A momentous techno-geek moment

I have broken the terabyte barrier.

I had a little technical problem last week which led to this momentous occasion.

I’ve been somewhat in the market for a new computer for quite a while. My computer went down almost a year ago and I had to fall back to an older slower one so I’ve been semi-looking around but never got around to pulling the trigger on a purchase. The inevitable happened last weekend when my backup machine seized up (I still had my IBM ThinkPad so I wasn’t completely cut off from the world) so I suddenly got more serious about getting a new one.

I happened to find a pretty good deal online from Best Buy. A two day Memorial Day Special on an HP machine (IBM sold off their PC business to Lenovo a couple of years ago, so I don’t have the IBM brand loyalty as much anymore – still get an employee discount at Lenovo though so I am a little predisposed to buying from them).

The HP machine came 2.5 GHz Pentium Dual-Core processor, 640 GB hard drive, and a 19 inch widescreen monitor. Best Buy’s Memorial Day special was $180 off which brought its price down to $499. I did my homework on the processor and while it wasn’t the latest Quad-Core, the reviews that I read called the processor a good deal (according to the reviews the processor lacks a couple of video instructions that mean that it wouldn’t be a good choice if you do much video editing but that’s something I haven’t gotten into yet). The $180 off deal got the machine into the price range that I was looking for and it was available at my local store so I jumped at it.

The machine did have a couple of shortcomings (only has one DVD drive and only supports one monitor, for example) but with the parts I have laying around the house, I figured I could address those. And it’s all those parts that led to my terabyte barrier breakthrough. With the purchase of the new computer, I decided it was probably time to do something with all these computers/parts that I have laying around. Some of the stuff works, some doesn’t – but just tossing electronics in the trash isn’t a good idea (and probably against the law to boot).

One thing that I was particularly concerned about was my hard drives. While I’m not normally a paranoid individual there’s undoubtedly information on them that could be put to use by nefarious souls. There’s also possibly stuff on them that I might want to keep (while I do back things up, like most people I don’t do it often nor thoroughly enough). Both of those considerations led me to get an external hard drive enclosure where I could install a drive from one of my other computers, dig through it looking for anything that I might need, then thoroughly erase it.

For a couple of years, I’ve had an 250GB external hard drive that I’ve attached to my computers that I primarily use for backup. It’s USB attached so I can easily move it from machine to machine (or hook it up to my ThinkPad). It was the first thing (after the internet connection) that I hooked up to my new computer. Now with my new enclosure, I just bumped my storage up even higher, It occurred to me that with my largest extra internal drive (120GB) installed, I’d be over the terabyte barrier (640GB + 250GM + 120GB = 1.01TB).

Here’s what makes that number really hit home with me.

Most of my time in IBM was spent marketing mainframe computers. Back in “my day”, a terabyte of storage meant a lot. This photo is of the IBM 3390 Direct Access Storage Device which was a breakthrough drive when we announced it.

3390 DASD

The 3390 is the device in the front next to the man. He’s standing by a string of 3390s (three of them) which are attached to the controller just to the left of the string. Behind the 3390s is a string of 3380s which the 90s replaced. The 3390 was introduced in November of 1989 so it’s just about 20 years ago (it was one of the products that I had responsibility for marketing when I lived in Chicago back then).

Here’s where things start to get mind boggling. The string of 3390 DASD that the guy in the photo is standing next to would typically sell for about $750,000. The string would hold a max of 68.1GB. To store a terabyte of data, you would need a string of 15 of these devices at a cost of well over $10,000,000. You’d also need a large well air conditioned room to hold them (they usually sat in a darkened room just off of the main computer room typically called the DASD farm). If I remember correctly, Sears/Allstate and State Farm were the first customers in the area to break through the terabyte barrier.

Today, you can buy a terabyte of storage that will sit on your desk for under $100.

In my wildest dreams I never would have imagined that I’d have a home computer with a terabyte of data storage.

Weird Journey

No – I’m not talking about a strange trip that I’ve made. I’m referring to the rock band Journey – or more specifically their song “Don’t Stop Believing”.

First some background.

In case the song doesn’t ring a bell (it should because it’s one of the most popular, and overplayed, hits ever), here’s Journey doing the original.

One of the reasons, that I enjoy the song so much is that my oft mentioned favorite local band, JR and Natalie, covers the song. Here’s the band doing part of the song during Penn State’s THON Dance Marathon.

A momentarily detour on the Journey

Having a thing for the song sometimes has an unfortunate side effect. In case you don’t remember, the song was an integral part of the final scene of “The Sopranos”. Unfortunately, it ruined the scene for me, because the whole time that I’m watching it, I can’t help but think of JR and Natalie singing the song. Here’s the scene.

So where’s this Journey headed?

I’m a big fan of using RSS feeds to follow various blogs/websites that I have an interest in. I use Feedly to manage the 113 sites that I subscribe to. Feedly helps present the latest info to me in somewhat of a structured manner without it I’d be lost. I usually check Feedly a couple of times a day to see what’s going on.

As is usual, one of the first things I did this morning was to check Feedly. Low and behold, within minutes of each other, two of the most prolific sites that I follow, Julia Allison’s “Non Society” and John Dvorak’s “Dvorak Uncensored” made posts on two unrelated “Don’t Stop Believing” videos.

I thought that was quite weird.

Follow–up

By the way, both of the videos are worth sharing.

First. Julia posted this video from the new TV show “Glee”.

Then Dvorak posted this hilarious spoof of the song.