A long, long time ago I decided to do an experiment. I built a server with 1 terabyte in storage. I wanted to see if the average person could deploy a terabyte of storage. The answer to my question was a solid no. That was April 2004. It cost a little over $3,000 and was painful. Oh times have changed.

I was loitering around the Apple Store the other day and I saw this nifty little Western Digital 1TB My Book. I was hesitant to purchase this since I figured mail order would be a better deal. I whipped out my iPhone and surmised that I was going to pay a $30 “convenience” cost to walk out of the store with it right then. Off I went.

I realize it sounds kind of “old man” of me to say that I’m amazed I can get 1 terabyte in a single disk. But, I am amazed! This is a decent drive too, supporting FireWire 400 and 800, as well as standard USB. As an added bonus it supports eSATA. I have it on my FireWire 800 port with the Mac Pro and it’s nice and fast.

I’m not brave enough to let Time Machine take this drive and have it’s way with it. I’m going to keep on using Chronosync to backup home movies, photos and iTunes media to it. I also need to find a place to put the raw DVD rips of 300 discs that I’m planning to start soon. More on that another time…

If you are looking for a big, huge disk to have around this is an easy alternative. Surely a lot easier than building a horrific box with 8 SATA drives. Ugh!