{"id":6389,"date":"2013-05-01T14:10:17","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T18:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/?p=6389"},"modified":"2013-05-01T14:10:17","modified_gmt":"2013-05-01T18:10:17","slug":"confessions-of-an-sdraholic-when-4-5-terabytes-is-not-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/confessions-of-an-sdraholic-when-4-5-terabytes-is-not-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Confessions of an SDRaholic: when 4.5 terabytes is not enough"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WinRadioExcaliburFullScreen\"<\/a> Alas, ever since I started using Software Defined Receivers (SDRs) last year, I’ve found that I fill up hard drives faster than I can buy them. As you may have noted, I like to make spectrum recordings–especially during the night-time hours, as I slumber. The following morning, upon waking, I’ll “tune” through, say, the 31 meter band as if it were live. What makes it even more amazing for me, is that I can fast-forward through time and scan for DX stations even more quickly.\u00a0 Great fun–highly addictive.\u00a0 And did I say, space-consuming?<\/p>\n

On my WinRadio Excalibur<\/a>, I find that I use about 4 gigabytes<\/em> of hard drive space for a one-hour-long spectrum recording, 100 kHz wide. Of course, if I were to record a 2,000 kHz (2 MHz) chunk of spectrum, it would chew through 4 GB in, roughly, 3.5 minutes.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fortunately, I rarely ever record spectrum that wide. I find that the maximum width I ever record is 1.25 MHz, which I reserve for occasions once in a blue moon. Most of the time, I stick to 100 kHz-160 kHz widths.<\/p>\n

After I record a chunk of spectrum, I usually listen to it, create an AF recording of anything of interest, then delete it from my drive. You’d think this would effectively keep my hard drive cleared out, ready to receive the next installment? Not so<\/em>. Well, at least, not in my\u00a0undisciplined\u00a0SDR beginnings.<\/p>\n

The flaw in my logic<\/strong><\/p>\n

Quite often, I make spectrum recordings while traveling, and do so remotely (using TeamViewer<\/a> to control my PC). In the past eight months, I’ve done a lot<\/em> of traveling. When I return from a trip, I find that I’ve often amassed a\u00a0sizable\u00a0collection of spectrum recordings. Upon returning from travel I also find (not surprisingly) that I’m typically busier than normal, catching up with email, phone calls, and delayed appointments. Thus, I never quite get around to reviewing–and therefore deleting–these files. Most of the spectrum recordings taking up space on my internal drives are those I’ve recorded remotely.<\/p>\n

Last year, I thought I’d solve the space problem on my ailing laptop by purchasing a dedicated tower PC (Core i5) maxed-out with RAM and with a 1TB internal (7200 RPM) hard drive. This particular Gateway PC also has a bay that accepts cheap internal SATA drives; I simply insert an internal SATA hard drive in the\u00a0ejectable\u00a0bay, load the drivers, and it’s good to go. When I purchased an additional 2 TB SATA drive for spectrum recordings, I thought I would be set for years to come…Ah, how the mighty crumble…<\/p>\n

As I write this today, I find I only have a total of 350 GB available on my PC. I’ve also filled an entire 1.5 TB external hard drive<\/em> with recordings I plan to archive and share with a fellow SWLer.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Tandy Color Computer 2 (“CoCo 2”) was my first personal computer. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)<\/p><\/div>\n

My, how times have changed<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reverse to the 1980s:\u00a0 When I was ten years old, I thought my Tandy Color Computer 2 was the best thing since sliced bread.\u00a0 Its 16 kB was surely plenty of memory for whatever I wanted to do, and the cassette tapes I used as a form of external hard drive gave me the certainty of a virtually limitless supply of memory.<\/p>\n

Today, I doubt I could make an intelligible MP3 recording, even with aggressive compression, that would fit a 16 kB file size.<\/p>\n

Facing the truth
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

The frank fact is that I’ve gotten much better at managing hard drive space, now that I’ve been doing spectrum recordings for more than a year. I shouldn’t need to buy additional hard drive space unless it’s specifically for archiving\/sharing purposes. I just need to regularly face the music (or static)–dig through spectrum recordings made last year, and delete those I no longer need.<\/p>\n

How do I manage space now? Here are my tricks for staying on the wagon, and saving both space and time:<\/p>\n