Seagate offers a 40 TB expansion solution that is truly plug-and-play. At first glance, 40 TB may seem excessive, but when you break it down into real-world usage and modern content demands, it may not be as much as it sounds.

To illustrate the point, consider a family of four — two parents and two young children, ages two and five.

At that age, video recording happens almost daily. If it doesn’t, those parents are missing out on moments that are nearly impossible to recreate later.

Using an iPhone set to record video at 4K resolution and 24 FPS (frames per second), a one-minute video consumes roughly 270 MB of storage. If a parent records a four-minute video once per day for a year, that results in about 360 GB of data — roughly one-third of a terabyte.

Before continuing, it’s worth noting that the Seagate solution includes software that automatically syncs mobile devices with the storage system. Large videos can be difficult to move off an iPhone without a cloud or streaming backup service, and Seagate provides that capability. We also published an article covering manual transfers using a SanDisk USB iXpand device.

Given the age of the kids, a four-minute video is probably short for whatever funny or chaotic moment is unfolding. Rounding up to ten minutes of video per day, per parent, puts daily storage consumption at roughly 5.5 GB.

You could reduce resolution from 4K down to H.264, but who really wants to do that? High-resolution video is useful for editing, and five years from now today’s 4K footage may feel low resolution.

As the kids get older, they’ll start contributing their own videos to the Seagate storage system. The examples could go on, but the takeaway is simple: as technology improves, the amount of storage required to preserve our digital content grows right alongside it.

As a closing thought, consider how difficult and time-consuming it can be to migrate data from one storage device to a newer, larger one. While a 40 TB expansion may feel like a big purchase today, upgrading from a smaller system later often takes longer — and is more painful — than expected.

Mac users usually get the short end of the stick when it comes to software and hardware support for Mac OS. Most products and applications are specifically designed for Windows users, knowing this is the largest install base of computer owners. However, the tide is shifting. I’m not sure if the popularity of the iPod and iPhone are the sole reason, or if users are just tired of the buggy OS of Windows, but Mac computers are popping up everywhere. Friends, work, school — well, always school — and even my grandparents’ house.

Today SanDisk is giving the Mac fan base a bit of love. SanDisk introduces the first secure flash drive which fully supports operation under Mac OS. The SanDisk Cruzer Enterprise is a USB stick that may be used on either a PC or Mac and provides full data encryption for the drive. With a friendly user interface, the owner can unlock files and data on the stick for use and sharing. Once the drive is locked down or disconnected, the encryption is automatically re-enabled.

• Log in and shut down access to the encrypted storage area
• Change and manage passwords
• Change contact information, language, and other preferences
• Launch online support, view current firmware, and drive information

Granted, this solution is data encryption — not true USB copy protection like in some drives we’ve seen before — but for many users this will be more than enough.

Available in 1-, 2-, 4-, and 8-gigabyte (GB) configurations, Cruzer Enterprise supports Apple Macintosh computers running Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” and Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard.” Cruzer Enterprise safeguards all files stored on the drive with advanced hardware-based 256-bit AES USB encryption, which, combined with advanced password protection, makes it extremely difficult for unauthorized users to access data if the drive is lost or stolen. Existing Cruzer Enterprise users may download a firmware update at https://www.sandisk-enterprise.com/macupdater.

Source: SanDisk.