I was talking with an office-mate today about how I knew of no uses for the Firewire 800 port on my Powerbook.
Until now.
| The LaCie Bigger Disk Extreme, with the largest hard drive capacity available, is a unique innovation that packs an amazing 1.6 terabyte of storage space in a manageable 5.25-inch 2U format. Featuring the most advanced technologies in the industry, the LaCie Bigger Disk Extreme is the first FireWire 800 storage device to achieve transfer rates that are up to 50 percent faster than most FireWire 800. drivesI |
Now, at $2200, I don’t see one in my near future. Nor do I have use for 1.6 terabytes of storage capacity. But there is something amazing about being able to plug 1600 gigabytes into my laptop for that little bit of extra space for, say, six gizillion MP3s.
At the first JCDL (Joint Conference on Digital Libraries), I remember Brewster Kahle talking about how you could easily, for less than $3000, purchase a cheap PC and pack it full of hard drives to get a terabyte-in-a-box. Brewster was interested in this possibility due to his “hobby,” the Internet Archive. In four years, we’ve gone from a standard PC packed full of drives to a 6″ x 3″ x 10″ box that you might set on your desk. A box that happens to store the digital equivalent of, oh, roughly 2500 CDs.
Wacky.