WD's 3TB Internal HD

I'm a die hard WD HDD fan. It's the only brand of HDD I've never had fail on me. I've been running them since like, well I remember having a 320meg WD HDDs and so on right up to my current config which is two 74 GB WD Raptors HDDs in RAID for speed for my OS drive and then two WD 1.5 TB SATA drives not RAID for storage which are pretty much full.

Just picked up a WD 2 TB SATA HDD. All this used HDD storage has me worried about data loss. I mean, what would I do if I lost all 10 seasons of Stargate SG-1 and my complete X-Files collection!

I think I'm going to setup my 1.5 TBs to be mirrored RAID for storage/backup purposes and use my 2TB for my not so important stuff when I get my new PC built this week.

With these new HDDs being so big it almost makes sense to buy them in two's or three's for some type of RAID to prevent data loss. Man, 2 or 3 TB would be a LOT of stuff to lose if something goes wrong.

brianzion said:

i think the reason the big disks run slower is because they contain more platters

Hi there
Not necessarily true -- more platters -- more access arms etc etc. Depends on what you mean by "Run slower".

Data access slower or physical speed in RPM is slower. The Bus connection also is significant -- SATA, e-sata, IDE etc etc.

If the "Caching" size is large enough and the "Pre-fetching" algorithm decently accurate - this is an algorithm that gets "predicted" data from the HDD based on statistics the OS gathers while you are logged on - then technically the disc could rotate at 1 RPM per minute and still serve data quicker than a disc rotating at 10,000 RPM with poor caching and a useless pre fetch algorithm --an extreme case but there is a lot more in Disk access optimisation than just brute RPM speed.

In fact newer discs even at 6400 RPM deliver data much quicker than older discs such as 60 GB disks -- large a few year ago --having the same RPM speed.

As always in all things computing things are generally NOT as they seem to be.

Hi kdogg

You don't need 10 seasons of Stargate to be online all the time -- just get a couple of 500GB external USB disks - really CHEAP now and back the episodes up.

Keep two copies of backup (ALWAYS have 2 copies of ANYTHING backed up in case one fails) and then you can free your primary disk space on your computer.

Incidentally you don't need super fast access for watching a Stargate or any other DVD (even if copied to disc) so there isn't any need to keep the whole lot on line all the time. Just run from the external USB disc -- even a small netbook will do this just fine.

Cheers
jimbo


RAID doesn't prevent data loss if the disks fail. You STILL need decent backup.

Cheers
jimbo