What would you do?

[Greenlizard0]

Currently I have a 1.5TB hard drive for my storage needs which has run out of space. I have 2, 1 sitting in my rig, and the other in a self assembled caddy outside which acts as a back up.

By upgrading there'd be 2 scenarios :

A) 2 new identical 2TB drives setup in the same way, sell my existing 1.5TB drives.
B) 2 new identical 1TB drives which sit alongside the 1.5TB drives.

A)I'd sell the pair of 1.5TB drives I have at the moment, and with them having around 2.5 years of warranty left, I should be able to get a price for them such the whole upgrade costs around £120.

The advantages of that are I have two less hard drives running and I'd not need to buy another external caddy for the additional back up drive.

The disadvantage of that of course is that yet more data is put onto one drive, though of course it is backed up.

B)Upgrading such that I purchase a pair of 1TB drives would also, looking around at prices, cost £120. So the same price.

The advantage of that is now my data is put across more drives making the loss of one slightly less dramatic. Also, I'd be getting an extra 500GB or so ugrading like this for the same amount of money spent on drives.

The disadvantage is that now I'd be running 4 drives, and I'd have to spend a little more on purchasing a caddy.

What would you guys do? Do you have any thoughts?

Cheers in advance.

[jim]

I'd take the 2TB drives, easily.

The bigger the drives, the easier it is to expand in the future. If you're worried about losing your data, get more forms of backup.

[killie99]

I've never quite understood the theory of "if I have more drives of smaller size I'm better protected from losing my data" - so long as you have a backup strategy.

Lets say you have 4 x 500Gb drives or 1 x 2Tb drive - I'ts got to be a no brainer really. If you stick with the 4 x 500Gb drives you are 4 times more likely to see a failure as you have 4 times as many drives. In reality it's much worse than that as the 2Gb drive is probably a newer technology with a much better MTBF. For example, if you have Seagate series 10 500Gb drives the MTBF is 700,000hours, if you have series 11 or 12 drives the MTBF is 750,000 and that's before we get to how much power they are consuming or how much heat they are generating inside your case (which in turn will cause other components to fail).

Always always always buy the drive with the best MTBF and buy as big as you can affort, along with a backup stratergy.

There is some mileage in having the 4 x 500Gb drives if you have no backup strategy as you'll only lose a quarter of your data but that is one poor strategy for looking after your data.

[Greenlizard0]

Cheers lads, keep them coming!

That's what I was thinking as well. If a drive's going to fail, well, it's going to fail. That's why I have a back up.

[Pob255]

This might sound odd but how about deleting stuff?
Or just moving unused data off the pc onto dvd or similar.

1.5tb is a heck of a lot of data, and I'd question how often some of it is actually accessed.

[killie99]

This might sound odd but how about deleting stuff?
Or just moving unused data off the pc onto dvd or similar.

1.5tb is a heck of a lot of data, and I'd question how often some of it is actually accessed.

I don't think it's a lot. I have nearly 1Tb of photographs in raw format and I have 750Gb of music in FLAC format and I suspect a lot of people have a LOT more than me if they are storing movies .....

[chadders]

Just an alternative, if you have hot swap SATA on your motherboard, get an icybox/icydock and you can chop/change your hard disks at will?

I'd have thought this perfect for photography/video editing, and the other plus side is a backup solution using hard disks.

edit: I bought Icy Dock MB877IK-B 5.25" Tray-less Aluminum Body 3.5" SAS & SATA I / II Mobile Rack this one, works very well, and under £25

[Syllopsium]

Maybe I'm old fashioned for still using DVDs and CD/SACDs for playing films and music, although I will admit that if you're iPlayering or *cough*obtaining *cough* TV/films from the Internet, this can quickly eat up space..

My space is mostly used up by applications and multiple operating systems. Games in particular are offenders, and development environments aren't particularly light these days.

[Greenlizard0]

This might sound odd but how about deleting stuff?
Or just moving unused data off the pc onto dvd or similar.

1.5tb is a heck of a lot of data, and I'd question how often some of it is actually accessed.

You're right, not all of it is all the time. And some I admit I'm just hoarding e.g. older less often listened to music.

I have deleted a fair wack of everything, including some *cough* pornings as well

See below re: dvds/cd.

I don't think it's a lot. I have nearly 1Tb of photographs in raw format and I have 750Gb of music in FLAC format and I suspect a lot of people have a LOT more than me if they are storing movies .....

Bingo, among other things, I ripped around 80 albums during the summer into FLAC.

Just an alternative, if you have hot swap SATA on your motherboard, get an icybox/icydock and you can chop/change your hard disks at will?

I'd have thought this perfect for photography/video editing, and the other plus side is a backup solution using hard disks.

edit: I bought Icy Dock MB877IK-B 5.25" Tray-less Aluminum Body 3.5" SAS & SATA I / II Mobile Rack this one, works very well, and under £25

Hmm, that's interesting, I had looked at those a while back but I rarely (if at all) want to bother with "naked" hard drives if that makes any sense. That's why I have a caddie that moves into my room while running a back up.

Maybe I'm old fashioned for still using DVDs and CD/SACDs for playing films and music, although I will admit that if you're iPlayering or *cough*obtaining *cough* TV/films from the Internet, this can quickly eat up space..

My space is mostly used up by applications and multiple operating systems. Games in particular are offenders, and development environments aren't particularly light these days.

I'd thought long and hard about putting them onto DVD. True to say I used to do that a while back (CDRs) and they've sat well in a box. I do prefer however the advantage of immediate access an online drive confers.

[shaithis]

I would buy a nice huge NAS j/k

But seriously, I would not upgrade from 1.5 to 2.0 TB drives.....to me, that is not worth it (33% extra capacity).

I stick to a rule of 200% minimum.....and seeing as there are no 3TB drives at the moment, if I was in your shoes, I would just buy an additional drive and find somewhere to slot it in.


And roughly on the same topic, I saw these today which could be handy for a number of people:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Scan-...HDD-Formats%29

[chadders]

They do alternatives to "naked" drive trays, there's a version where you pay about £10 per enclosure and you slot your drive into it.

I was happy enough to use the plastic blister packs to hold the drives, although there are also protective covers you can get.

I think there's also a 3rd alternative, whereby you get the 5.25" bay, and a caddie that you slot the disk into. But you can use the disk in it's caddy like an external drive when not at your machine (USB2.0 I think).

But then it's all alot more hassle compared to just bagging bigger drives - just that you can pickup cheap smaller drives for storage and backup plans.

[InkZ]

Raid5 3 x 1.5 drives, job done

[jim]

Raid5 3 x 1.5 drives, job done

Except then he doesn't have a backup.

[Behemoth]

RAID is great untill things go wrong. Used to always have an identical pair of drives running in RAID. Got annoyed with it all in the end and switched to having a couple of external hard drives.

Currently got a 400 gig which has 40 gig left (so about 10% of space left on that drive) and a 500 gig that I'm sure at the rate I'm downloading stuff at the moment will be full pretty soon too.

[Pob255]

OK consider option D, put in another large hard drive, and move stuff onto it that's not vital, if you've ripped a bunch of cd's then the ripps are not really vital and in need of multiple copies.
If for some reason you lose them you can always re-rip them.
Same goes for other large things like installed games, you can always reinstall them, so they are not really vital or in need of back up.

[Greenlizard0]

RAID is great untill things go wrong. Used to always have an identical pair of drives running in RAID. Got annoyed with it all in the end and switched to having a couple of external hard drives.

Currently got a 400 gig which has 40 gig left (so about 10% of space left on that drive) and a 500 gig that I'm sure at the rate I'm downloading stuff at the moment will be full pretty soon too.

Indeed, I used to have a RAID 1 setup at home, before it went wrong and then I really couldn't see the benifets of having an almost "unusable" drive (in terms of capacity) versus me keeping the data. A backup system is much better.

OK consider option D, put in another large hard drive, and move stuff onto it that's not vital, if you've ripped a bunch of cd's then the ripps are not really vital and in need of multiple copies.
If for some reason you lose them you can always re-rip them.
Same goes for other large things like installed games, you can always reinstall them, so they are not really vital or in need of back up.

That is true, but ripping that many cds took a long time (as in days). They're also in my parents' house (300 miles away). So if I lose that drive and it's not backed up..

It was certainly an idea though. And by far, it will have been the cheapest (I'd need say spend £60 for a 1tb drive or less for a smaller capacity).