Hi there!

Sorry if this has been discussed before, but I am seeking for answers regarding new models of HARD DISK drives. I need at least 5-10 TB of space but in my country 1 TB drives are very expensive with import taxes and that sort of thing, they cost at least 1000 $ bucks.

I need to know if there's something available in the market with at least 2 TB of space, because I need to store my entire collection and get rid of so many DVDs. Blu-Rays/HD-DVDs are out of question because I want to use them as a way of backup, not the real thing you are accessing/dealing every day.

If the answer is no (regarding HDDs larger than 1 TB), which drives are recommended? This moment I have two Samsung drives (one with 160 GB and other with 300 GB), and they have not let me down until today. So, correct me if I am wrong, this is the best company along with Seagate, and the chances of you receiving a HDD and having problems a few years later are high if you are not using a Samsung drive?

Someone is always complaining about Maxtor Hard drives, I don't know about the rest, I assume if they are as good as Samsung, they must not be silent, and make some noise. Mine are very quiet.

Thanks.

$234 US for 1 TB, that expensive in your country? ebay one, or if you have family in the US have them buy one and just send it to you. under 25 cents per GB is a good deal.

No single hard drive larger than 1TB (yet).

I hate Maxtor.

I am looking at 1TB drives myself and I am considering the WD Caviar RE2 GP WD1000FYPS. It is an enterprise class hard drive and sells for about $280 for the OEM version (i.e. bulk, not retail) in the US.

"Enterprise" class hard drives are generally the most expensive you can buy for a given size because they are meant for business servers where reliability is important.

I've got 3xWD GP retail drives from when they were released at best buy for 249, they are nearly silent, fast, and spacious. we should be seeing a break past 1 TB with the 320 GB per platter. 320x4 = 1280, but those drives will definitely cost a bit when they are released.

250 US$ is a lot of money.

Even if I was going to import these drives without paying any taxes, they will cost me at least 500-600 bucks using my money. About 50 cents/GB.

A simple DVD with 4 GB of space will cost me US$ 50 cents or less.

I can't understand why is taking so long to release Hard Disks breaking the barrier of 1 TB. 1 TB drives have in fact 930 GB, so if you consider this, we don't have any 1 TB drive yet.

Wait, I can figure this out. It's taking so long because a good technology will never be available when you must need it. That's why we need to change our processors/motherboards/etc. at least each 3/4 years. But nothing compares to hard disk drives. The most expensive things in the world.

The same applies to our internet speed. Some places pay a very high price to a lousy connection, because there's no competition between companies. And they don't want us to have so much power in our hands. To get rid of all disks.

And people are not used to store much data (in my case, lots of videos) on hard drives. And that's why I didn't change my P4 to any Dual Core/Quad yet. I will not make the same mistake again. What's the point of changing the whole hardware if I can't find any decent HDD? My both drives are worthless now.

It's funny, people find Blu-ray discs a good thing and didn't even realize we already have this amount of space years ago, on hard drives. Blu-rays are nothing but a major travesty, but no one sees it. A dated technology.

The same applies to 1 TB drives. If you spent 250 bucks today, tomorrow they are going to release a 2 TB drive for the same price. Who knows?

I am sick and tired of waiting. If we are going to wait so many years to have decent drives, why not make them less expensive?

The title of this topic has been edited by RCPilot

quick answer: money

company's could care less about what we pay for their products, all they really care about is a profit margin. but a happy customer is usually a repeat customer, thus why their always trying to please us with the latest and greatest.

prices will come down eventually, but by then there will something something bigger, faster, better, and higher priced to complain about.

...just my 2c

as for when the bigger hdd will be out, my guess will be Q3/Q4 of this year. its hard to say what company will get there first, but when they do just wait 2 weeks and 2/3 other companyies will have an equilant hdd

About my original idea, some considerations:

Regarding Blu-Ray/HD-DVDs:

I can see why people are so excited to explore this new technology, and everything related to high-definition. But am I the only one who believes those discs are a failure, when it comes to the space required to store all the data?

I was looking these days the specs from the Star Trek - First Season boxset. 8 DVDs have stored the first season. HD-DVDs, are using 10 double-sided discs.

Well, here comes the problem. Years ago, we already have hard-disk-drives capable of store much more data than a single HD-DVD or Blu-Ray (HDDs capable of store 100 GB when HD-DVDs/Blu-Rays were not even created), and if you think about that, we should have much more larger discs today. In the old days, prototypes were under consideration, but for some rea$on (??) they were dropped.

And years later, we are so happy about something that is nothing but a travesty.

I am really not happy with the idea of storing hundreds of discs. Even if everything is shinning, and if there's nothing left for me to buy. My collection have almost 1.000 DVDs. Not 1.000 editions, 1.000 discs. A TV show can have 45 discs, for example. A movie, 3 or 4 discs.

Why people keep buying movies, and TV shows splitted on several discs? I don't get it.

A long time ago, companies are promising super-discs and I can't see any device capable of store all my collection (all my 1.000 discs) at a good price. HDDs are the most expensive things if you plan to store videos and general multimedia contents. And the reason behind the idea of store anything on a single place (and keep the original discs as a backup) is that this is the most logical course of action.

That way, you may access all the data (and your collection) much more quickly. The same way you do to avoid inserting all your discs when you need to play a game.

You will be able to play and watch all your movies anytime, and using the resources of a computer (no doubt a computer will beat any Player in terms of options to manage your data). You may even reauthor those discs, or record your own things from TV and that way you will need to make new cases.

That last example is perfect to show how is pointless to keep making your house look like Blockbuster (and save money with packages). If we already have a place where everything is together we don't need to label 1.000 discs.

And to be honest, I don't like to deal with my own original discs, because I know they are very fragile and even the slighest thing can cause error when reading the data (exposed to the environment, people touching the discs, anything can damage them).

That's another reason I don't like to store discs! My hard-disk-drive is more reliable than my discs. Of course no one will rely on his own HDD as a way to backup the data. This is insane. But what are the chances of losing any data stored on HDDs compared to DVDs and High-Def. discs?

My 5 year-old hard-disk, running 24h/day have not let me down! However, in the last 5 years, I have experienced problems with recorded discs, even from my original collection.

In the end, that's what counts.

One more reason to threat them (DVDs and High-Def. discs) as a way of backup, not the real thing you should keep using, touching all the time and going anywhere with them.

If people have this need to admire packages (I don't have - what's inside it's more important to me), why these companies don't start to sell movies using the internet (for you to download the data) and the packages as well (to avoid buying the wrong Amaray cases when you want Digipacks), this could represent many good things such as the end of the limited copies (terrible "out of print" messages).

Something that is a major problem for many stores and should have been solved today. I am tired of surfing on websites like Amazon and seeing old products not available. That applies to movies, soundtracks, and even videogames.

A world where people can download and watch movies even in High-Definition on stream. Why not a single living soul is concerned about this and keep doing the same wrong things? Are we destined to buy the same worthless junks every generation?

Am I the only one seeing things from another perspective? I don't see what's so great about HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs.

And the same goes for HDDs. They can't release a 2 TB drive or they won't? It's a simple question. If they can release a 2 TB for 500 $ bucks, then do it!!! Right now. Why they have to wait years to do that?

Because some idiots like me are buying worse HDDs? Then stop selling those drives! For God sakes.

This thread makes me remember something that I regret even today.

Two decades ago, when I was recording things that were (and will never be) available again (or in a better way), I was forced to use the worst way of recording my VHS tapes, instead of the SP quality (2 hours). I knew the SP mode was better, but I didn't care.

I never realize that everything was going to vanish for good (another reason to make backups of anything you got, unless you have a way to access a free worldwide "movie library" with all your needs, and that way you don't need to collect anything.).

I was dumb that time and never realized that one day was going to regret my decision (since many things are not being showed anymore on TV), that was pure economic. That's right, VHS tapes were far more expensive than a single DVD-R. And recording things on SP was a bad choice mainly because of the risk of not have enough space. Some VCRs didn't have support to the LP (4 hours) format.

However, even in the old days we were used to record different things and programs on a single tape (if we were using the EP/6 hours quality). The diversity of things you were able to record on a single tape was a trademark of that time.

Now we don't have to record anything that is available for sell, packaged the way the companies want it. We might convert our old VHS tapes to DVD. But we can't buy new High-Def. recordable media yet, it's very expensive compared to Hard Disk drives and even DVD-R discs.

And we can't use our HDDs to store anything we have, they don't have enough space since we are already using to store many movies, musics and other stuff, even compressed, might be downloaded videos you're watching when you have time.

So, one problem is solved. No more lack of space to record something retaining the best image/sound quality (a huge issue those days). Even by using a capture card (instead of a DVD-recorder that retains some quality only if you use the same 2/2.5 hours on a single media/4.7 GB). However, we exchanged one problem for another.

But hey, what the hell!

Nevermind.

It's useless to keep fighting against something that was forced upon us in the past decades. Some things never change.

To understand why they arent breaking the 1TB barrier, you need to understand how HDs work. They have platters inside and they can only fit so much on one platter. Also you can only put so many platters in a case.

When platter density gets bigger, or they add more platters, HDs get larger in size. 1TB is a lot of data to be stored in one location with no redundancy.

Start investing in RAID with some 500's or 750's. I currently run 4x750GB drives in a RAID 5.

Save your money and take a trip to the US. Buy some hardware. UPS/Fedex it to yourself.

Good times.

I'll be honest with you. I don't feel like buying any HDD now. I was going to change my entire hardware (P4, 3 Ghz) to a Dual Core recent processor, in order to use a good capture card (Blackmagic Intensity Pro, using two HDDs and RAID 0), and to watch High-Def. videos (720P and specially 1080P can't be played on P4, they run slow).

But I will not do that unless some REAL HARD DISK is going to be released anytime soon. I will prefer to spent 1000 $ bucks on a new processor than 300 on a stupid Hard Drive.

I can't stand this anymore. In the past years I received reports that new technologies were arriving, larger drives and specially discs like this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holog [...] atile_Disc

But nothing was concret, they were just rumours. In my opinion, we should not buy anything anymore. Ever! Because, if tomorrow someone releases a 10 TB HDD by the same price a single 1 TB is charged today?

I am not being pessimist, I am being smart. I had enough of these companies and their tactics to steal my money. It's not about paying abusive taxes and because I don't have enough money. Not at all. If I want to, I can spend 3000 dollars from my personal account to buy anything I want. So, money is not the issue here.

What is making me sick is the idea of buying something that is wrong from the very beginning. Why would you buy some technology that you know is dated?

What's the difference between buying a expensive HDD for 300 $ and paying the same price for a Blu-Ray player? Can't you see? It's the same thing!

People don't need to store their entire collection of DVDs to need more than 1 TB.

No, thanks, they can continue doing this as long as they want to, but I am not a sucker anymore. If it's not possible to build a 2 TB drive, so be it. I expect to be there when it's possible.

it's all a conspiracy by the govt.!

damn you govt.

You're damn right it's a conspiracy.

And the govt. is the first one to blame, since they never make laws to defend the insterests of the people, only powerful companies. The names RIAA and Piratpartiet mean something to you?

About what we are discussing, I found this link, comparing some TB drives:

http://www.extremetech.com/article [...] 009,00.asp

It's interesting - they are saying the best choice should be the Samsung Spinpoint HD103UJ!!!!!!!!

And I was just saying here good things about the Samsung drives!!!!

What a coincidence!

The WD1000FYPS was also recommended on that test, but not as the best drive.

1000$ on a processor , or a TB hard drive, I thought countries stopped doing that , Where the hell are you from anyways ?

I mean , I'm from egypt , and we have our share of fairly stupid acts , some retailers still sell old P4 pcs when they had sd rams ffs , but I could think of so few countries that would do that to people.

In countries that aren't exactly the manifacturers, things tend to get a little overly expensive for the high end stuff , my guess is just to combine a few 500gbs or even 320s ... that is if they're featured at a fair price.

I'm not sure how it works in your country but here's how it works in mine:

I bought a 500Gbs WD HDD for 99$ yesterday << Cheap , however for a 1TB it would get more in the range of 310-320 $.

There's a 2TB mybook But I'm not sure it can be partitioned into 1 partition , costs 700$ though.

the E8400 is 180$ < Cheaper than the US , but you're gonna have to pay 1400$ to buy an extreme processor , which i still think is pointless

I bought an 8800GTX a little over 6 months ago for over 700$ as opposed to 540$ in the US at the time , the 8800GT is still a reasonable 250$ here though.

I'm guessing where you live is much worse , but your only way is scamming along the computer shops and malls for the low end stuff , the products that are released worldwide in almost the same week, they could be at a reasonable price and go raid. Sorry you have to live in ****

1000 $ on my local money on a processor like Core Duo or Pentium is not the real value, I was merely suggesting that was more easy to deal with it than paying the same price for a 1 TB drive. A 1$ dollar costs almost 2,00 $ here but the govt. charges you more than 60% from imported products, so, let's picture this situation:

A 1TB HD drive costs 250 bucks.

I am going to pay 500 $. Plus the shipment, that must be, at least 20-30 dollars.

560 $ on my money.

Then, you must add at least almost US$ 100 from import taxes, and the final price should be at least 800 $ here.

And you must also add a fee to the store which is going to sell this HDD. This is why a PS3 model is selled by 1000 $ or even more expensive here. A Core Duo E6550 processor is selled by almost 500 $.

Are you following me?

Right.

I will try to make this deal using eBay and making the seller send me as a gift, in order to avoid paying abusive taxes. But it's very risky to not receive this package, since this extorsion is still there.

And the comparison between a processor/motherboard and a HDD is perfect. A Core Duo processor can last years and you don't need to buy another. My P4 3 Ghz have almost 5 years old.

However, a single Hard Disk can't last so much longer, because doesn't have enough space to fill your needs and it's much more required every day.

And even if each 1 TB drive was selled for 20 bucks instead of 200, it's a bad idea to buy more than 2-3 drives. Where I am going to store them? I think that many drives are going to drain more resources from my computer, and not make my life easy.

I do have a question. If I have two different models (Seagate and WD for ex.), or the same company (WD) but different drives (500 and 1 TB) is it possible to use them on RAID 0?

I was not able to find the Seagate SpinPoint, only the WD10EACS, who by the way, have a low power usage (I don't know if I can trust this drive, looks like slower than it should be).

You do realize that Blu Ray discs, which you call a travesty, cost very very little to make and store a decent amount of data on them.

Hard Drives store much much more data but cost much more to manufacture.

Hard drives are much more convenient than blurays they're faster, bigger and you combine all your data on them. this idea of storage is simply senseless if you have thousands of GBs of data.

Sides, if you wanna tackle the whole senseless cost efficient per GB theory , then the smaller the more cost effective , a 1TB would cost 25c/GB ,a 500 GB hard disk would cost 100$ and so 20c per GB , . a bluray about 22-25c/GB , a dvd for 50 cents would be like 10c/GB , you can even buy a cd for 10 cents ( in a pack of course).

but blurays and dvds are simply not storage, they're platforms of autoplay. and in my opinion they even go bad more often than hard drives, they're slow , they're stupid , the rewritable ones are expensive ( at least the blurays are)

if i wanna store 1 TB of data, i wouldn't go play 200-250$ or whatever the cost is for 20 50 GB blurays might be, it'll be all over the place and not directly acessible, and I doubt blurays are any cheaper where my friend Sam lives up in the northpole.

As for raid0 with different hard drives , it's ok, as long as you have a backup , performance gain might be a little less than with 2 identicals , and drivers maybe at a greater risk of failing , but i'd still say go for it, just download the drivers for your mobo or controller.