Laptop storage
02 May 2008
Can you ever have enough storage? I carry half a terabyte around with me on a daily basis, just in case, uh, I suddenly need to connect an HDV cam and record everything that happens for the rest of the day *shifty eyes* … yeah, it’s overkill. But overkill is the name of the production game. I’ve got two desktops that have been replaced by one desktop and this laptop — the laptop is a backup, primarily, and normally gets relegated to the oh-so-interesting task of PowerPointing (sometimes it gets to record audio, too… nice and spaciously even when it’s full of rips of video, just in case! The second hard drive normally houses any realtime data applications to make sure that normal response time isn’t impacted).
In case the main playout PC (has some fancy things that the laptop doesn’t, like RAID 0′d drives and better video processing hardware) decides to throw up, as it did late last year, the laptop serves as a ready-to-go alternative. I’m starting to carry a second, smaller laptop for slide playback — it’s a lot slower, but it also used to be the lightest laptop on the market (1.19KG) and I’m about to kit it out with solid state hard drive goodness. This makes it hopeless for recording/writing applications, but I’d never trust it with that, anyway. It does, however, ensure it’ll be lightning quick especially for applications like slide playback — ever had a hard drive spin down and pressed a key only to hear the computer laboriously whir back to life before changing slides? That’s one of the main attractions in retrofitting a relatively old laptop (it’s a Pentium III/256MB/touchscreen… the touchscreen is mostly what inspired the purchase when in China last time!) with a relatively new technology.
Of course, it’s quite possible none of this stuff will ever come in handy. But it might (and, surprisingly regularly, does). I just ordered about another 40 assorted connectors and cables that I’ve used, loaned, or lost over the course of the last year or so… not because they’re strictly necessary right now, but because they almost certainly WILL be (and, when you order them from cheap overseas suppliers, you can’t have stuff next-day when you need it!)
Anyway, I think it all ends up in the “better safe than sorry” basket. More important for some jobs than others, certainly.