How much drive space do you really need

I recall my first real computer. I had to write my own basic code programs, or copy them from a book of programs and hope that I didn’t make any typos. Then, when success was within my grasp and the sum of my checkbook was displayed, I could save this program for future reference to, wait for it….…a cassette tape! What an advancement when several computers later I could buy large floppy disks with programs already on them. The dual 5 ¼” high density disk drives allowed me to run a program from one disk and save a 1.2 megabyte of data. Man, was I smokin’ hot! Little did I know that 30 plus years in the future I would be using computers that routinely had drives that stored 2 million times that data. In fact, with the introduction of the newest M.2 Solid State drive in the 1 terabyte size,  a chip the size of a large postage stamp now holds over one million times the data that was possible on those HD 5.25” FDD’s.

Therefore, anM-Tech laptop can now have total storage of  6TB’s. This is up from the previous maximum of 5TB. We have had 2 TB SSD’s in the 2.5” 7mm format for a year or so, but the latest drives that are really opening up our horizons are those that use the M.2 port. As of this week we have included the SanDisk X400 M.2 SATA III SSD drives. These little wafers had previously topped out at 512GB. Now with the X400 we finally break the half terabyte size restriction with a M.2 1 TB SATAIII SSD. Most M-Tech models take two 2.5” cable connected drives for a total possible of 4TB storage, and with the two M.2 motherboard slots dedicated for drive use another 2 terabytes can be added (2X 1TB) for a total of 6TB of storage. Is this a lot? Below shows how much a mere 2TB of data can hold, now times that by three and you start to get the picture. Makes you wonder why we are using cloud storage. With data so prolific and cheap, I wonder why I risk my privacy and access to anybody but myself.

What’s your opinion? If you can store safely and securely on your own computer, is there ample reason to expose your personal information to the likes of Google, who makes no secret of their data mining operations. Now with the new SDXC memory card standard, available on all M-Tech laptops you can even back up your personal on a the same style SD card that fits in your cell phone. That allows all your private data to be saved from your laptop to a Micro SD card the size of your pinky fingernail. Can you really tell me that with ½ terabyte of backed up data on something so small and so long term secure you can’t find a better hiding place for it than on a cloud server that likely is data mining your personal information? Heck, you likely won’t use but a quarter of the space, so put the card in your cell phone or tablet. It can just as useful for their data storage as well and when full very easy to hide or store indefinitely PLUS, if you lose the data on your laptop, you have your backup source right in your pocket. Of course this is just one of a million different options of how to handle your off computer data storage. Who is to say you will have access to the cloud whenever and wherever you are when your data take a dump on you. By using the SD card slot for backups and keeping that card in your phone you have the backup everywhere you go. Are you really uptight about data loss? Then have two cards and clone them. One goes with you I your phone and the other in a safe at home or your bank safe deposit box, you know, for you spies out there. Anyway, just a thought.