Will Blog for New Hard Drive
After two weeks of testing, the computer repair shop finally confirmed my laptop’s problem is a failing hard drive, as many of my geeky friends hypothesized. I’m going to get a larger drive because it just makes sense to do that now. I just need to figure out how much bigger is really better.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how storage media has changed. I remember the days when everything would be on diskette–actually, I can remember computers running reel-to-reel tape, believe it or not–because hard drives were so much smaller. Now, it seems like there’s an attitude that using that kind of storage media regularly is just silly unless we’re doing some kind of backup. Computers don’t come with much in the way of media drives anymore. We have to purchase many of them separately. Was it safer or better to store things elsewhere than it is to store data on a hard drive now? Both have their risks. It’s just that now when a hard drive fails, it seems that the consequences are so much higher because, at least in my case, hard drives hold so much more. I’m glad I did that backup a few weeks ago. (Thanks, J & P & JD, et. al., for all the nagging about that.)
My next task is to buy a protective case for my machine.
Addenda 2/28: When I originally wrote this post, I meant to link to the cool cartoon Tony sent via a comment, but forgot to work it in.
3/6: JH, one of my favorite geeks, recommends Tom Bihn’s cases, particularly the Brain Cell.
February 26th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
The size of the numbers has certainly changed. I think I have a 40 MB drive still lying around. Yes, I am a pack rat. Nowadays 40 GB is getting to be small. Newer laptops have 80 GB drives. I would say bigger is better if the power consumption is the same. Otherwise it will compromise battery life.
Backups have always been kind of like the weather. Everybody talks about them, but lots of people don’t do them. It’s also more of an art than a science. In principle a hard drive is destined to fail at some point, but I have never had one fail before it became obsolete.
I’m about to move to DVD for removable media backups. I have 20 GB of pictures. Single layer DVD’s are fairly cheap and hold 4.7GB. I’m figuring a storage lifetime of 5 years. There is someone at Simmons who has, I think, a better handle than industry apologists on just how long they last.
For regular backups though, I don’t know if removable media make sense. How about a desk top with 300GB drive and ethernet? $300 unless you really want another monitor. I could make you a grand deal on a used CRT.
February 27th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
The spiffy protective case I use & love is from Shinza.
I also have a 250 gig LaCie backup drive that is fantastic and comes with some OK backup software too.
February 27th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
Ooh, thanks, Erica! Was gonna ask re: your spiffy case.
February 28th, 2006 at 11:16 am
What I’ve been seeing more and more of is more-or-less RAID-as-backup… buy a 2nd drive and have it set to make a live copy of your main drive, either in real time or on a regualar, one-touch basis.
Scott McCloud (_Understanding_Comics_, _Reinventing_Comics_) said a while ago that he thought we were moving to an era of always-live data. That things will get incrementally transitioned from media to media, from harddrive generation to next-generation while always staying instantly accessable. I’m starting to agree with him, though I didn’t at the time.
February 28th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
Yeah, JB, I think what I’m gonna do is go with a 60 or 80 G internal drive and get something bigger for backup storage that I can sync easily.