How much space do you need?

The first fridge we bought was a 2-door LG behemoth with a whopping 430-liter capacity. My better half (MBH) thought I was totally out of my mind. I thought it was perfectly reasonable. Fortunately as that was the first few things we were buying for our home, I got my way.

In hindsight, I should have used that leeway to max out on the largest screen TV and baddest-ass hifi set, instead of a crummy fridge! Well, live and learn, I guess.

What's the big deal about a 430l fridge you ask? Well, for starters that's equivalent to the storage space of about 14 minibars. There were only 2 of us, and we didn't really cook. So to be fair, that size could be considered a tad cavernous for us then. So to make full use of the fridge, we started keeping all sorts of things in there.

Not quite like this, but wouldn't it be neat to have something like that?!?

My personal record was keeping about 6 assorted Cosway mooncakes in the deep freezer until the 10th Chinese Lunar month.... of the following year!! Occassionally we'd clean the fridge and find long lost, frozen artefacts in there... kinda made me feel like an icelandic explorer hoping find a woolly mammoth intact in the ice.

We were never quite sure what we'd find in there!

Fast-forward to today, and the faithful LG icebox is still chugging along, keeping good tempreture without breaking a sweat. Of course these days, it is stuffed to the brim with all manner of real and edible food. Finding that we were not having enough space, we resorted to getting a dedicated freezer for all the protein sources to meet the carneverous needs of my boys.

Occassionally, out of fun, or out of the need to proof that I'm the better judge (which I tend not to be), I'd bring up the 'fridge story' as an indication of how much foresight I had in choosing one that was big enough to meet our future needs!

That anecdote was getting trite, but it didn't stop me from using it ("one can never have too much storage space") when I needed to get yet another hard disk. This would be my 5th hard disk, and I was running out of excuses:

• My first HD was a 40GB 2.5inch notebook drive put in an external casing. MBH accidentally dropped it one day, totally ruining it. The lost of the data within was devastating!

• I next bought a 300gb disk. Had a perfectly good alibi -- needed space to store all the pictures I'd taken and my previous HD was broken.

• Then I bought a 500gb disk. There was yet another compelling story to be told -- I needed a secondary hard disk for backup, and besides, the 500gb was then even cheaper then the 300gb one I bought previously. (It helped that MBH had dropped the first one, making her acutely aware of the need for a proper backup image!)

• My friend and mentor, Mark, came over from Melbourne one day and plonked a 300gb disk on me -- "here ya go, enjoy". So I had a windfall there -- free drive plus a bazillion cool things that came stuffed in the hard disk!
  

Its been barely 6 months since I had bought the 500gb disk, and I was greedily eyeing the new Western Digital Caviar 1TB Green drive. The 500gb disk was still only 60% full, and I had no immediate plans (or ideas) for filling up the rest of the 200gb. So in a sense, I was more short of excuses (to buy the 1TB) then I was on space.

Then along came a perfect excuse. A terabyte-worth-of-data kind of excuse.

Picture this:

Me: Dearest, I was kinda thinking I could do with a hard disk -- you heard about the WD 1TB drive?
MBH: Hmm... ?
Me: You know, the pervious Seagate one I bought... its going to run out of space eventually...
MBH: You're not going to tell me the fridge story again are you?
Me: No! Of course not dearest, it wouldn't be fair... even if it was true
MBH: What dear?
Me: uh, I said it wouldn't be fair... and I must be fair to you... heh
MBH: I think its cool too to have a 1TB drive, but what do you want to do with it that you can't already do with your 500gb?
Me: I can do *twice* of what I'm doing with my 500gb! :)
MBH: Right.....

Then came a whole bunch of half-baked reasons, justifications and sales-pitches to convince her (and partly, myself) that it made sense to buy the 1TB drive then.

Me: I mean, like, think of the kind of bragging rights I'd have, right!!
Me: I promise I'd load up '24' and House and your favourite serials for your easy access...!
Me: Seriously, this would be the last one I need for a long time....
Me: Aw common... can't a guy have his fun? (was beginning to get desperate)
Me: Look sweetie, how about if you thought of this as a Father's day gift... you've been saying how hard it is to get me something, right?

That last one, I must admit, was kinda low, even by my already compromised standards. But hey! That actually worked! MBH finally relented and said I could get silly and buy it. *grin*

My ensemble of spinning disks whirling happily away on top of the PC.
Took one of Mark's brilliant ideas of using a notebook cooler
(see the grey pad under the 2 harddisks?) to effectively manage the heat in my 2 fan-less enclosures.

A couple of decades back, this would have taken up the size of a room, needed some serious cooling and power cabling ... and the people responsible for cutting over 1.8 terabytes of storage would have thrown a champagne party for such a big milestone. Sorry, but I digress.

Anyway, RM 880 (650 for the HD and 130 for the excellent enclosure -- see above pix, left most hard disk) later, I had, tucked under the console table, more storage than any sensible bloke would ever need in his entire lifetime. Of course, for a tech-fan who also has a severe case of collectoritis, being 'sensible' simply meant looking for the next great excuse to use when I desperately need to get my next 2TB or 4TB drives in the future!

Hmmm... if I could get away with that fridge story again?!