This hard drive will extend my lifespan
UPS just delivered got my new Western Digital 500 gig external FireWire drive. I can backup MOST of everything I’ve ever done on here. Let’s call this thing PodBot 1.0.
I’m psyched. This thing only cost $167 (on NewEgg. I love NewEgg.com. They have great prices, and since they ship from nearby Orange County, the stuff arrives overnight, even when I pay only for the cheap three-day UPS shipping.)
I can remember ten years ago seeing a one-terabyte drive array (that’s twice the capacity of this one). It cost 100,000 dollars, was the size of a fridge, and nurds at the trade show were standing in front of it touching themselves and salivating.
I love that the tools of my trade are getting so damn cheap. It’s a great time to be alive.
October 9th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
It’s indeed awesome. Where do we go from here?
So how does it increase your lifespan? Does your data live on after you, like the progeny you’ll never have?
October 9th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
I dunno….before I got DSL in 1996, my buddy sold me on getting it. He said “It’s great. It’ll extend your lifespan.”
I guess I liked the sound of that.
But yeah, my data is how I will be immortal.
MWD
October 9th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
Julie told me “I’ve heard that terrabyte drives are unstable.”
I replied to her:
half a terabyte seems like enough for now for me.
Though I did write “0001″ on it with a sharpie, as if I’m going to get 999 more.
October 9th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
I sometimes envision 200 years in the future, when everything is buried and gone and the few humans left unearth some stray hard drives. One of them happens to be mine. In silent awe, they recover the data and scroll thru thousands and thousands of bytes of cat photos, learning of this monumental life of Squeaky. And his cat friends. And they sigh and think to themselves, “wow, look at this life,” piecing together all the data. And because of that, it’s all worth it.
October 10th, 2007 at 3:18 am
Im quite happy with my 1GB thumb drive. 20 euros in Paris…last year
[your 2005 (?) book '"writing school" said it'd be a couple hundred]
Its a nice deep indigo blue and I always wear it around my neck.
[....brings out my eyes]
High tech fashion beyond the ubiquitous cellphone;
Modest *bling-bling for geeks! What are you sportin’??
October 10th, 2007 at 3:57 am
I have a 4-big thumb drive that cost 20 bucks from NewEgg.com
But this is the **real** gear porn roll out I’m drooling over:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc
could be the memory in that rotating podbot we predicted.
MWD
October 10th, 2007 at 3:58 am
I think it would be hilarious to carry my thumb drive in my large aluminum briefcase. Fill it with hard black foam, cut out to only hold the thumbdrive. Very 007 McGuffin, ya know?
MWD
November 21st, 2007 at 3:09 am
Your comment about people digging up your old drive and reading the data got me thinking - I’ve been scanning my Dad’s old B&W negs and Colour slides from 60 years ago and most look as good as the day they were shot … and that is after sitting in unventilated cardbopard boxes and being moved from house to house … I wonder how my “digital negs ” will look in 60 years - I have CD’s 5 years old properly stored that are almost unreadable - thumb drives lack the capacity (I have 111Gb of photos and 200Gb of movies) and hard drives are likely to be obsolete (SCSI cables anyone?) Unless I move the bytes to new media every few years they will all be lost - are we making a huge rod for our own backs accumulating such huge piles of digital memories ?
I stumbled on your site while trying to find out what digital storage medium could reasonably be expected to last more than 20 years … still no wiser … data is surprisingly hard to unearth !