If you're into photography like I am OR worse VIDEO - you're going to need a TON of disk space. Not to mention that you're probably going to want some kind of backup of that data. When you get into multi-terabyte drives, backup can become a problem! Think about it, if you have 1, 2 or 3 Terabytes of data, you'll need 1, 2 or 3 Terabytes of storage to backup that data. That brings me to my "Ultimate Data Storage Unit": the Drobo.

Data Robotics' Drobo was just what the doctor ordered for me. I had finally had it with the myriad of external 250GB drives (one for video, one for photos, one for music and one to kind of back them up), when one day the drive holding my videos up and died on me. Of course, that was the only disk I didn't have a back up for! Figured. But fear not, I have a trick or two up my sleeve to recover the data from that drive, or at least most of it. If you happen to have a drive go belly up try this: put the drive in the freezer overnight. Believe it or not, that can give you just enough time to pull off sensitive data from a bad drive. Not sure the physics behind it, but I know that I've been using that technique for years and it's saved me a lot of heartache.