It Can All Be Stored..... But Then What?

In today's round of email ads, came something called the Seagate Backup Plus 4Tb.... that's, as opposed to the "Slim" which is 2Tb. It's being sold for $150 from Newegg, which of course means that, that's the de facto online price now. I'm always looking at storage because we all know, no one has enough storage and it's something which is always nibbling at the edges of my consciousness. Especially right now while I'm in the process of rebuilding my own file server. Anyway: so here's this huge (capacity-wise), "portable" (form-factor-wise) drive for a pretty amazing price. So I started digging around a little. 

 

This whole shindig started about a year ago with the Backup Plus Fast 4Tb drive. It sold for about $210 and was even thicker. It turns out that the "Fast" was fast  because it had not 1, but 2 Momentus M9t 2Tb drives in it set up in a RAID "0" (striped) setup, making it's read/writes the fastest out there among bus-powered drives. Of course, stacking 2, 9.5mm drives on top of each other makes for a FAT drive.... plus the extra hardware made for an expensive one as well.

So, this year, Seagate brings out the Momentus M018 drive that's 15mm thick, but is 4Tb all in one case! Yes, they crammed 5, 800Gb platters into one case! I'm not a Seagate fan, but all I can say is..... WOW!!! Am I going to run out and buy one of these things? Uhhh, no..... but it is very interesting. I'm still in the middle of acquiring more 2Tb Hitachi Deskstar so I can get to a 5-drive ZFS array on the FreeNAS file server. I know it's kind of quaint in these days of huge 4 and 6Tb desktop drives, but I'm conservative and paranoid! Now, if I can get my hands on one of the Backup Plus Fast drives at a good price, I might strongly consider doing that, so I can pull the drives to go in my Drobo Mini, bumping it's 5Tb (2, 1.5Tb, and 2, 1Tb) capacity to 7Tb.... then putting a couple of SSDs into that case to make for one very fast external drive! But what does one do with all that storage?

 

Media of course! I've found that backing up just doesn't use up much space. However; media file storage and serving does! While I was getting out the 200 DVD "Mega-Changer" and putting that beast back into the A/V cabinet, I came to the conclusion that I really wanted something easier. That thing was fine "back in the day" and has more than served it's purpose keeping the kids from handling the physical media, but we all know the day of physical media is over. As it sits, I have over 300 movies ripped already AND routinely carry them ALL around on a portable drive/access point from which they can be consumed via pretty much any digital device. Of course, I don't just have the crunched down MP4 files for iPad use, but also the original decripted files as well. Yeah, that takes up a LOT of storage space.

I don't think anyone would argue that the up-to-date delivery method of the computer file is way more efficient and convenient. The issue is the time it takes to rip all the movies and then to store all those file! This is going to take a whole change in mentality for me.

Up until this point, my servers have always been Friday to Sunday machines..... that is a file server that I turn on over the weekend, so that our laptops can do their backup and play the occasional playlist on a quiet Saturday morning. But our needs for data are different now. We want them to server our media files 24/7. We want to get that picture to go on the Facebook page on Monday night. We want to play our iTunes playlist throughout the house on Tuesday evening. We want to pull up that the old Star Wars Ep. 1 (God help us!) on Thursday night. Well.... you get the idea. What's the purpose of ripping all our CDs and DVDs if we only carry them with us on vacation?

So, the concept is that the rebuilt "Spectre" server will be a high up-time machine. Maybe not 24/7, but at least maybe 6pm to 1am/most days of the week computer that's there to feed all those tablets and TVs scattered all over the house. 

An Update For the A/V System..... Finally

Yes; the Frugal Propellerhead household is entering the world of 4K! Actually, we (I) didn't set out to upgrade the video end of our system. Again, like most other things in our lives these days, it came as an outgrowth of the move to the new house. I might have mentioned that, in this new house, is a rather large "game/media room". It's fully twice the size of our previous living room. Not only that, but there's a completely separate living area that we didn't have before. Since this second living space is connected to the kitchen in an "open-plan", it's a likely location where our family and visitors would gather. It will be an ideal refuge from the noise generated by our teenage (and soon to be teenage) children and their friends that we're assuming will congregate upstairs! Why does this all this mean 4K?

Remember when I pointed out the size of the "game room"? The size of it pretty much swallows the not-so-old 48" TV. It's simply not big enough for the space...... making that one perfect for the downstairs "den". So, what would you do with a room that's roughly 20 by 30? If money was no object, I'd get either a 70" monitor and/or a front projector with 100" screen! We can probably afford to go out and get a 70" monitor, but technology rears it's ugly head! As you might have heard; 4K TVs are becoming fairly commonplace. The price has dropped to the point where 55"-60" units are available in our $1000 target range. Actually, "the boss" would prefer for it to be sub-$1000.... so, what's a good husband/Propellerhead to do? Stay in the $1K budget and get a regular HD 65"-70" TV.... break the bank and get a 60"-65" 4K TV, or stay in budget and get a 55" 4K TV. 

I'm sure that most of my regular readers can figure out how this came out. I'm a little obsessed with "future-proofing" and I like to keep my wife happy...... so I found a 4K for under (significantly) the budget. Yup.... Neither one of us thought that it'd be a good idea to buy old technology just to get a bigger screen. We had actually decided to wait awhile and see how the price of 4K would shake out after Black Friday. Then, about a week ago, we found ourselves with some extra time on our hands after dinner with the in-laws. My wife decided to take the daughter and go to the cloth-store, so I chose Best Buy across the way. That way, I could look at the over-priced stuff and models that I can't afford. I dutifully examined all the new models and made my way over to the "open-box" and clearance section where I found some interesting stuff, including a nice 55" Sharp 4K for about $800. Then I saw a Sony XBR-55X800b, hanging on the wall but notated as "open-box" for $800. The description card showed it as having a scratch (which I could see) and "no accessories missing". To shorten the story; we decided to buy it after negotiating another $40 off. THEN, they couldn't find ANY of the accessories.....no remote.....no instructions.....no box (opened or otherwise)......and critically.....NO STAND!!! I made myself look frustrated and ready to bolt, whereupon, they took off $100 and included a $70 Logitech Harmony 650 remote. 

I was even able to act like I had to think it over before jumping at it! So; 55" Sony 4K TV, and Harmony remote for $700. On eBay, I found the original remote for $10, followed by the stand for $60. Now I can start putting the game/media room together!