2TB Drives Opinions

[Corpsecrank]

I would like to know what you think about 2TB HDDs.

Do you own one?

Is it to soon to start messing with such large capacity drives?

Should we wait for higher capacity more compatible SSDs?

And lastly what are the possible problems with them? Have you heard about problems yet?

I would like some opinions before I shell out a large sum of money to build a large RAID. Those drives aren't cheap and I need a few of them to do what I want so I am gathering info prior to making final decisions on a large storage solution.

 

[Antman]

To a certain degree, it depends on your RAID type. You need to read about bit error rate (BER) on large capacity volumes. You are a GFX guy - imagine your graphics with some pixelated nonsense sprinkled on the page.

I want to move to hi-cap drives for my RAID5 volumes, but I am sticking with 500GB for the foreseeable future. In the long run, I feel that additional controllers and housings (racks) will serve my long-term storage needs more securely than hi-cap drives will. I am even considering the purchase of cases of flash memory.

 

[swarfega]

Also so far I think ive only seen green (eco) drives?

 

[pparks1]

Eco drives though are likely fine when it comes to mass storage.

 

[Corpsecrank]

I see well this is helping. I want a large amount of storage with as few physical pieces of hardware as possible.

The biggest thing for me though is data integrity and loss prevention. This is why I asked about large capacity drives and how well they hold up.

I am just trying to do my homework and settle in on a good long term storage solution that I can feel secure about not losing data or needing to expand the space in for a while.

 

[Winphreak]

The problem with larger drives is, one scratch of the needle, and a lot will disappear. I have seen 1TB drives out long enough to agree they are stable to run, but I seemed to find disagreeing reviews on Newegg about most 2TB drives. When I bought my USB external, I got a 2x1TB instead.

I'm just wary of a 3.5" 2TB drive overall, unless you mirror it on another one. Even then, 5 years later, you might be cursing about everything if something goes wrong. A bad power down or just overall wear-and-tear might mean the end. And while the freezer trick works for so long, it'd be hard to pull 2TB of info off of it before the metal heats back up and expands again.

I know this is a personal opinion, but I just say that buyer beware. This might still be too "new" to know how well they last.

 

[Corpsecrank]

That's just the problem. They are new and I am not so sure I should trust all my data to these things just yet.