Terra-server

I am in the midst of loading my 500+ cd collection onto my hard-drive. This driven partially by the 14 year old I gave my iPod to and partially by rediscovering all the cool CDs I have that I haven't listened to in forever. I'm about half way through and running out of hard-drive space, a problem I have never had before on any computer I've ever owned. Not that my hard-drive is tiny, it's just that mp3 files take up space.

For just how much space and an easy to understand article on mp3 compression check out How Stuff Works.

So, I'm whining to a co-worker about my drive problems when our network admin comes up and says - "hey, we have an extra drive you can have for $150. The only problem with it is that it's too large to back up." My ears perk and swivel and I am reaching for my wallet before he finishes the word "up."

My new toy is a Buffalo TeraStation Home Server. The Tera standing for almost one terabyte of disk space. For you not-so-geeks, that's 1024 Gigabytes. To compare and contrast, my current hard-drive is a measly 80 Gigabytes. Using MP3 compression (which is about 10:1 for music files) and a little math, I should be able to store 20,000 music CDs on my new hard drive.