I like my digital files to be organized and easily accessible. I like my desktop to be organized whether on my notebook or desktop PC’s, both Renata and my smartphones, our tablets and all that other digital clutter that fills our life. The one thing that has been missing in contributing to this digitally organized lifestyle is a modern hard drive capable of fulfilling all our needs when it comes to storage, accessibility, synchronization and backups. That is until now.
I have numerous old USB hard discs stacked varying from an old 80GB drive to a 3.5 inch western digital with a capacity of 320GB that needs external power (like most 3.5 inche discs), each serving its purpose, however not the purpose of organizing our core digital life.
Roughly 8 months ago, as a temporary solution at the time, I purchased a passport sized Western Digital hard drive with a 1TB capacity to consolidate pictures, music, files and so forth and it comes with me wherever I go. The reason this is my temporary solution is because up until recently I have not been very satisfied with what the market has had to offer. Dating as far back as 2008 I purchased my first Philips NAS hard drive which died a few months later, have had several 3.5 inch external desktop hard drives and over the recent years have built together passport sized external hard drives primarily from old notebook hard drives that I would put into a casing and use for some backup purpose.
Nonetheless, my (and now our) digital lives over the past years has still been in a bit of a clutter aside from the semi organized WD passport I carry around with “stuff.” A few months back I began discussing with my brother the numerous solutions that the storage market had to offer and how best to organized everything digital. This had begun moving to the top of my “finally get off my checklist”, hence the research and discussions began.
Now for the average tech user, you may wonder why in the world don’t I just go buy a freaking hard drive and organize everything neatly and check this topic off my list. Well, to be as frank as possible, when it comes to tech and digital there are a lot of things I fancy in order to optimize our daily life. Its not about the technology “per se,” but more so how the technology supports my (our) daily lifestyle so as to not have to “waste” time.
The Options
Let me give you some insight to some of the thoughts that ran across my mind:
Online Cloud Storage
There are many great services out there. Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, MS SkyDrive and so forth. My media company, the KLG, even began building a storage solution primarily for internal company use, however we killed the idea to simplify our use of using a single cloud storage which ended up being Google Drive.
I have used numerous solutions throughout the past years, originally starting with Box, moved to Dropbox and then finally after playing with a handful of other cloud solutions decided the Google Drive serves its purpose and does what I need it to do. Which for you may not be the case, but I believe the programmers and designers over at Google have done a fantastic job with the product.
So from that perspective I use Google Drive on a near day to day basis for personal files, picture uploads for blogs/editing/etc, presentations for clients regarding KLG, and so forth and it serves its purpose however I don’t want to use a third party service to keep all my private digital files organized and “in the cloud.” With Google Drive you have full control, don’t get me wrong, but I want to be the owner of the entire system when it comes to digital. So this option weighed itself out.
KLG Servers/3rd Party Servers
The next option was to use our company servers (KLG) and build a software, either from scratch or using a php script (open source) to accommodate what I wanted to accomplish. We have our own hardware, we support clients, we support our projects and business so why not use it personally? The primary factor behind not using this method was to ensure the split between work and private life. Something I value highly. You may say, it would be more efficient as you minimize total touch points for digital files however regardless of what we may have done, I knew it could have been done easier without much time investment from my part.
We could have rented a third party server from any webhost, there are literally millions out there that offer basic services for near to nothing and often times (shared hosting) an “unlimited” amount of space. Then again you need to be connected no matter what and some slow drag and drop interface is not something that made me say “Yes, this is it.”
External Hard Drive
Seriously Hermann, just get a freaking hard drive and so be it. Not that easy folks. As previously mentioned, numerous ones sitting around, storage not near to enough of that which I wanted/needed even if hooked up to a central network. I could go for a simple USB 3.0 – 2, 3, 4 or more TB drive and done deal. Here’s the issue. I want to access my data without having to carry around a hard drive. I want Renata to be able to access files and so forth, and in case we wat to play music in the kitchen, the living room or anywhere else in the house, the network should be able to access the files without me having to do any manual plug and play labor and drag things here or put them over there.
As a temporary solution or even for backup purposes and for the average user I recommend this as the primary go to solution. Today’s wide range of small devices allow for TB’s of storage to keep all your digital files in place and shouldn’t be too large of an issue for anyone. This was my temporary solution. A 1TB drive to cover the a good portion of files I needed access to, nonetheless all my data was still dispersed, not centralized and not accessible when someone wanted it.
Wifi Hard Drive
These devices have been around for a bit but not really for the mass market until recently. Its still a technology that is growing however one I am very fond of. Picture your above hard drive, say in Western Digital’s passport format yet with the capability of connecting to the WiFi network, allowing multiple people access at once. In laymen terms, put the device wherever you want, say your living room table, press the WiFi connect button to connect to your network and off you go. Accessible via mobile, PC, tablet, etc.
Great when you think about it and something on my list in the near future for straight files I want on the go rather than my USB plug and play drive, however when it comes to read and write speeds, data transfer, and overall security these devices are just not there yet. Give it another year or so and watch this market take off.
NAS
I had my first NAS device back in 2008 and it was cool, nifty gadget. The home user version of what businesses used in their networks to store and share data amongst its employees. NAS technology also has several factors that cause dependency on speed and accessibility one of those primary factors is the network it’s connected too.
Up to date, living in Spain we have been “forced” to be on ADSL, regardless of company until recently where the telecommunications companies (primarily Telefonica – which I had been in a personal battle with) have step by step begun offering Fiber Optic solutions with some serious speeds. Our ADSL connection allowed for a max 30MB connection whereas in real terms it ended up being 4-5MB’s per second download and a bit slower upload. Connect a NAS to this network and on the go I could forget accessing files via network storage. After some unpleasant customer service experiences with our then provide Jazztel, and our street now capable of hosting fiber optic, we changed back to Telefonica and now are at least where South Korea was 5 years ago – 100Mb lines. Yes!
So with this change in our home, the NAS option came under closer scrutiny when researching and discussing with my brother who in parallel is/was pondering a similar digital debate being a multimedia junkie (working with pictures and media files for his daily living) and so it goes that this then regardless of a few cons became our preferred option.
The conclusion
In conclusion, after some thought-out research and really pondering if the NAS was the solution considering I didn’t want another Philips to die on me with all my files and leave me in the dark yet again, I figured, lets risk it. Names like Western Digital, Buffalo and Seagate were among the top contenders and I was quite pleased with what some of these guys featured, each still having its pros and cons however overall I was quite satisfied with the offering.
Ill get to more details on my chosen NAS in the next post however the NAS in the end would allow me to access my files anywhere on the go, whether on my phone, Renata’s phone, my notebook, desktops, at home while flinging files onto our TV via Chromecast and so forth. It would allow us to play music on any chosen device anywhere in the house, say I want to play one song in the kitchen and another in the living room, no problem. Connected to our new backbone of speed within our home network files in GB sizes can be transferred in seconds and on the go whether my personal data plan or on WiFi, I have easy access to my data also within seconds.
One large topic off my checklist. Something I recommend everyone to think about when it comes to being digitally organized and efficient. Don’t we all like to have everything neatly stored somewhere with easy access?
What are your thoughts on being digitally organized? Any other ideas I am overlooking? Let me know in the comments below!
