I remember my brother and I downloading the Quake 3 Arena demo in 1999. It was a whopping 80 MB, and took a total of 3 days to finish on our family's dial-up connection. We had to pause the download when we went to bed at night, and continued it in the morning, but it was worth it. That was the largest single thing that I had ever downloaded on dial-up. It felt like such an achievement. Today, though, I was presented with an even greater challenge.

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails was unable to release an official DVD of their previous tour due to a disagreement with his former record label, so he decided to put the raw high-definition footage from three separate shows online for free. The only problem is that the entire package is just over 400 GB. I really have no actual need for 400 GB of uncut concert footage, but the obsessed, OCD driven fan inside of me demands that I am able to see it all. This may be the single largest thing that I've ever attempted to download, or ever will download in the near future. Given the 60 GB/month bandwidth cap that Shaw enforces on my current internet subscription, I'll have to split the download into monthly intervals. Best case scenario, it won't be until July that I am able to say I downloaded something that was 400 GB. I don't even have more than 150 GB of free hard drive space right now, but with the incredibly low prices on hard drives these days, I think I'll be able to afford to upgrade within the next 7 months.

Wish me luck.

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