Storage

[Robert]

Right - I've posted about this before but the time to buy is now upon me.

I have three options.

Keep my two 320gb drives and buy a 1TB mybook (although I would rather keep everything internal).

Sell my two 320gb drives and buy two 750gb Western Digital drives.

Sell one 320 drive and buy a samsung F1 TB drive.

[Lucio]

The question is, what will you be doing to backup such vast reams of data?

If the answer is nothing, then get the two 750GB WD drives, put them into RAID 1 and keep your 320GB drives as well.

Whilst RAID isn't a proper backup method, at least it decreases the chances of loosing everything all at once...

[Robert]

I'm not that bothered about backing the stuff up

Edit: I'm also limited to 3 hard drives in my case as I had to remove one HD cage.

[Lucio]

If you're not bothered about backing stuff up, chances are you don't NEED the extra storage either because you're not even using all the stuff you have on your PC now.

Therefore go with the cheapest option and just add one more HDD to your current setup.

[Robert]

But I am using it all

[arthurleung]

I would say:
Sell one 320 drive and buy a samsung F1 TB drive.

Then when the time comes
Sell one 320 drive and buy a samsung F1 TB drive.

Resulting in 2x1TB drives in the long run

TBH if I have the money, I would have jump straight to 4x1TB RAID5 but as you said you have the space constraint.

[Robert]

I think I'll go for the 1TB drive and sell 1 320 drive.

It should still give me quite a bit more space and it's cheaper than 2 750 drives.

Any other views?

[TooNice]

The Samsung F1 is rather sexy, but personally I would not buy a 1TB drive right now. Per GB, it's still too expensive for my taste. 2x 750GB (WD AAKS - no slouch or excessively noisy) works out to about 14.5p/GB. The 1TB works out to about 19p/GB. That's almost a 25% premium. If possible, I would get a 750GB now to buy even a month or two, and then see where 1TB drive cost then or get a second 750GB.

Of course, there are other factors, the F1 should be the better overall drive, and a single 750GB will last you less than a month and you simply can't justify the absolute cost of 2x 750GB drive, the point is moot. Just get the TB F1. But even from a performance point of view, I can see some benefit of running two drives instead of one: for instance, you could extract a large file on one drive without interrupting (significantly) a game if it's stored on another.

In general though, I try to avoid the latest/greatest HD (especially when they have only been available for a few weeks) because you don't get good storage-for-buck.

[999tigger]

I stilllike the Samsung 500gb drives. They offer the best value for money.