Tag: hard drive

More disk space on your Macbook Pro??

Ever feel like you need more internal hard drive space in your Macbook Pro? I dump so much video, test footage and other media onto my internal drive, the 750GB drive doesn’t fulfill my needs any more.

My other question. How often do you use your DVD drive in your laptop. I seriously can’t remember the last time I did, I think it was about 4 months ago.

So the solution I chose was to install a second hard drive in my Macbook Pro. It’s called MCE Optibay Hard drive option. It replaces the internal DVD drive with a hard drive of your choice, spinner or SSD. The DVD drive is then installed into the included external case and hooks up to your computer via USB.

All of a sudden I have another 750 wonderful gigs at my disposal. At a $175 plus the drive it is more than getting an external drive but the convenience is worth the cost I think.

My first question was about battery usage. I was told by the tech who installed it that the battery consumption will only increase a little. This sounds a bit odd but time will tell…

Hard Drive Failure – Backup?!

This morning an awful sound came from the closet that houses my server at home. It sounded like someone had stuck a fork in a blender… Funny enough, just yesterday, I made a comment about how my hard drives spin, day in and day out. EYEtv is running 24 hours a day recording tv to the disks. Well the computer must have heard me… cause it showed me a big red text that read “stripe slice failed” 🙂

I’ve been lucky through the the years and despite failed drives I’ve lost very little data. I know of people who’ve lost enough data to make a grown man cry. Because as you know, it’s not if but rather when the next hard drive will fail. I don’t think it’s an option, it is a requirement to have a good backup system setup, both at home and at the office. How would you deal if you lost all pictures of your kids/friends and family becuase they were on that drive with no backup. Not to mention work related files.

I have an elaborate backup system setup, involving both redundant drives on-site as well as an off-site backup in case of fire/theft/flooding…but I am a nerd. 😉

Nowadays there are many great options for automatic backup solutions. External hard drives thats sense a new file and automatically makes a copy  or Cloud solutions costing next to nothing that synchronize your data as soon as something new is added. I am just surprised how few people use them… How do you backup all your data?