There’s a famous quote often incorrectly attributed to Bill Gates back in the early 1980s that “640KB of memory ought to be enough for anyone.” He didn’t actually say it, but the quote has been ubiquitous in computer articles and discussion. If there’s one thing I’ve learned after just over a decade of computing it’s that no amount of memory or storage space is ever enough.
In 2006 I remember the big deal was new laptops were starting to ship with 1GB of RAM. This was a big deal! Almost a decade later there are few modern operating systems that will even run with 1GB of RAM.
Around 2004 my parents got me a new computer that had a 120GB hard drive. This wasn’t giant for the time, but it did seem like it would be hard to fill it.
In 2011 I built a new desktop at home and opted to shift money from a bigger hard drive to a better processor. Instead of springing for 1TB I went with 500GB. Today that machine suffers from lack of disk space.
It really does seem like a universal law that if you have the space, you will fill it. I think when all is said and done my home disk storage space adds up as follows: 500GB disk in my desktop + 120GB disk in my 2007-08 Mac mini, 1TB Seagate mirrored RAID, and the 128GB SSD in my Macbook Air. The 1TB mirrored RAID has become the real workhorse for my home storage. I could’ve built it as RAID0 and had 2TB of storage space, but I wanted mirroring since I was also using this as a destination for several backups including my Macbook Air Time Machine backup.
I’d never had 1TB of free space before, so at first it seemed like I’d never be able to fill it. The Time Machine backup didn’t end up being that big either and it’s grown rather slowly. However, I’ve been getting back into film and sound production and I’ve quickly amassed 10s of gigabytes worth of raw HD video footage. Last time I checked, my 1TB RAID had just under 200GB remaining.
I decided it was time yet again to expand my storage capacity. Since I already had the stable RAID, I went looking for the biggest reliable storage I could find. I was also very interested in Thunderbolt. Now that I have my Macbook Air I can take advantage of Thunderbolt storage. It should be noted that single disk, spinning drives connected via Thunderbolt will ultimately be limited by the speed of the drive itself rather than the Thunderbolt bus. Therefore it’s hard to tell whether a Thunderbolt-connected drive will actually be faster to access than the same drive over USB 3.0. Thunderbolt drives are also more expensive because the controller chipset is still much more expensive than USB 3.0 chipsets.
That being said, I was going to be transferring things to and from my Macbook Air which has the super snappy SSD. I ended up settling on a LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 mobile 2TB drive. I’ve only had it a few days, but I love this drive. First, the construction is excellent. The rubberized cover helps protect it against bumps and LaCie even claims it’s water resistant (I’m not going to test that claim though!). I don’t like portable hard drives with cheap-feeling construction. I like the solid feel in my hand. Second, I do think the Thunderbolt transfer speeds especially off the Macbook to the drive are very good. Since a lot of what I’m moving onto the drive is big HD video files, this is very helpful. I also love the fact that the Thunderbolt cable is integrated into the drive case and is also long enough to be useful. Many portable drives ship with comically short USB connection cables. The Thunderbolt cable on the LaCie is at about a foot long, and tucks away in a slot around the outside of the rubberized case for safe keeping. The drive also comes with a USB 3.0 cable/connection if you want to connect it to an older Mac or PC or anything else.
I know it’s early, but I’ve yet to even make a dent in the space on the LaCie. 2TB should be enough to handle my storage needs for at least a little while.