Tera Bit Drives

[David006]

Considering getting a Tera bit drive as a few friends have 'em with 100s of movies thereon and will transfer 'em for me...also would like to back up my ever slower laptop....

Anybody bought one or recommend which one to get...simpler the better methinks...friend says they are available for about 4-5 k baht in Phuket..

Thanks for any assistance/thoughts here.

cheers

dad

[lopburi3]

Acer 1tb drive is sold by Lotus for 3,590 baht. Would be a bit less in discount computer shop. Runs cool on own power supply using USB for data. Have bought three of them during the last year and working fine. I did reformat to NTFS and don't use the build-in software. This is not a laptop (usb powered) model and is the normal (small) 3.5" external case size.

[seedy]

Have used the Seagate drives for a while now. Simple plug-and-play via USB. No problems so far.

[Nio]

Western Digital My Book

They are about the size of a fat paperback book

I have (3)

One I can carry all work data around with me with only a netbook if required

The other is all movies and PSP game

Third is backing up home PC

There were 4,000 baht purchased at IT City at Fashion Island Mall

[guava]

It may be best to avoid a couple of the new Western Digital models that came out recently unless you know your stuff. As far as I know this only applies (so far) to the Western Digital Caviar Green Green drives 1.0TB or greater with model numbers ending in EARS (64MB cache, 4K sectors). This doesn't apply to models ending in EADS (32MB cache, 512 byte sectors).

The issue is described (and somewhat glossed over) by Western Digital here

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/advancedformat/

Other articles here

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3691

and here

http://blog.fosketts.net/2009/12/23/drobo-...-format-drives/

Basically Western Digital are the first to use a larger 4K sector size which is a good thing long term, but for now is creating some offset hassles for people with older machines/operating systems, including XP. Quite likely other platforms and hardware, possibly RAID devices, gaming consoles, hard disk media players, external drive setups etc, may experience issues as well.

The drives to look out for are:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=773

WD20EARS - 2.0TB, 64MB cache

WD15EARS - 1.5TB, 64MB cache

WD10EARS - 1.0TB, 64MB cache

The following models in the WD Caviar Green range will not have this issue:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=576

WD20EADS - 2.0TB, 32MB cache

WD15EADS - 1.5TB, 32MB cache

WD10EADS - 1.0TB, 32MB cache

I think retailers will not be getting more of these models in stock though.

AFAIK all other drives from WD, all drives from other manufactures, and any external USB/eSATA drives should be fine. For now... But do some research before buying anything.

IMHO, the Caviar Green series are excellent drives (lower power consumption, lower heat, and probably better reliability than many), suitable for all but extreme power users and servers. I've had far better luck with WD drives over the years than with any of the numerous Seagate, IBM, Maxtor, Quantum, Hitachi, Samsung drives that have died on me long before they were due to meet their MTBF maker.

And the new advanced format drives are probably a good choice provided you're sure you won't run into compatibility issues, and understand what is required to partition/format/align them to work with XP etc.

I know all this because I did everything wrong - in absolute ignorance that the WD15EARS I bought last month was any different to the 20 previous drives I've bought. No warnings on the drive, no box, no instructions, no jumpers. I merrily cloned an XP partition directly onto the new drive - and soon after began a week of frustration, misery, and lost productivity until I discovered the cause of the miserable performance, crashes etc.

[Beggar]

If you buy a Seagate 1 TB (about Baht 2800) + an external enclosure IDE/SATA to USB2 with fan (about Baht 800) you can have it for about 3600 Baht (this in Pattaya).

I have 6 1 TB Seagate and I am happy with them. I have 3 enclosures Oker and they are okay for this money. They have a fan and the PSU inside. So if you switch them off then they are really taken from the power what might be important here in Asia. They might not hold forever - so far 1 out of 4 died.

But I have an enclosure AGESTAR IDE/SATA to USB, Firewire and eSATA. It never worked - has been for RMA 3 times already so I never could really use it. So far I paid for it about Baht 1600

But in any case - do not expect the USB2 interface to be that fast. It will limit the speed of any drive to the speed of the USB2 interface. But for backups no problem. Might have the speed of your notebook HD if it is an older one.

One more hint to Seagate. Avoid 7200.11 and take 7200.12 instead. They had severe problems with the 7200.11.

Edited February 2, 2010 by Beggar

[David006]

Thanks for the info guys.... impressive amount of knowledge out there.

Thanks again

regards

david

[nikster]

I find the all-in-one enclosures are better quality than the separate cheapo enclosures you can buy.

So I'd recommend a WD all in one, like the MyBook. Seagate should do the same thing. I like the WD MyBook though because of it's no-nonsense design. Not too bright LED (I don't need to light up the room at night, thanks), square, with good ventilation. I have an old 300GB one, never let me down, now getting a new one soon. 1TB or 1.5TB. Sweet spot for HD price seems to be 1.5TB right now, e.g. lowest price per GB.