Storage is storage, physical or digital, just one catch...

I have to admit, I have a generic “storage” feed where about half of the articles cover the self storage industry, home organization, closet organizing…you know, the storing of physical stuff. One article from The CIO Weblog titled “The Different Types of Storage Space for All Needs” came through, so I bit, and clicked through to find it was all about physical storage.

What I found is that no matter whether you are storing your digital content, or your everyday excess, there are some real commonalities in how they are described and marketed. The article categorizes 3 types of storage spaces:

Vehicle or Boat Storage
Portable Storage Units
Temperature Controlled Storage

If you think about it, Seagate has digital storage that fits into each one of these categories.

Vehicle or Boat Storage: Seagate wireless drive called Satellite is a wireless hard drive that enables you to take all of your digital content with you (up to 500GB worth) in the car, on the boat, etc. Because the drive uses its own wi-fi connection between it and your mobile device (laptop, tablet, smartphone), you need not worry about needed a 3G/4G network, or an available wi-fi network to tap.

Portable Storage Units: Seagate Backup Plus Portable Drives and Seagate Slim Portable Drives have capacities up to 1 terabyte and are small enough to carry with you.

Temperature Controlled Storage: Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drives, GoFlex Home, and BlackArmor NAS aren’t exactly air-conditioned or designed for extreme environments, but they are ideal for storing anything and everything digital inside your “temperature controlled” home or office. These storage solutions boast capacities up to 12 terabytes and can be connected directly to a PC or to a network. What’s more, in the case of GoFlex Home and BlackArmor NAS, you even have the capability to access your content from anywhere you have an internet connection.

So, the difference, or the catch between digital and physical storage? With the excess physical stuff, often times, we are fine with parting with it via donation or dumpster. We even take strides to not accumulate more in the first place. Asking ourselves the question, do we really need that new…?

But, with digital content, we almost never throw anything away (delete it), seldom donate it (best not share copy-written material), and have absolutely no problem accumulating more and more of it, sometimes without us even knowing.

I guess that is the beauty of going digital…lord knows our family has more than enough children’s books, and not enough shelf space. That’s why the kids are getting Kindle Fire’s this holiday (I’m safe because neither of them read this blog). And for the books we do have, there are some keepers, but the rest…to the Children’s Hospital they go.

Cyber Monday tech – the gifts that keep on giving

What are your most important files?