The Working File

My friend Joe has been doing research on home data storage, and sharing it on his blog. Separately, he emailed me about this 1 terabyte Western Digital drive. I am probably more interested in this version of the product, because it has an Ethernet connection, allowing access to the data from multiple computers on a single home network. The Amazon reviewers only give it 2 out of 5 stars, which doesn’t sway me too much, even though I normally find these ratings very useful. Most of the complaints seem to focus on a product feature I am not very interested in, which is that it can also provide secure access over the internet from any computer. The problems seem to be that, it requires an extra subscription fee, the other computers need special software, and that software is perhaps buggy and limited to certain operating systems. I just want the thing to work at home, so this does not concern me. Also, there were some complaints about the special backup software included with the drive, and again, I plan to use different backup software so I am not concerned (currently I’m using Acronis True Image Home on our Windows machine, with which I am reasonably happy). Finally, there were noise complaints, a perennial issue with external drives, but other reviewers denied this.These types of devices seem to have trouble getting good reviews, and the bad reviews are really vociferous. Here is another 1 TB device from Buffalo which managed 3 stars on Amazon, and some people really hate it, too. You always have to discount certain product reviews, as the people most motivated to post a review are the ones who had a bad experience, but there seems to be something more going on with these devices. I think it’s the fact that they don’t really do anything. You pay money for them, and hope you never need them (much like regular insurance). Given that, I think people might have very high expectations for trouble-free operation. A device that costs money, doesn’t do anything, and ends up causing trouble is bad all around.Meanwhile, I’m relying on attached firewire storage for my Mac.  Specifically I’m using some LaCie firewire drives, with good results so far. Sometime in the next week or so, I’ll install Leopard, and try the new Time Machine backup feature.  The LaCie drives come preformatted for the Mac file system, which I think helps to avoid some of the issues some people have had with Time Machine.