Yogesh Kamat
Ask ten experts how to build a “digital home” and you'll likely get ten
different answers. Some will tell you to focus on applications: security, photo
slideshows, music streaming, TV recording, and so on. Others will tell you to
focus on building a solid, high-speed network or making sure your multimedia
gadgets support this or that type of content. Especially for novices, it can all
be a bit overwhelming.
We can't tell you what approach is best; the balance of planning priorities
varies from home to home. We can tell you that one of the most commonly
overlooked but crucial aspects of any digital home is storage.
Why Storage Matters
Many of us grew up on word processing and spreadsheets, back when 20
megabytes of disk storage seemed vast. But then came multimedia, and now 20
gigabytes seems uncomfortably cramped. Our world now has CD ripping, file
sharing networks, download services, digital cameras, and affordable DV
camcorders. A CD ripped at high fidelity settings in MP3 format might consume
80MB. The same album downloaded from a music subscription service (at slightly
lower fidelity) would chew up about 45MB. A conventional 5-megapixel (MP) image
captured in standard-compression JPEG format takes up roughly 1MB. And one hour
of uncompressed standard video consumes over 14GB of disk space. Want to use
your computer or similar TiVo-like device to record your favorite TV show? At
DVD-quality recording, that's about 2GB per hour. Going high-def will multiply
that by more than six times.
You can run the numbers for yourself, but with a relative handful of CDs,
downloads, and video, it's apparent that dozens if not hundreds of gigabytes of
storage space are needed. If you're still devoted to your VHS tapes and film
camera, accept that the world is now running in the opposite direction. Digital
now outsells analog on almost every media front, and some old school analog
titans are closing plants left and right. Especially if you have broadband,
there are literally terabytes of data flowing through your home like a river,
and all you need is the storage solution to dip in and have your fill. The trick
is to have the right solution to ensure you have enough storage and the right
level of data protection so you can manage that content easily and keep it safe.
Fortunately, reputable companies offer a suite of reliable storage solutions
at affordable prices. So yes, there are lots of ways to tackle a “digital
home,” but all of them depend on having plenty of storage capacity, with the
right management tools, planted at the right places across your home network.
Storage Hotspot #1: The Primary PC
The average capacity for a new PC's hard drive may still be under 100GB, but
this size is really more pertinent for a user with a system holding an operating
system and a handful of applications and documents. In a digital home, the rule
for a primary PC is to buy as much storage capacity as you can afford because,
trust me, you'll grow into it. But there are a couple of caveats.
First, the mistake that most consumers make is to buy the biggest hard drive
they can afford and nothing else. Capacity is great but not if it means
sacrificing data protection. With two hard drives in a computer, you have the
ability to set up and use the second as a periodic backup location, or set up
both drives in a “mirrored” configuration. In technical circles this is
called a RAID 1. In essence, whatever gets written to the primary drive is
immediately mirrored to the second. Because the second drive is more or less
invisible to the system, your two 250GB mirrored drives still yield only 250GB
of visible storage, but if anything happens to the first drive the second
automatically kicks in so you have no down time and zero loss of data.
Experienced computer builders can help you with setting up a RAID 1 in your PC,
again assuming that it has two disk drives of
For those users that do not want to break open their PC and install another
hard drive, a simpler route is to use add an external hard drive that plugs
directly into the computer's USB or FireWire port. Many external drives come
with the ability to add storage space and back up a computer's data, but it's
important to choose a solution with integrated software backup capabilities and
not one with software just thrown in the package as this can make set up more
difficult.
Speaking of backup, every heavily used computer should have adequate backup
provisions. If this computer houses your priceless family photos and videos,
isn't the cost of a second hard drive, whether internal or external, ultimately
negligible? Moreover, if you depend on this computer for income, homework, or
mission critical recordings like the Super Bowl, do you want to risk drive
problems at the worst possible time, including the infamous “disk full”
error message?
That said, as you continue to amass multimedia content, some files will prove
to be higher priority than others. This is where an external storage solution
can also come in very handy. You might have one external for extra storage and
another for backup, or one large external might serve both functions.
Also consider the role of extra drives for housing secondary content. For
instance, say you shoot 100 images of the family reunion, and ten of them turn
out to be excellent shots you edit and share around. Those other 90 might come
in handy someday, but they're not important enough to tie up space on your
primary drive. The same might be true of TV shows you watch and want to save but
perhaps not revisit for a long time. An extra drive is a great way to keep
secondary content within reach and not slow down or increase wear on your main
drive(s) in the process.