Superseded storage

The cleanup at our home,Welwel, is progressing quite nicely.

All of my genealogy files, folders, books and photos have been moved and are shelved in our new home.  Today finds me back in my old geneacave going through more stuff. I have spent the day going through my collection of portable hard drives that have capacities ranging from 80gig to 4tb. Before I toss the old bulky models I have been going through their contents to see if I have neglected to transfer any files (that I may never need) whenI have upgraded over the years. I am cleaning all files off the old drives and then Mr GeniAus will give them the hammer treatment.

On the left of the above image is one of my earlier models which stored 80gig with its power source and on the right is one of my two 4tb portable models. This portable black drive travels everywhere with me while its blue mate stays at home.

More storage?

Storage is cheap.

I have nearly all of my data and photos saved on a 4TB Seagate portable hard drive. I back these up to 2x2TB drives, the docs go on one and the photos on the other. As these drives are getting old and may fail some day soon and it's a pain to save to two different places I invested in a 4TB Western Digital My Passport Drive while in Hawaii.  This was on special at Best Buy at around $US129, about 2/3 of its cost in Australia, I priced it here at $AU249.99 (about $USD182). I chose a different colour for this new drive so that it was easy to distinguish from the old one.

I usually spoil myself with some tech surprise when I go to the US  because, even though our Aussie dollar is weak against the greenback, there are still savings to be made.

I'm now in the process of tidying up the files on my old Seagate Drive to my new one. I will keep one drive by my computer and the other in another location that I can access regularly for backups.

4TB

Before travelling overseas earlier this year I realised that I needed a portable hard drive with more than 2TB of storage. I thought that if there was one place on earth I could find such a beast it would be Bangkok.

Dragging Mr GeniAus along I went to the big technology mall, Pantip Plaza,  in Bangkok in search of a portable drive of 3 or 4TB but there was none to be found. One stallholder  said he could order me one in but that it would cost more than $AU1,000, my response was "Thanks but no thanks".

Since I arrived home from that trip in June I have made regular trips to local electronics stores to see if they had a such a drive, there were plenty of large bulky 4TB drives but no small ones that a little old lady like me could pop in her handbag and tote around the world, that is until two weeks ago. I did the rounds of my three fave stores and at the third I found on the shelves a Seagate Backup Plus Fast 4TB portable drive, a heavy but small answer to this old girl's prayers. Even though I didn't dance on the spot the young salesman appeared quite shocked that an old girl would get so excited,

As I had an overseas trip in the offing (and in Australia we can apply for a 10% tax rebate on goods purchased in the four weeks before we travel) I exercised restraint and didn't make a purchase on impulse. I retreated home, read some reviews and discovered that the device was over $AU100 cheaper at B&H in New York where I like to shop. As I needed wanted the drive before I travelled I realised that I would have to pay a premium (as we nearly always do in Australia).

As it is now less than four weeks until I take off on my next adventure I went to the shops on Friday and bought my new toy. I burnt the midnight oil  as I put all of my data, docs and photos onto the drive and then asked Picasa to index the photos and left the computer humming overnight. Now all is organised once more, it is so nice to have everything in one place once more. I'll have lots of space to store the happy snaps I take on holiday.

I wonder how long it will be before portable 8TB drives are on the market, I guess 1 Petabyte drives are just around the corner too.