For the past several months I've been buried with projects, and junk has piled up in my home office. Add to that I've needed to make some major computer and networking changes, and that means it's time for a major office overhaul.

It's been about two years since I set up this office, and in that time I've added and removed printers, hard drives, computers, lights and other accessories that require all sorts of cables. So I know there are various orphan cables lying behind the desks and file cabinets. It's certain there are also dust bunnies of gargantuan size, as it's been that long since those nooks and crannies have been cleaned. And over the last few months I've added some new computer equipment and decided on a new backup strategy. This week I started to put everything into place.

First step was to map out what I was going to do. I did this on paper so I could clearly see where everything was going and what it was connected to. My "master" plan revolved around three computers. First is an Apple MacBook Pro, which would be my main work machine, since it lets me run both Windows XP and Mac OSX on one portable laptop. In addition to that I've got an AMD tower that my son and I built this past summer and a Mac G5 tower. Those two machines will be used to test software and handle printing. My goal is to have only the software I use regularly on the MacBook, so I'm not constantly installing and uninstalling software on it. All three of these computers have gigabit Ethernet, so I added a 4-port gigabit switch to my network setup. That way I'd have very fast transfer between those three machines, with the addition of some new CAT6 cables.

Next I measured the space I've got and did a little shopping. There are six printers (not counting the Epson PictureMate - yikes, that makes seven! ) and one flatbed scanner in my office, and I wanted to get three of the smaller printers and the scanner onto one shelf unit. I found a nice three-ft. wide five-shelf wire unit at a local hardware store that would work nicely. Now for the fun part, moving everything.

Since I really can't be without email for more than a few hours, I first moved that to one of my laptops. Clearing space in an adjoining room, I spent the first morning just unplugging everything and moving it out. I can't believe how many feet of cables I pulled out of there, and I don't even want to think about how many powerstrips are in use. They're all surge protected, and I have a big UPS unit under the desk that can provide backup power to the computers in case there's a total power failure to the house.

Next step was some serious vacuuming. Then I moved the shelves in and started running USB and power and ethernet cables again, but this time each one was labeled with a piece of yellow gaffer tape and a name of the device it connects. When I find loose cables in the future, I want to know where they came from.

By end of the second day everything was up and running. The MacBook Pro is hooked up to a Dell 24-inch monitor. The AMD and G5 towers share one Apple 20-inch Cinema display, using a DVI KVM switch (it lets multiple computers share one keyboard, mouse and display). All three machines are networked with gigabit Ethernet, so I can access data from any of them quickly and easily, and even data on USB 2.0 or Firewire drives that are attached to them.

The final piece of the puzzle is my new baby, a big NAS device, made by Infrant Technologies. NAS means "Network Attached Storage," By big I mean big capacity - it's got four, 400GB SATA drives in it, in a RAID 5 array. That means I have 1.2 terabytes of storage online, with regular backup. It's also on the gigabit Ethernet network, so that's where I keep all my key documents. I can hit it from any of the three machines, even while I'm on the road. It also runs unattended backups, and can do that for all the machines on the network (including the family computers). I'm still figuring it out, and will do another story on it and my new backup strategy at another time.

For now, it's great to have the office neat again (which won't last long) and feel a bit more organized (which again won't last long). Time to get back to photography. I'm shooting a Kansas City Chiefs game tomorrow, then off to lead a photo trip to the southwest (for www.packpaddleski.com). Now where did my camera bags end up…