I really need a Terrabyte (or part of one) for...

I've been always thinking about archiving the movies we have / watch, but doing a 1:1 archive of a DVD is VERY impractical. My friend always uses DivX, but I've been reluctant because of 2 things -- 1) I didn't have a way to play DivX movies back on my TV (vs. pc or laptop) and 2) I like watching movies with CC (subtitles) -- there's a lot that you miss without it at times.

But I finally picked-up a DivX DVD player (and ordered a portable 8.5 inch DVD player with DivX compatibility from OfficeDepot today for $130), so now I'm ready to figure out the subtitle issue and get going with archiving my movies.

The last problem is SPACE. Where am I going to store all that video data? At 2-4GB per full-length DVD movie, you can quickly fill up a hard drive. My desktop has 120GB, which I thought was huge when I first bought it, but now I see why my friend has multiple external USB hard drives totally over a couple of terrabytes of space -- for all those digital photos, video clips taken with the cam corder and camera phone, and video files.

Luckily storage is coming down so fast in price. It's quickly approaching the holy grail mark of a $0.25/gig. I found a 400GB drive for $119, which is fantastic. But perhaps I need to shell out just a little more for more space? Wow, can you believe I'm saying that 400GB is NOT enough? :-)

Get your storage here! About a Quarter-A-Gig!

Technology truely is amazing(ly cheap) these days days. 2007 is the year of storage -- with the masses finally gettin on board with watching, downloading, creating, uploading videos, photos, etc, what everyone can use is a bit more storage. Instead of going through the hassle of opening up your case, and installing another drive in an open drive bay, an easier (and somewhat portable) solution is to get an external drive to store all that newfound media. Where else are you going to dump the hundreds and thousands of photos you've been snapping in your digital camera, camera phone and even camcorders that take decent still pictures?

Nowadays, the price of storage has plummeted to about a $0.25/Gig of hard drive space -- that's amazing! For example, you can get a 320GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive for less than 100 bucks! (ok, so it's 28 cents/Gig, but that's close enough to that shiny quarter in your pocket!)



Or if you spend just a little more, you can get 1/2 Terrabyte Drive(that's 500 GIGS!) for only $150! Usually, these external USB Hard Drives provide transfer rates of up to 60MB/sec on USB 2.0 (that's pretty fast) and are fully backwards compatible with USB 1.1 (which means it will work with **YOUR** pc!). Some of these hard drives even come in a fanless design, so it's QUIET. And they can be placed either vertically or horizontally, saving space and fitting nicely into the background.

With all the new media options with Windows Vista, you'll most definitely need more storate in the future (even if you still have Windows XP, you'll be upgrading at SOME point in the future!)