It's hard out there for a geek

[greatbear]

Hello, my name is Phil, and I have become addicted to hard drive space.



*Hello, Phil*

It didn't used to be like this. But ever since losing quite a bit of irreplaceable data (pictures, music, whatever) on several occasions due to sudden crashes and lack of backup discipline, I've been on a recent quest to have everything I (and Jeff) have in the digital domain backed up in multiple and redundant areas. This meant building two new servers as well as adding redundant internal storage on two other PCs plus a couple new external drives for 'near-line' storage and backups. All tallied up, it comes to a bit over 20 terabytes worth of hard drives I picked up this year to integrate into everything here to use for current and future storage and backups and a great deal more peace of mind.

Since I find more and more of my entertainment and memories being digital in nature, and the file sizes only increasing, I wanted to have some infrastructure put in place where I can automate backups and keep stuff at hand, and also be able to protect much of the important stuff in case of some unforeseen disaster. My shoeboxes of pictures and slides, books filled with newspaper clippings, and racks and boxes of tapes, records, DVDs and CDs are giving way to ethereal, virtual representations that only exist if they are stored somewhere. I lost pictures of Mom I will never see again. Music and jam sessions between me and friends/exes. Fun or thought provoking bits and pieces collected from the web and email, as well as deeply personal things. All got lost. Not any more.

I want to keep the pieces of my digital life in safe keeping. I also upload some of this to various places on the web such as Flickr, but I have distrust for any online services as a whole. Will they be there in the long run? Will they respect my privacy? Will they keep my digital stuff from falling into the wrong hands? These days, I doubt any and all of that, so it's up to me to go it alone. So, the Great Home Network Upgrade of 2008 will hopefully meet my needs for many years to come. The only work remaining is running a bunch more Cat5e/6 around the house and a gigabit ethernet switch. Then I hope to sit back and enjoy the results of all this work.

Comments

Hello, my name is Phi....

[nebris.livejournal.com]

Last time I counted, there were four hundred and twenty six different 12 Step programs. [that's not a joke either lol] I'm sure there's one for you too. =)

~M~

[furrbear.livejournal.com]

You could send me your 20s, 40s, 80s. I've a number of older SPARC and Alpha boxes with 4.3s and 8.6s that need some more room to breathe (plus there's no room for doing any development work)

[rratfox.livejournal.com]

You crack me up, man. Just in general.

[(Anonymous)]

YOUR MAD I TELL YA MAD

Btw the way when you gonna do the "One Eyed Trouser Snake Rhumba" with me :)

LOVE YA HONEY

[jrjarrett.livejournal.com]

That picture of you both frightens and excites me.

[normalcyispasse.livejournal.com]

Computer storage: she is deliriously cheap. I love it, even if I only have 3 or 4 TB at my disposal.

Either way, that's a lotta porn.

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

I guess one thing that bothers me and that's largely this thought of EVERYTHING must be digital, regardless of what it is and on the PC, to me that's like putting all your eggs into one basket. As we all know HD's fail, memory cards fails, floppy disks fail etc and while getting rid of paper clutter is nice and all that a lot of things you don't need to hang onto for more than 3 years, photos and all that are irreplaceable at that so I like to straddle both the analog and the digital worlds.

I'm also with you for relying on the online venues for storage needs for exactly what you state.

[anim8rbear.livejournal.com]

May I suggest this little gem:

http://www.drobo.com/

[bearinslc.livejournal.com]

I think you should invest in a NAS and bump it up to 10 TB.

[mfpatterson.livejournal.com]

OMG, THAT IS THE BEST PICTURE YET!!!
Made my day!

[msclwolf.livejournal.com]

So much time and effort to sort out stuff that you wanna make sure you can keep for ever and ever and ever. I just hope as new file formats emerge and older ones are used less that you can either convert em easily or still be able to view/use your files!!!