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As I was whirling around this morning doing the Suzy Homemaker bit (weird, isn't it, that after 4 weeks of vacation, it's only on the last day that I really get the up early thing down), I saw an old box for a CD drive and I was struck with the memory when I use to buy that stuff.....and then realized that I haven't even bought a hard drive for years.
Now the quick answer is that everyone has things in the Cloud so they don't do hard drives anymore. Not me! I see the Cloud as an incredibly stupid security risk and don't touch it.
I think it is more in my case that I am just not download "as much" as I use to. The biggest things I usually download are pictures for my diaries (pics that associate with my thoughts I wrote down on the page), but it takes a heck of a lot before it is time to transfer it off the thumb drive. Ie, I have been building one up to complete 44 pages of writings, 143 pictures, and that's only 29 M......which is comparatively little on a modern, cheap thumb drive. Though as it is in this case, that is on the lap top drive now and it is just when I get back to work will it be copied over to a thumb drive.
My biggest, constant zapper of space is my DSLR work. Gigs of pictures that get stored in several places, photo shoot after photo shoot. They take up a lot of space but I still have more room.
It may be that I was able to make a killing on hard drives a few years ago where I bought a lot of portables, bought a lot of plug into the wall kind. That when I go into the office store and look at the HD prices, I am swayed by the thoughts of all that space I am not using efficiently or that I am not really sure what is on it or it's because of the DVD spindles I pick up which I go through like hot cakes!
If anything would cause me to buy another hard drive, it is running out of space on the Tet drives I use to backup my made DVD's. That, however, is an ongoing project that is hard to keep up with (think the last time I ran my machines was a week ago), so that may not be anytime soon.
..................but that's just me!
Are we slowing down on our storage of "information"?
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In my case (very personal opinion !!), DVD's or CD's are only good for transferring a certain amount of files (whatever they may be) from one place to another without ever expecting getting them back.
In our personal life, we take a gazillion amount of pics of our grand kids.
Every quarter, my wife collects them and sends a DVD to each parent.
What *they* do with that data is up to them ...
All the data I have is stored all on external hard drives of at least 1 TB.
They are small - (physical size) and are all plugged into a common hub.
Each HD is filled with only a certain type of file.
Just like your OS has sections or directories that are (for a very long time now) labeled - Documents, Pictures, etc.
So, in essence I have a huge external *personal file cabinet*.
Besides that *system* I have a forever revolving main back up system (there are 3 systems in different places) that fills up one huge HD after another of every files that is ever made. That data is destroyed after 7 years for certain files or longer depending on the legal requirement of how long these records need to be kept.
I have very few files which I *like* to keep forever ...
So far, I have not had to do anything drastic to recover or whatever else.
When I have to *look up* something, with the digital capability, it is really easy to *find* things, by parsing the names I have given each piece of information.
The last part of this previous sentence is really the key (again a personal preference).
In other words, is the information a document or a picture for instance, or is a PDF file of a *Bill of Sale* for instance a document or a picture ?
Last but not least, is the fact that I was surprised to find out how many people I know professionally, who do not have their systems backed up by a UPS.
OK, nuff about me, and back to Tamara.
I suggest that she gets a 1TB small external hard drive that usually already comes with back up software.
Then set that up so that first it makes a mirror image of her system and then only backs up changed or added files.
It should be always be connected to her laptop, and thus works in the back ground.
The thumbdrive she now uses, can still be used as she has been using before.
Sometime, because of her own statement : *the thoughts of all that space I am not using efficiently*, all she needs to do is take a week or so and really organise all that precious data she has, into a *for her only* easy filing system.
.........Sometime, because of her own statement : *the thoughts of all that space I am not using efficiently*, all she needs to do is take a week or so and really organise all that precious data she has, into a *for her only* easy filing system.
Been there done that ...
Well, as it goes and by most people's grading scale, that's not precious information at all.........and it would probably take WEEKS taken off from normal life to arrange it.
A lot of it, in that not efficient space, is the end product of using what one of my administers called a "Hoover" program. Software that you told to go out to various sites and vacuum in all the files that fit certain parameters. Say, for example, sucking up Pbase and all those pictures of the world that various people have taken. There are at least two catches to this that was probably done 10 years ago or earlier.
First of all, what often comes in with the big pictures are a lot of little pictures, such as thumbnails, as well. Secondly from my stand point, it is my eyeball effort that would have to sort all of that. So the information sits there, unsorted.
It sits there, undeleted, for two main reasons. First of all, for the effort it took to collect it, it would be shame to have to repeat that effort, assuming that such data was still out there. Secondly, a lot of it was collected experimental data for Project Sarah (AI confidential), a concept that I've never really had the time to work on.......but if I did have the time, I'd rather spend the time working on the concept than sorting the test data.
Instead, let's briefly cover the "Crime Drive", a portable drive, that has its backup somewhere, where I keep all my law enforcement research done over the years. If I need to refer to some lowly life like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Dutroux , I can just plug in the Crime Drive and let the search feature bring it up instead of depending on the Net. The individual files themselves may not be so ordered, though. A lot of them were produced with methods described above, usually under the attitude of, "Heck, down load it all! I'll sort it later!"........where that later sorting really never occurs. In that immediate end, though, we find what we need to accomplish the task, our useful information is listed in the References, and we go on, leaving that jumble behind in nice little boxes on the computer.
WHICH is what this post is really about.
Are we not downloading as much data as we did before?
Are we more efficient in how we download data?
Perhaps we believe there is no reason to download data since it will always be out there on the Net?
A couple of years ago, we might have been buying hard drives like hot cakes but I am finding I am not doing that now.
What has changed?
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