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My Almost-daily Journal |
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| About I love trying out new things, especially when it comes to internet technology. I never really kept a journal, but it's something that I've always wanted to do. Now, everybody will get a chance to look inside my twisted, and somewhat-warped mind.
I've also subscribed to Audio Blog, so a few times a week, I'll leave actual voice blogs. Very cool!XML Newsfeed Previous Posts
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Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Computers and the Never-ending Storage Issue Originally sent this to Peter: I'm running out of disk space. I have 60GB drive and a 40GB drive. I have about 7GB free on drive C and 10GB free on drive D. Of course, I have many games loaded that take up 2GB of space on the C drive. I can uninstall them and things can be better. I also use the C drive to backup My Documents, which actually lives on the D drive (a remnant of when the C drive was an active webserver, and I didn't want to keep sensitive files on that drive). Also on the C drive is the newsgroup app, Agent. The dat file alone takes up a few gigs for headers, binaries, RAR's and PAR's. Those RAR's and PAR's then get moved to the D drive, which is basically just my "data" drive. I also had to off-load most of my raw encoded video data onto CD. This worries me a little since I read a startling article on degradation of CD quality over time (as little as a year). Come to think of it, one of my CD's with zips was actually unreadable after three years. Questions and concerns: 1) I'm thinking about getting bigger drives. Mainly the WD 120GB Special Edition. I'm actually thinking about getting two of them, to replace both drives, for a total of 240GB. Or a 120GB for the C and a 250GB for the D. 2) Is there a way to transfer the data, OS, registry, etc (the whole drive) of my C drive onto the larger 120GB drive? Don't some hard drives come with software on a CD to do this? CloneCD, Norton Ghost, etc. Is this something that's actually feasible and successful? I don't want to start fresh, since there's way too many apps that are loaded. 3) I've been "virtual window shopping" on Newegg.com. It's almost as exciting as walking around Microcenter, Best Buy, Craftsman store or Home Depot. While I'm not ready to jump into an 800Mhz FSB mobo with the 875 chipset just yet (soon, though... very soon), I'm thinking about getting a card with USB 2.0 and firewire ($29 from Newegg... not bad... nice to have firewire). I need USB 2.0 for my idea on #4 and #5. 4) Maxtor 120GB USB 2.0 backup external drive. I have way too much data that would cripple me as a human being if it was ever destroyed. I put way too much work into scanning pictures and negatives, and way too much work encoding home videos. I would be crippled mentally, emotionally, physically, meta-physically, non-physically and socio-economically if that data ever got destroyed. I also need to backup all my websites at least once a month (even though CIHost claims they run backups. I don't trust them. If CIHost ever went belly up, I'd be wasted, since I really don't have backups, especially with df.com. Having a backup drive would be pretty nice. They're a whopping $183. I'm not broke, so why shouldn't I get one? They also have a button to backup on the fly, though I'd probably do monthly full backups and daily incrementals with the built-in Veritas solution provided by Win 2000. WD also has an external backup drive. Perhaps I should stick with WD. 5) DVD Burner. No regrets on this one. I want to get the best one. Either the Plextor top-o-the-line ($230-ish) or the Pioneer ($180-ish). Of course, those are internal drive prices. What I'd really like is an external USB 2.0 drive. Or do I want external? What is the difference in speed for IDE channel vs. USB 2.0? I'd have to swap out my current Plextor CD writer if I went with an internal one. I'd want to use the DVD burner to 1) incorporate my 100's of CD's of backups of zips, files, pics, movies, etc., onto just a few DVD's, 2) make backups of the data that's on the backup drive listed in #4, 3) copy DVD's (oh no... DMCA come and get me), and 4) create video DVD's as opposed to nasty VCD's (CD's with video... lower quality). 6) Power supply. I think my gookanese power supply is giving out. Whenever I set up Agent to download overnight, there's a 50% chance that my computer AND UPS 1000 Pro (power backup) will be turned off... basically a minor power meltdown. It's either a UPS battery backup problem (though the UPS seems to tell me that all systems are go... strong battery on the one downstairs), or a computer power supply problem. I think it's the power supply, since my whole case only cost $99 for the case, window kit, neon tube, and power supply. 7) Finally, if I didn't buy the USB 2.0 card for $30, I could obviously put that money toward a new 875 Asus mobo. But I'd need to spend money on a new processor and memory. I'd have to go with at least a 3.0 - 800, since I currently am running a 2.4 - 400 (I know the PC133 memory is a crippling bottleneck). The problem I have is I really don't want to spend the time to "start fresh" right now. If I upgraded, there's no way I could just swap in the drives, since I'm running window 2000, and Win 2000 "looks" for specific mobo configurations for security reasons (keeps people from ripping off sensitive date by yanking out hard drives and putting them in other computers). It's a nice security feature built-in to Win 2000, but for me, it's more of a hinderance. Then again, who am I kidding? I'll probably not buy anything. I still drive a 1994 Jeep. I don't spend money. I collect and roll my change. I'm trying to be frugal for our two up-and-coming big-ticket items: wedding and a new house. Somewhere after those, I need to get a new vehicle. posted by Dino at 3:06 AM (permanent link) |