Computer Games

Well, I finally did it. I finally bought and configured my (for now) perfect computer system.

The G5 came with a 400G drive and about a year ago I added another 500G internal to hold my photography and then bought an external 500G for backing up to nightly.

Well, they're full.

So, recently, after much thought, I figured out what I wanted. Problem was, it really didn’t exist, albeit in an incredibly cost-prohibitive build-it-yourself from kind of way. I've been spying on the external hard drive manufacturers and they've seemed on the brink of releasing what I was after, and this week they finally did. Well, at least Western Digital did.

The 2T external with RAID1 capability, which is to say that it can be formatted to operate as a 1T redundant drive.

Here's my reasoning: I don't ever want to pay for data retrieval. I've done that professionally through companies that I produced through and it's a total racquet. I want a 1T drive that mirrors itself, so that if one drive fails, I can yank it out and replace it without losing a byte. Key to this is being able to open the enclosure. LaCie does not allow for this as is the case with most third party external drive enclosures. Western Digital does.

Also:

When the damn apartment catches on fire, I want to be able to grab something and save my life's work.

I've been speaking to my computer genius friend Lawrence about building an external to this spec and we priced it out (at www.newegg.com) at around $600 and change...

I walked into J&R downtown on Wednesday, and there was the brand new 2T Western Digital drives for $649.99 RAID1-able.

Seemed like the thing to do. A Halloween present to myself.

Easy set-up and configuration and here it sits, holding 500G of photographs, mirrored.

The current configuration consists of applications only on the 400G internal, documents and photos in progress on the 500G internal (a workstation, if you will) which is backed up nightly to the external 500G. The Western Digital only holds finished, archived photos, which I place on there manually after they are done.

So, technically two things to grab in the fire, unless you count the girl, the cat and my complete collection of Famous Monsters magazines. And the three Trevor Brown paintings...

Shit.

Next step - figuring out how to get a copy of everything "off-site" - 'cause I probably won't be here when the crazy bitch downstairs sets the building on fire...

This is Shien. I just finished her shots last night on my sleek, shiny, new system.