whats your preference for a secondary hardrive (external/internal)?

i am more onto the external side but not sure of any particular brand names or what particular info i should be looking at closely. Such as if i can get a 1TB at the same price and quality as a 500MB, is it good to go or too big?

general info on hardrives is good, just looking for opinions

9/17/2009 12:45:24 PM

i just bought this Fantom 1TB external to back up my WD 1TB internal for my media server and also just got a WD 750GB internal for my development machine

9/17/2009 12:56:10 PM

these days, i don't see any reason NOT to go external...NOTHING you could use it for (except running programs, including OSes) will be hindered by the fact that it's external, regardless of whether you're using firewire, usb or esata (though this might as well be internal since that's how the system sees it)

my pick continue to be the fantom all-aluminum fanless external...it's got USB 2.0, esata, a 2-year warranty, and a western digital "green" drive in it, all for $80AR: http://www.buy.com/prod/fantom-greendrive-1tb-usb-2-0-and-esata-external-hard-drive-2-year/q/loc/101/208503758.html

do note, however, that the WD drive that's in there isn't listed on WD's website...it's of their green line, but it comes with an 8mb cache and not a 16-32mb cache like almost all other bare drives (i use two of these myself, so i can say from experience that it shouldn't matter one bit...throughput values are high enough that the difference in cache size shouldn't matter UNLESS you're running programs from the drive, which you're not)

9/17/2009 12:58:30 PM

WD all the way

what was wrong with your other thread? /message_topic.aspx?topic=576539

9/17/2009 12:58:45 PM

just picked up this deal today

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=1562361

9/17/2009 1:23:24 PM

yea i would just store files and whatnot on the external

all i have right now is a 152 GB internal

I was wondering if WD is good but yea, i think im gonna get a 1TB WD
only thing i was wondering about was whats eSATA, FireWire, Solid State Storage.

9/17/2009 1:28:41 PM

^ eSATA is "external SATA" where SATA is the most recent common interface for hard drives...essentially, you plug a SATA cable into your motherboard and the other end is a bracket that looks almost the same, but has a slightly different form...when you connect your external via this connection, your computer sees the hard drive as being internally connected and using the fastest interface possible (SATA is 3gb/s, USB is 480mb/s, and firewire is either 400 or 800mb/s...actual throughput is much less)

firewire is its own connection type and comes in a couple of different flavors...it's especially useful for A/V...think of it simply as an alternative to USB (it has its advantages and disadvantages, but for your purposes, they're the same)...it's possible you don't have any firewire ports on your computer, but you definitely have USB

SSD is a hard drive that is made up of flash memory (like the memory in your computer, or the memory in a flash drive/thumb drive/USB stick/whatever you want to call it)...they're expensive and limited in capacity, but they're as fast as most traditional hard drives (sometimes faster) and use much much less power and generate less heat since they have no moving parts

[Edited on September 17, 2009 at 1:47 PM. Reason : .]

9/17/2009 1:41:08 PM

gotcha thanks

hey is it better to just upgrade to one video card or bridge two weaker ones. i have that 8800 gt and just wondering if it be better to get another 8800 gt or if i can bridge a 9800 to it. or just get one nice one. plus some of them say they are ddr3 memory on the cards and my mother board is a ddr2. it only matters that the mother board and video card are both pci express, right?

[Edited on September 17, 2009 at 2:41 PM. Reason : .]

9/17/2009 2:30:24 PM

^ depends on what you're doing...in all likelihood, you're better off to just stick with a single card (in any case, your motherboard will only support ATI's crossfire or nvidia's SLI and you'd need to check)...also, some motherboards only have one PCI x16 slot and/or don't support either of the dual-card options)

additionally, and i'm no expert in this, but i don't think you can bridge two different cards (i could be wrong...i've just never heard of anyone doing it since it seems like it's asking for trouble)

the DDR3 you're seeing is actually GDDR3 (graphics DDR) and has nothing to do with your motherboard...some of the nicer cards have DDR5, though most of the decent lower-end cards are only DDR3 (as you've noticed)

[Edited on September 17, 2009 at 3:12 PM. Reason : .]

9/17/2009 3:12:07 PM

yea, i know my mother board does allow for the bridging and has a number of pcie x 16 slots.

ive seen some cards though say pcie 2.0x16. so i got confused by that

really just figured i might as well get a new upgrade and do the single card but how to go from a 88 gt id probably hit up the nvidia 200s

9/17/2009 3:39:49 PM

the "2.0x16" bit refers to the pcie 2.0 spec

9/17/2009 3:43:00 PM

roger

9/17/2009 3:51:56 PM

Anyone have an old external usb hard drive they wanna sell me for cheap? Don't need anything more than 100 gb.

9/17/2009 4:32:23 PM

here's a 1tb SSD with a PCIe interface...i'm thinking about getting a couple

http://www.amazon.com/OCZ-Technology-OCZSSDPCIE-1ZDRV1T-Z-Drive-PCI-Express/dp/B00284ABEQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1253565860&sr=1-1

9/21/2009 4:44:46 PM

Quote :

"You Save: $10.00"

9/21/2009 4:54:21 PM

hardrives

9/21/2009 8:09:13 PM

^^ don't forget:

Quote :

"this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping."

9/21/2009 9:46:55 PM

If you had $3k to spend on a rig, would this not be the first thing you bought? The price is justified for what it is.

I'm running two OCZ SSD's in Raid 0 and its pretty god damn amazing. I cannot recommend SSD's enough. The best way to improve performance of any PC.

[Edited on September 21, 2009 at 10:33 PM. Reason : 0]

9/21/2009 10:32:36 PM

No, it wouldn't, because I'd already be in the hole after buying it

9/22/2009 2:36:47 AM

Western Digital Caviar Green WD15EADS 1.5TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

$99 w/ free shipping

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136351

[Edited on October 8, 2009 at 1:15 PM. Reason : it's only 5400 rpm, but still, good deal for a mostly data storage drive]

10/8/2009 1:13:15 PM

quick question, is it advisable for me to run my OS/system off an external drive via eSATA? i'm planning on getting the Rosewill silver enclosure for it (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817173043), just wanting to see what your thoughts were.

10/9/2009 6:06:02 PM

300GB WD Velociraptor (primary) 10k rpm for OS,Programs,Games
320GB WD Blue (secondary/internal) for storage
320GB WD Blue (secondary/external) for mirror backup of internal

Backup/Restore/Media:
2TB WHS (various HDD's using drive extender)

10/9/2009 6:40:41 PM

any opinions on apples time capsule?

at this point i only have around 150-200gb of things to store, the time capsule only comes in 1 & 2tb so its definitely more than i need but if i think longer term, it would get me through my current laptop (which i think i have at least 2.5-3 more years on, if not more), a new laptop and my boyfriends stuff. he stores all his music on my laptop and syncs his ipods through it. also we'd be able to take more high res pics with his digital slr if there was more storage available (currently not an option as i only have 100gb drive which is full and i have a backlog of things that need backing up)

i like the wireless, effortless aspect of the time capsule. auto back up without having to worry about it. i've lost everything to a hd in the past so i feel like i'm pretty vigilant with back up, but i do tend to only do it every 4-6 months

i'm willing to put the $299 down for it but when i searched online for reviews, a lot of people said theirs died after 18 months and that def scared me off a little bit

anyone use time capsule? anyone love it? hate it? is it too much for a noob like me? are there other options for wireless, automatic back up?

10/10/2009 12:36:00 PM

^ i like mine a WHOLE LOT. by far the easiest wireless device i've ever set up, and having the hard-drive on board is great for backups and everyday filesharing. but, like with any other hard drive, it's good to keep a copy of your data in more than one place.

10/10/2009 12:39:54 PM

i just thought about this and havent checked yet.. do they have time capsules on refurb? is it stupid to by a refurb hd? i know they used to make smaller time capsules, i dont know if i'd ever get close to 1tb of storage space. i would def be interested in a lower price than $299. thoughts?

10/10/2009 1:00:09 PM

For my desktop its got a 250GB raid1 plus a 150gb for all my Vms. I recently moved 2 externals of various sizes (150 and 250 i think) to a 1tB internal for backups of everything. serious things get backed up to the externals irregularly.

10/11/2009 5:05:32 PM

Quote :

"Western Digital Caviar Green WD15EADS 1.5TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive "

piece of shit just died on me

3/21/2011 10:20:46 PM

BURN IT

3/21/2011 10:24:20 PM

I've got a windows home server I've just kept adding drives to. got about 5 TB of storage space on there from a mishmash of old drives. Its nice cause everything is autmatically replicated and the storage pooling makes everything appear contiguous.

Unfortunately the next version of the software killed this off making it basically useless.

3/21/2011 10:36:47 PM

so is it

"har drives"

or

"hard rives"

lol the latter sounds like Engrish

3/21/2011 11:12:04 PM

Quote :

"two OCZ SSD's in Raid 0"

Which model? I'd be curious how that stands up to a 4 or 5 drive 10K RAID5. You'd probably mow down seek time, but transfer would be an interesting shootout.

3/21/2011 11:55:02 PM

what's everybody's experience with SSDs these days? I've been using one in my laptop for about 9 months and I've loved it since day 1 it's wicked fast. then I read this on codinghorror the other day and now i'm paranoid my drive is gonna flip its shit out of nowhere any day now anybody had one fail?

5/8/2011 10:04:25 PM

I've only had mine for a few months, but it's going strong.

The nicest thing about them is that if you're really concerned, you could very easily image the tiny SSD nightly/weekly/whenever to the larger storage drive you undoubtedly have.

Of course, if you've just got a laptop with one drive slot, that may complicate things, but I'm sure a 3am nightly backup isn't out of the question every so often.

[Fake edit: OR USE THE CLOUD!!!!1]

5/8/2011 10:26:49 PM

Quote :

"SSD is a hard drive that is made up of flash memory (like the memory in your computer, or the memory in a flash drive/thumb drive/USB stick/whatever you want to call it)...they're expensive and limited in capacity, but they're as fast as most traditional hard drives (sometimes faster) and use much much less power and generate less heat since they have no moving parts"

As fast? Come on now buddy, they're wayyyy faster. If you seek out the latest controllers, their read/write rates are faster than conventional hard drive, but much more importantly, the access times are out of this world compared to conventional drives. And believe me, the near 0ms access time plays a larger role than then the read/write times, which may be lower for lower class SSDs (read: nearing $1 per GB and dropping), but it's near meaningless compared to the access time difference.

For most desktop computers, it makes perfect sense to get an SSD for the OS/programs, and slower conventional hard drives for storage. You can get a 60GB Vertex 2 SSD (or maybe theres some newer shit out) for 100 dollar bucks. Theres no reason not to...

Hell even for a laptop, run a 60-80GB SSD as the sole drive, then use an old desktop/NAS for the bulk storage. I'm running XP on my main laptop and with an SSD and the boot times are way better (but W7 is even faster).


[Edited on May 8, 2011 at 10:45 PM. Reason : ssd ftw]

5/8/2011 10:39:49 PM

never had one fail - ran one for 2 years in my dell e4200 laptop as my only drive and never had an issue

i'm running one in my macbook pro as my primary drive and i've installed a 500gb drive in the superdrive bay for storage

in both cases the speed i think is noticeably faster than other similar laptops running a regular hdd - i've never had any issues

5/9/2011 12:33:17 AM

Quote :

"As fast? Come on now buddy, they're wayyyy faster. If you seek out the latest controllers, their read/write rates are faster than conventional hard drive, but much more importantly, the access times are out of this world compared to conventional drives. And believe me, the near 0ms access time plays a larger role than then the read/write times, which may be lower for lower class SSDs (read: nearing $1 per GB and dropping), but it's near meaningless compared to the access time difference."

you realize i wrote that almost 2 years ago, right? and they were much less impressive 2 years ago, especially given their ridiculous price point and lack of TRIM...the affordable ones were not that impressive

[Edited on May 9, 2011 at 7:41 AM. Reason : .]

5/9/2011 7:41:05 AM

Quote :

"you realize i wrote that almost 2 years ago, right?"

Naw my bad, didn't notice qntmoverlord bumped a 1.5 y/o thread . I assumed it was a new one...

5/9/2011 10:50:30 AM

It was my impression that a "Hard Drive" was a "HDD" aka. Hard Disk Drive versus a "Solid-State Disk" or "SSD". They are not the same. I know it's just semantics, but let's get it straight.

5/9/2011 11:30:48 AM