Devices and External Drives

Evan isn’t coming for Baba Time today because of an event at his school, so here’s an early ephemeral blip made in the Physical Therapy waiting room. (Did not post yesterday, as I had a migraine. I’m fine today.)

My obsession of the day is External Drives. In 2019, I splurged $200 on a 4TB external drive to store my photos [cheaper now, but oh well]. I thought that drive would last for the rest of my life and hold whatever I wanted to put on it. 

For the past 2 weeks, my laptop could not “read” the drive that has been its buddy since 2019. I called the Apple Store, and they told me to update my laptop to the Ventura operating system, which I did, and now the laptop can sometimes (but not always) recognize the drive. The Apple employee also cautioned me that external drives only last two to four years. WHAT?

In fine print with the upgrade to Ventura, I’m told Apple is now going to take any photos I have on my laptop, no matter the processing system I use, and store them in the Cloud, whether I want that or not. So eventually I’ll have to pay monthly for Cloud space in order to have access to my own photographs.

I conclude that the only way I can keep my photographs is to print them (or make books of them, which is expensive); to Blip them (and hope Blip continues being solvent and “live”); or to hope that I can afford Cloud space, and that my digital files on the Cloud will be accessible to people who outlive me, if they want them…. How would that work, and why would they want them, and what if the Cloud goes down or there are environmental disasters? 

People make millions of photographs every day. Why do we need them? I wonder. I notice I'm still attached to the best of them, but this one is typical of those I can easily trash.

What do other people do about digital storage? And did everyone but me know that external drives don’t last more than two to four years? I know and accept that Impermanence is a thing, but we have to replace our external drives every two to four years? Really?

In far more profound and disturbing news, Los Angeles police killed Keenan Anderson, a young Black English teacher last week. All the George Floyd protests have led to no changes except increased police budgets. The story is horrifying and the video footage is traumatizing.