I've been around long enough to know that it is absurd to think that I could walk down to my local superstore and pick up a 1Tb drive for $220. 1Tb is absolutely HUGE. I can remember that the 10Mb drive on the new IBM XT was HUGE. 1Tb = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. That's a lot of zeros. So how does a drive like this end up on my desk? I just got sick and tired of juggling disk space all the time. I have 2 - 250 Gb drives and 1 - 160 GB drive which for a while seemed like an infinite amount of space. That's before 12 MB images. And you know how many images we are all taking now that we're digital and snaps are "free." When I backed up 2007, I ended up with 60 GB free on each of the 250 drives. That should last me through...now. I freakin' ran out of disk space! How could this be so? I'm in a continuous mode of purging and moving stuff around, and I know from experience as a programmer, eventually you are going to lose something. I'm kinda paranoid about digital stuff. I mean you can't see it, touch it, smell it, it doesn't weigh anything, and it doesn't get dusty or moldy. So what happens when it's gone? Well my friend, it is really gone, kaput, no existent, never to be found ever again. That's hard to fathom when we are used to the semi-permanence of slides, prints, negatives, and such. Yes, these can burn or get lost (so can the digital stuff), but you could always be secure in knowing that unless they were burned or lost, you always had them. Now I'm looking at my little 1TB drive sitting over there with the little flashing light, oh it is so sleek and solid. There is absolutely nothing that prevents this thing from dying, right now, before my very eyes. I've had hard drives that failed, it is not pretty. In fact they ALL fail, they are temporary devices, they wear out, they are mechanical things with moving parts and all kinds of electrical components which must work in perfect harmony.
So you need to think about it. Your images are in the ether. They are like storing your negatives on a window ledge off a 10 story building. One day they will be gone. And you better have a backup that works, or you will be crying.
Sir, could you make that 2 - 1Tb drives. Thanks.