In the phrase “May you live in interesting times” – often referred to (inaccurately) as “the Chinese curse”- “interest” is used as a euphemism for “trouble” or “unpleasantness.” If that is the case, then “dull,” “uneventful” and even “boring” could be used as “trouble-free” or “easy” in much the same manner.
Blog reader and OWC customer Larry Rymal did just that when he spoke of adding an OWC Storage Solution to his current system:
“Other than the added storage space, it was a very ‘boring’ uneventful upgrade.”
This is a great statement on the ease of use our products offer. No complex instructions, special drivers or extra equipment is needed to use one of our Storage Solutions. Everything you need to use it comes in the box, and its generally just a matter of minutes between opening the package and having your Storage Solution up and running.
In other words, it’s about as “dull” as you can get.
The irony of this phrasing, though, is that the actual usage of our drives is actually pretty interesting – and not in the euphemistic sense. I never mentioned what system Mr. Rymal hooked his OWC Storage Solution up to. No, it wasn’t a Mac. It wasn’t Windows or Linux box, either (though our Solutions would work with any of them).
He hooked it up to his DirecTV HD-DVR. Now, instead of the already-respectable 500GB worth of storage, he’s got 1.5TB, giving him about 300 hours worth of program recording.
The neat thing is, this isn’t the only instance of our Storage Solutions being used in non-traditional ways. Our products are designed to be as easy-to-use and widely-compatible as possible, which means they can be used with a lot of different setups. For example, I use an older Elite to store movies for playback via my DVD player, which has a built-in USB port. A few months ago, OWC Duane put up a great how-to showing how to use our Storage Solutions with your next-generation gaming platform.
If you’re using one of our Storage Solutions with something other than a basic desktop or laptop computer, I’d love to hear about it. Just leave a comment below.
I’m looking at a nice OWC shopping cart at the moment, and am about to push the Big Button… this is for an embedded Mac Mini on my sailboat (Nomadness) along with external storage, A/V tools, upstream EVDO and WiFi, and resource sharing with a Linux Server and about 15 Arduinos scattered from stem to stern. Interesting packaging challenges in the salt water environment with occasional lightning… but I’m sure your drives can take it. ;-)
Actually, I’m trying to make a few selections with power requirements being a key issue… if you email me so I can get a few quick questions to the right person, I’d love it. Thanks!
The X360 drives use a proprietary format that requires a lot of work to get around and even if you do the drive size is limited to the sizes Microsoft offers for it. I had to settle for accepting I was going to pay more than I wanted to increase my drive on my X360 after I decided the original 20GB drive was no longer an option. You might consider getting a refurbished drive, which can save you a little cash at least.
An external drive is great for media storage and playback for the X360. It also does allow you to get a 1TB or even larger unit to do so. If you are looking at using the X360 for the purpose of media storage, however, I’d recommend getting one!
I’m using your Voyager system with our X-Serve to back up our network. It’s pure genius…just buy a cheap hard drive and you can pop it in and out at will! I take mine home every week for safe keeping.
I wish there were a way to replace the XBOX 360 drive with one of your 1TB units. I am stuck at 20GB unless I want to fork over $130 for a (gasp!) 160GB version. (Highway robbery!)