The other day, as part of some information engineering I was doing, I needed to ingest a folder of high quality Tiff files. The combined size of all the files was 35GB. I had brought my trusty WD Passport external hard drive and figured I’d just dump them from the host computer onto there. Once we connected it (via USB mind you) and began copying the files it estimated the task would take 13 hours. We watched and waited in disbelief until I realized they had the same folder of images on a large external hard drive that was connected to the host computer via Firewire. Since I had my laptop I figured we should connect the large external hard drive to my laptop and see how much more quickly the process would go. Estimated time for all files to be transferred: approximately 23 minutes. Luckily that worked fine.
If it didn’t my next step would’ve been to try the master and slave computer trick, except I didn’t have a Firewire to Firewire cable…but I’m wondering now if their external hard drive had just such a cable attached. I suppose a few extra cables would be good to keep on hand for just such events. Since I’m in the market for a good laptop bag I’ll be looking for some good pockets for extra cables.
What do you look for in a computer carry-case?
Do you have any favorite brands or styles?
John Trendler: Still Learning 