

Image
Photos courtesy of Ghosthunter If you drive or are at least into cars, no doubt you've probably heard at one time or another about the Khaos Super Turbo Charger . It's a device that is claimed to drastically reduce the fuel consumption of your gasoline driven vehicle by as much as 50%. It created such a hype when it was introduced in November 2003 after glowing reviews and endorsements from, among others, the Department of Energy (DOE), the Makati Land Transportation Office (LTO) and Taiwan’s Automotive Research and Testing Center. Even Malacañang got into the picture, and presented the inventor, Pablo Planas, with a Presidential Award Medal for Outstanding Invention. All in all, various government agencies and government officials got into the picture, singing the praises of a device that miraculously reduces fuel consumption by a significant margin. As a result, in less than a year, more than 3,500 units were sold and installed to customers who swear by the product's effe...
Read more