Tech-dumb Meltha is dumb

[bookishwench]

All right, I'm going to ask a truly weird question, one that probably has a really obvious answer, but I'm not getting it.

People are switching their DVD and music collections (and photos?) to digital, apparently for lots of reasons but at least in part because digital doesn't get scratched/degrade/whatever. Okay, I get that, but where the heck do you store digital files? Won't that essentially fill a hard drive in like 10 or so movies? And wouldn't you lose everything if the computer went belly up? Or is this that whole "cloud computing" thing I'm hearing about, whatever the heck that is?

I miss VCRs. And you kids get off my grass or I'm keeping your baseball.

Comments

[amilyn.livejournal.com]

I think folks are buying huge terabyte drives...and hoping they don't crash.

[bookishwench.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Okay, that makes... some sense? Thanks.

[pokeystar.livejournal.com]

Most portable hard drives are 1 Terabyte and beyond these days. Which is 108 high quality movies (much more at lower qualities).

Cloud drives are online networked storage. Don't trust it entirely. And you pay for it, typically, beyond the minimum amount (5gb or so). After say a year at $4 a month, you might as well buy the hard drives.

GDocs (Google docs) is a form of sharable cloud drive - as is flicker, photobucket, etc.

All of these services are deemed stable and secure - until they aren't.

;-)

tl;dr - nothing is certain in the digital age.

[bookishwench.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info. Good grief, a terabyte?

[cynmoon.livejournal.com]

Apple TV, plus a Mac Mini. We use the mini as our media server for all the things we pirate (most things). But more and more we're buying TV show seasons from iTunes. You own them forever on every device that can access the store, and it's all stored on the cloud.

Plus even if there are 10 shows you're watching, it is still cheaper on average to buy a season pass for each show than it is to pay for cable over the same period of time. And you now own the season so no need to buy the DVD's too.

[bookishwench.livejournal.com]

Hmm. So that's why they're talking about cable's demise. Very interesting.

[krazylokoguy.livejournal.com]

I bought a portable hardrive that's 2 terabytes a couple years ago and that's where I put most of the stuff I want to store. I do worry about it crashing randomly. Some people back their data up. How? I don't really know.

[bookishwench.livejournal.com]

So, rather than risk each individual disk all being simultaneously wiped out in a series of freak accidents, I'm supposed to risk all my media being wiped out in only one accident? Why does this sound like it's going to result in a disaster?

[ladyali.livejournal.com]

I don't have a Kindle, and I doubt I will ever put all my DVDs on my computer/external drive. I like having tangible objects, like DVDs. I love physically holding books. I still burn CDs from my computer. I am really not a digital girl. Will my DVDs get scratched? Maybe. But I've only had that problem with one season of my West Wing DVD collection and that's because I just wasn't careful with it.

Bottom line...I don't trust ALL digital.