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Cheaper and cheaper

 
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WanMan



Joined: 19 Mar 2006
Posts: 10270


Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 8:33 pm    Post subject: Cheaper and cheaper

Its not near the holidays yet, but OEM Western Digital Green 2TB drives are going for $99 at Amazon.

While I find myself with less and less reason/need to buy ever larger drives, it is making it possible to aggregate data onto fewer and fewer disks. I just bought a pair along with another Kingwin Ezdock2. That's $230 for 4TB of external storage.

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garyfritz



Joined: 08 Apr 2006
Posts: 12088
Location: Fort Collins, CO

Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 9:09 pm    Post subject:

I won't buy any new drives unless they're RAID-protected, and even then there has to be a good backup. I don't want to put all my important / irreplaceable data on yet another POS soon-to-fail disk.
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MikeEby



Joined: 24 Jun 2007
Posts: 5237
Location: Osceola, Indiana

Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2010 12:35 am    Post subject:

I'm up to 11TB, I'll be needing another real soon. I've actually found RAID to be less reliable then a single drive. On several occasions I've see something go terribly bad with a mirrored RAID array and everything lost. I won't install one unless it's a SAS controller with Enterprise quality drives.

Mike

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ecrabb
Forum Moderator


Joined: 13 Mar 2006
Posts: 15909
Location: Utah

TV/Projector: JVC RS40, Epson 5010

Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2010 12:50 am    Post subject:

How are you drives configured then, Mike?

A buddy just bought a 2TB drive from Newegg for $60 or so with some coupon. Insane.

SC
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MikeEby



Joined: 24 Jun 2007
Posts: 5237
Location: Osceola, Indiana

Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2010 1:34 am    Post subject:

ecrabb wrote:
How are you drives configured then, Mike?

A buddy just bought a 2TB drive from Newegg for $60 or so with some coupon. Insane.

SC


Just simple NTFS volumes, the software (Media Browser) then pools all the shares to look like one big ass drive full of media files. Below is an older screen capture, now I have 6 shares that Media Browser sees. It also automatically downloads the movie art, synopsis, genre, and actor & director information. You can sort or filter on that criteria. All I do is adding another drive to the server share it then start adding media files. The WMC software looks very much like the NetFlix PS3 interface, all controllable with a media center remote. I NEVER use a mouse or track ball with my HTPC or even see the Windows desktop anymore. When the movie is over I let the HTPC go back to sleep then wake it up with the remote when I want to use it again. I takes maybe 5 seconds to be ready to watch. HTPC technology has come a long way in the last few year, Win 7 is super stable.




Mike

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greg_mitch



Joined: 03 May 2006
Posts: 5320


Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2010 4:16 am    Post subject: Re: Cheaper and cheaper

WanMan wrote:
Its not near the holidays yet, but OEM Western Digital Green 2TB drives are going for $99 at Amazon.

While I find myself with less and less reason/need to buy ever larger drives, it is making it possible to aggregate data onto fewer and fewer disks. I just bought a pair along with another Kingwin Ezdock2. That's $230 for 4TB of external storage.


$99 2TB drives have been around for awhile now. I have one drive sitting in packaging for 2 months now...keep forgetting to format it...and MAN does it take a LONG time to format those darn things.

I bought it really just to have a backup of all my videos and pictures.

I think I have a bit over 10TB now...

I just hope they get the 3TB drives down to $99 by this summer with either USB3.0 or lightpeak.
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WanMan



Joined: 19 Mar 2006
Posts: 10270


Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2010 10:42 am    Post subject:

Hey guys, what is up with this WDC EARS and Advance Format. Seems that they are using 4KB sectors instead of 512-bytes. While I know for Vista w/SP and W7 will not have a problem with it, there comes a question as to XP, and also when using USB-interfacing solutions (enclosures, docking stations, etc.). I did not know this when I bought and WDC seems to be more than willing to not openly acknowledge this.
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Spanky Ham



Joined: 22 Mar 2006
Posts: 5643
Location: Comedy Central

Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2010 3:43 pm    Post subject:

I think it has been talked about for awhile. I know several review websites have been talking about it.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/advanced-format-4k-sector-size-hard-drive,2759.html

It is only an issue for me with my laptop. I don't care whether I run XP on the desktop or not.
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