Which 1TB hard Drives?

[Justintoxicated]

Well I can't wait much longer...Maybe another week or so. All my Hard Drives are full. I need to pickup a 1TB hard drive but I'm not sure which one to get. I was looking at the WD because of it's lower power consumption (except at startup) and excelent price. However it seems that it's real life seek time is averaging about 13ms. it's definately one of the slowest 1TB options.

Will it be fast enough to do whatever I want in sage?

Next in price is the Hitachi 1TB drives. These have 5 plates instead of 4 so more chances of failure IMO, but they do offer the best performance and are the next cheapest of the 1TB drives. They also use the most power...

Then there is the segate drive, which is a good compromise, however they are extreamly expensive so I would have to wait till they go on sale somewhere.

Can I get by with the WD drives?
I get my info from storagereview.com

-Thanks

[valnar]

I prefer the Hitachi drives. I use the 500Mb in my server now on a RAID 5 array. They are very quiet too.

I don't like Seagate drives for one, probably superficial reason. Their SMART error rates are usually screwed up. I have a better feeling for the status of my Hitachi drives.

-Robert

[CollinR]

Seagate doesn't have an SV35 1TB drive yet so I am still stuck at 750GB.

ST3750640SV thats basically all I use, they have proven themselves well in profession which is somewhat similar to my hobby.

[Justintoxicated]

seems segate has some kind of 1TB offering is this drive not ideal? I have the naming scheme on segate drives...

I was refering to this particular article

http://www.storagereview.com/1000.sr

[CollinR]

I just use the SV35s so I gotta wait.

Info:
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/mark...v35_7200_2.pdf

[Justintoxicated]

Originally Posted by CollinR

I just use the SV35s so I gotta wait.

Info:
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/mark...v35_7200_2.pdf

interesting, I wonder what makes them so special for DVR's. I'm not really recording all that much stuff so I am not sure it is necessary for my use.

I'm still wondering if I could get by with the WD drives. They are considerably cheaper.

[evilpenguin]

If I was buying now i'd go with the WD Green Power 1TB. The noise, power consumption, and performance all look perfect for HTPC use.

[Justintoxicated]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

If I was buying now i'd go with the WD Green Power 1TB. The noise, power consumption, and performance all look perfect for HTPC use.

Thanks these just went onsale at fry's I might pick one or 2 up tomarrow. Althoguh to be honest I don't have a dedicated HTPC yet!, Perhaps if I find a large enough case my existing computer will become a HTPC come January.

[stevech]

Originally Posted by Justintoxicated

All my Hard Drives are full. I need to pickup a 1TB hard drive but I'm not sure which one to get.
-Thanks

One drive? How do you protect from drive failure (without at least RAID1)? It will happen.

[Justintoxicated]

Originally Posted by stevech

One drive? How do you protect from drive failure (without at least RAID1)? It will happen.

Well problem is I don't have the money for 2 right now and the sale is not THAT good $269 and I have sceen this drive as low as $239. I'll probably throw another drive in an external enclosure later, or maybe try a raid-1 array later (I like external option better) As of right now I have a 500GB external backup drive for all my super important info. But hey I can't deal with only 8GB free space so I need to pickup another drive in the meanwhile.

I could always create the raid-1 array (hardware) later if needed right? I liek the external backup drives better, however I hate all the cables etc. Perhaps I need some sort of NAS backup system to be ideal.

I only have room for 4 HD's in my case too so that is not helping matters. I wish they made a case larger than a CM stacker that was reasonably priced...Damn 120x2 Radiator is taking up all my drive space in the front.

[stanger89]

/soapbox

RAID is not backup. If you've got important stuff that you can't lose, you need to do a proper backup of it (burn to CD/DVD/etc, copy to external, preferably disconnected HDD).

RAID, any RAID doesn't protect you from the things most likely to happen: Stupid user and stupid program.

[stevech]

Originally Posted by stanger89

/soapbox

RAID is not backup. If you've got important stuff that you can't lose, you need to do a proper backup of it (burn to CD/DVD/etc, copy to external, preferably disconnected HDD).

RAID, any RAID doesn't protect you from the things most likely to happen: Stupid user and stupid program.

Agreed. But in my many years of using PC, Microsoft has finally delivered us. with NTFS du jour, to a point where file system corruption beyond repair is very rare (Gee. my VAX VMS and RSX systems did that in the '80's).

So what happens to my computers in the last 15 years is a drive failure - motor bearing fail or heads crash. It's not if, but when. That's why I have RAID1 for videos, since I don't want to drive image that partition as I do for the boot partition on the same RAID. And I just stick in a new drive. I currently have two 500GB SATA drives; these are priced OK these days.

my really important stuff (financial, family photos) are backed up many ways, encrypted. Such rigor not needed for videos, I say. Just RAID1 for drive failure protection.

Stupid user (me on occasion) hasn't happened irreversibly, in many years. On the server where Sage and other stuff runs, user web surfing and email are not done.

[stanger89]

That all makes perfect sense, but many people don't understand things that well, they think if they've got RAID setup, their stuff is safe, backed up, secure, and that's simply not the case. RAID protects against one, and only one thing, disk failure.

[Justintoxicated]

Originally Posted by stevech

Agreed. But in my many years of using PC, Microsoft has finally delivered us. with NTFS du jour, to a point where file system corruption beyond repair is very rare (Gee. my VAX VMS and RSX systems did that in the '80's).

So what happens to my computers in the last 15 years is a drive failure - motor bearing fail or heads crash. It's not if, but when. That's why I have RAID1 for videos, since I don't want to drive image that partition as I do for the boot partition on the same RAID. And I just stick in a new drive. I currently have two 500GB SATA drives; these are priced OK these days.

my really important stuff (financial, family photos) are backed up many ways, encrypted. Such rigor not needed for videos, I say. Just RAID1 for drive failure protection.

Stupid user (me on occasion) hasn't happened irreversibly, in many years. On the server where Sage and other stuff runs, user web surfing and email are not done.

No worries I know all about raid and I would also consider raid-1 for videos. but I dunno if I want to max out my case just yet.

My Current method of backup is a 500GB USB drive. it's on a timer I bought at target. Once a week the timer turns the drive on at 1am, and shuts it off at 6am. I have my backup software synchronized to start backing up to this drive at this time Seems to work well and I never even notice when it is going.

I really don't want to buy 500 GB drives. Yes they are a better deal but also add more heat, and power consumption to my PC. I think the 1TB price is worth the extra $80 (if you figure 500GB drives are about $99). Plus it's a nice round amount of space compared to 750Gb.

edit: Just purcashed the WD green drive and I am about to shut down and install. What would you all recomend for a partition size for live recording (64k blocks)? I have not really used sage to record TV yet due tot he fact that all the stations I want to record I can't get through my HDHR tuner and my Cable Box Firewire appears to be malfunctioning (dropping frames). But I would like to record some Family Guy and Simpons and junk. Would 100 GB be enough (I know it's kind of custom/personal question but just looking for some free advice)?

[trini0]

Originally Posted by stanger89

RAID is not backup

I can attest to this.
A few weeks ago, I was setting up an iSCSI target box, with two targets, on two raid arrays.
Well, there was a bug in the software, where the 2nd target was writing to the 1st target array.
I lost all my movies/tv, and some virtual machines. Thank God I had a backup of the VMs. I can live with the lost movies/tv.

[Justintoxicated]

For performance reasons would I be better off formatting this 1TB drive as one partition for storage. Then using my old 400GB WD drive (with like 100GB partitioned in 64k clusters for sage?) This drive should have better performance than the new 1Tb drive and make for a cleaer setup (other than backup which needs to be updated anyways)

The only problem is that my backup is only 500GB for now.