"I Want an Oopma Loompa NOW!"

As promised, Part II of my devious plan to conquer the world. I mean, my paperwork! I need to look into storage options for my photos, videos and these soon-to-be-scanned-in papers.

If you thought my paperwork filing plan was sloppy, our computer's file plan is an incredible mess. I try to keep up with it, putting everything in it's appropriate folder on our shared hard drive, but sometimes I get sloppy and will go weeks at a time just dumping EVERYTHING into my MacBook's "Documents" folder.

I try really hard to file the pictures into folders that have both the date and a brief description of the event. My more loyal followers see me doing this all the time when I point you to pictures on this blog. Each album is just my uploading the contents of the photo folder, which is named such that I can go to the My Pictures folder, alphabetize the folder list of photos, and they're in date order automatically.  I like it that way, I know not everyone does things the same way...

Anyway...let's assume I'm organized in that department. Which I'm not.  And that I've scanned in all the paperwork I needed.  Which I haven't.

My next challenge is storage of all of this digital personal paperwork. And photos (I have nearly 20,000). And videos. And maybe even some of the kids' schoolwork?

Starting two PCs ago, I've avoided putting our personal files on our internal hard drives. I have an external hard drive USB-attached to our PC and I ensure all of our PCs and Macs can connect to it to read/write our personal files. The external hard drive is starting to fill out (it's "only" 200 GB) and it's time to look into something new...and bigger.

Many of you have weighed in with me on "off site" storage options, and I've also have discussions about "on site" server and wireless external hard drive options. All of this will cost us money, and LOTS of time ensuring the files are transferred properly. And the I want to have a periodic backup plan.

Okay, I know I'm starting to sound like Veruca Salt here. I want this, and I want that...

In a perfect, limitless bank account world, I would love one of these Apple Time Capsule external hard drives!

The 2 TB version, please. But I think in reality, I need to (a) consider a 1 TB instead, since we don't NEED a 2 TB drive and (b) do a little more research. There are lots of allegations of an 18 month shelf life on these things and I would like to see how well the newer ones are doing.

I'm not looking forward to how much money this is going to cost, either. But the computers we have aren't getting any younger, and the external hard drive everything is on right now is nearing 3 years of age...I'm nervous it's going to croak really really soon. I'm copying my entire 2010 photo gallery from my Mac to it right now, in fact. But the copying isn't doing so well -- 16 GB of files via WiFi? I used to have a nifty auto-backup feature on our old PC, perhaps I should bring it back on the new one?

Back to the office...