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01.17.06
Albatrosseses
posted by Absinthe | 11:04 PM
I have too much information.
When I got a new PC a year or so ago I was under the impression that 80GB was going to be enough hard drive space. Then I started dabbling in video editing and DVD authoring, decided I needed a couple hundred CDs’ worth of MP3s on more than one drive (just in case), and somewhere along the way I picked up a statistically insignificant but still sizeable chunk of Party hand histories. So the last few weeks I’ve been dumping things to what’s ostensibly my backup drive and wondering how I’m going to get enough stuff off my (otherwise lovely high-toned SerialATA) main drive.
As usual, I went after the mosquito with the sledgehammer. Last week I ordered a 250GB external LaCie for media storage. Then this weekend I saw a 300GB (UltraATA, but still) internal drive at Best Buy for about $125. So I bit. Over half a terabyte in new storage this week for well under $300, which is a pretty good trade in terms of BB for information.
Except that I, like a dolt, forgot that I don’t actually have a spare IDE port on my motherboard. So my once-schmancy Intel motherboard, which is all full of itself and is quite capable of managing the mother of all RAID arrays, sadly lacks a piece of twenty-year-old technology that would make my modern life that much easier. I discover this, naturally, after I’ve cracked the case open and unpackaged the hard drive.
The PC gods give me lemons, I set about trying to make lemonade. The drive bay setup on this case is pretty sweet, mostly because smarter guys than me would be using it for a proper RAID array. Getting the drive firmly seated in the tower is no problem. I poke around for a while and realize that, ok, I DO have one IDE port, but it’s currently occupied by – d’oh! – the DVD drive. No problem, I think, I’ll just make that the master and slave the hard drive, which I think is a brilliant plan until I notice that the laws of physics and EIDE specs have spectacularly failed me – the placement of the drives and the requisite cables being configured in such a way as to preclude any such possible kludging.
Well, fuck me, I know how to throw money at a problem. $50 later I’ve got a spare IDE controller PCI card taking up an otherwise useful expansion slot. Everything’s hooked up again and ready to go. I think. The problem is I can’t quite bring myself to turn the damned thing back on.
Until now. You all will excuse me; I have a date with destiny.
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Topics: General Geekery | 2 Comments »
January 18, 2006 at 8:12 AM
I chose the less expensive solution – I let my hard drive die without backing up for 15 months. 80GB of data loss clears up all of that “too much information” stuff (since a July 2004 backup is just worthless enough not to bother restoring).
(Note – I highly do NOT recommend taking my route – nice work on purchasing a few more storage options!)
January 18, 2006 at 3:31 PM
Hard drives are super cheap. I don’t know why people don’t buy ‘em just for backups.