Huge Hard Drive?

[geoffphuket]

I recently up graded my ancient laptop's hardrive from 10GB to 80. (Don't laugh)

Now, I only use this PC for storing a few photos, downloading the odd movie, mp3, saving e-mail's etc and for me, this is a bottomless pit of storage. It seems however the push is for bigger and bigger drives, but what happens when these fail - the larger the drive the more necessary it is to have a back up of the same capacity, I just back up to cdr's.

What I'm rambling on for here, is to find out what the average home user stores on their gigantic drive....hundreds of movies?

[astral]

I have notebook with a 80Gb drive and a 300Gb external for backup.

What is on there:

Periodic backups of data

Photos. It is amazing how the digital photos buildup, especially if you use the high definition RAW format .

Video.

All the programmes I need to rebuild my system. No need to go hunting for all the cd's. I carry a DVD copy of these with me when I am on the road as an emergency pack.

[Tywais]

I have two 300GB internal SATAII drives and two 250GB external USB drives for 1.1 Terabytes of storage. Internal drives for my primary applications, picture files, programming and engineering applications, games, music and some videos. External drives for backup, primary videos (shared locally on a wireless network feeding my media PC upstairs). My crucial data and document files are in four locations. My internal drive, external backup drive, work computer and work backup drive. Can't afford to lose 14 years of work you know.

[Insight]

One 200GB drive almost completely full lossless audio and lots and lots of British telly from UKNova.

I'd ditch UBC if it wasn't for the news and Discovery/National Geo.

[geoffphuket]

I have two 300GB internal SATAII drives and two 250GB external USB drives for 1.1 Terabytes of storage. Internal drives for my primary applications, picture files, programming and engineering applications, games, music and some videos. External drives for backup, primary videos (shared locally on a wireless network feeding my media PC upstairs). My crucial data and document files are in four locations. My internal drive, external backup drive, work computer and work backup drive. Can't afford to lose 14 years of work you know.

Hmmm....this is what I was getting at. One Terabyte being enough for 14 years work. Obviously the PC won't be around by then, not as we know it anyway, so all this stored data has to be transfered to the gizmo of the day...and its backup

[britmaveric]

Photos, Videos, Movies, Music and Software on 320GB drive.

[Tywais]

Hmmm....this is what I was getting at. One Terabyte being enough for 14 years work. Obviously the PC won't be around by then, not as we know it anyway, so all this stored data has to be transfered to the gizmo of the day...and its backup

Certainly media technology will change again. I remember when I used to back up my data on audio tapes. Showing my age now.

[thaiflyer1]

First computer 2 drives 40Gb it came with and 120Gb i added to it, this com used for connection to net and downloading .

Second computer 2 drives 250Gb each use this one as a music server and for rendering video............currently 300Gb of music on it (All backed up on disc)

[monty]

4 Western digital 320Gb sata drives (300Gb formatted or a total of 1.2 terrabyte)

Around 350Gb is music in MP3 (mostly 192 kbps or higher for reasonable quality) and the rest is my complete DVD collection in uncompressed MPEG2 format ( I mean no extra compression when transferring the DVD conetnts to my hard drives, obviously MPEG2 is already a compressed format!)

[Jockstar]

I need more space. Currently got a 160Gig HD. But not really enough. I play games and like downloading stufff. Add to that a camcorder and what i record on that and you soon realise its just not enough.

[Khun Jean]

I use mine 300 Gb mainly for copies of mini-DV from my camcorder. I am still not satisfied with the quality when i compress it to Divx or MPEG2 or WMA. For easy editing i have a second disc and it is also easy for playback. I wished i had a DV-In camcorder than i would be able to put it back on tape, but until that this is fro me the right solution at th moment.

[geoffphuket]

I need more space. Currently got a 160Gig HD. But not really enough. I play games and like downloading stufff. Add to that a camcorder and what i record on that and you soon realise its just not enough.

Hadn't thought about camcorder use. I guess that would eat free space. Games don't really interest me, I get seriously board after reaching a level I can't get past.

Good replies from everyone. Looks as if video and mp3 are filling your hard drives....so it looks as if my 80Gb isn't going to be enough

[britmaveric]

Wait till Terabyte comes out - that should satisfy me for a lil while.

[Charma]

First PC had 120 meg! (not counting the commodore 64 I had before that!)

Currently have around 4 terabytes on external networked drives. These are in a raid setup for extra backup protection and are filling up nicely with video. I do a lot of video editing and one project can eat a few hundred gigs!

[geoffphuket]

Just another thought on this subject....does anyone ever look at stuff they've saved from years ago? Tywais mentioned he'd got 14 years of work stored on his, so I can understand his situation, but my original question was aimed at home users.

I tend to watch or listen to what I've downloaded a couple of times then delete it to make way for something new. OK, some music and personal photos are kept, but who seriously wants to keep watching or listening to the same thing over and over again? I'm sure that most hard drives by the time they fail, are full to the brim with stuff nobody ever looked at....and we're being persuaded to buy bigger and bigger ones all the time.

Am I right or wrong ?

[Firefoxx]

I have 8 internal harddrives in my own PC, for a total of 1.5 Terabytes (and they're all full, need more). It's that way since the most economical drive is the 250GB drive. Mostly video editing files, but I've recently started downloading HD movies. Also have another 400GB in external drives, and perhaps another terbyte or two on other computers. I tend to keep a copy of everything in the drives, since it's not that expensive any more. It's my personal home PC, and only a small portion of the files are work-related.

First experience with computers was a Texas Instruments at the mall... then Apple II's... first home PC was of course, the PC XT, with 10 megabytes of HDD space.

Anything remotely important is archived on CDs/DVDs as well as stored on hard drives. New material is constantly being produced, so old material is usually only taken out for reminiscing... but sometimes you find some memorable gems in the archives.

Edited July 28, 2006 by Firefoxx

[Charma]

Just another thought on this subject....does anyone ever look at stuff they've saved from years ago? Tywais mentioned he'd got 14 years of work stored on his, so I can understand his situation, but my original question was aimed at home users.

I tend to watch or listen to what I've downloaded a couple of times then delete it to make way for something new. OK, some music and personal photos are kept, but who seriously wants to keep watching or listening to the same thing over and over again? I'm sure that most hard drives by the time they fail, are full to the brim with stuff nobody ever looked at....and we're being persuaded to buy bigger and bigger ones all the time.

Am I right or wrong ?

I read recently that historians are concerned that, as more of us now store our video, photographs, letters etc electronically, that much historical information will be lost to future generations. As you point out, most people do not convert all this stuff to hard copy for storage and eventually it gets lost/corrupted/deleted. I could never contemplate producing hard copies of all this stuff. We also don't even know how optical storage will last (probably not hundreds of years).

I think hard drives will just keep getting bigger because the media just keeps growing - higher definition photos and movies need even bigger storage. Roll on the new storage solutions that are being worked at the moment that will do away with spinning discs!

[Niloc]

I am also a software developer, I started in 1986 with a Color(!) Computer and I have kept virtually every line of code I have ever written at home, its now 6170 files, 670MB.

I don't care for music or video but I do have digital photos I store in my home made photo archiver, with all the software my 80gig drive has 69gig free.

My first storage was cassette tape, my first hard drive was a five megabyte full height which must have weighed two kilograms, later came 10Meg, 20,40,120 and then Whoopeee! A whole Gigabyte on a single drive!! I remember paying $7.00 for a single 1.2 meg floppy (not those pissy 1.44 little plastic boxes, proper FLOPPY DISCS!)

Writable CD's also caused a revolution, before them the only way to back up was either lots and lots of floppies or a tape streamer, I thought of video tape as a backup medium but never got around to it.

I am finding the discussion on operating systems interesting, I reckon we should all go back to CPM!!

[Jockstar]

I tend to watch or listen to what I've downloaded a couple of times then delete it to make way for something new. OK, some music

I have over 20 gigs of music on my PC and i would never dream of deleting any.

[z21rhd]

Just another thought on this subject....does anyone ever look at stuff they've saved from years ago? Tywais mentioned he'd got 14 years of work stored on his, so I can understand his situation, but my original question was aimed at home users.

I tend to watch or listen to what I've downloaded a couple of times then delete it to make way for something new. OK, some music and personal photos are kept, but who seriously wants to keep watching or listening to the same thing over and over again? I'm sure that most hard drives by the time they fail, are full to the brim with stuff nobody ever looked at....and we're being persuaded to buy bigger and bigger ones all the time.

Am I right or wrong ?

Spot on Right ! for average home use 1 x 80 GB internal hard drive for op sys and working programmes. External hard drives (4 x 80GB better than 1 x 320GB )

As a scientist I continually back up data to cd's.

[geoffphuket]

Ahh....at last someone agrees with me

[Charma]

I am also a software developer, I started in 1986 with a Color(!) Computer and I have kept virtually every line of code I have ever written at home, its now 6170 files, 670MB.

I don't care for music or video but I do have digital photos I store in my home made photo archiver, with all the software my 80gig drive has 69gig free.

My first storage was cassette tape, my first hard drive was a five megabyte full height which must have weighed two kilograms, later came 10Meg, 20,40,120 and then Whoopeee! A whole Gigabyte on a single drive!! I remember paying $7.00 for a single 1.2 meg floppy (not those pissy 1.44 little plastic boxes, proper FLOPPY DISCS!)

Writable CD's also caused a revolution, before them the only way to back up was either lots and lots of floppies or a tape streamer, I thought of video tape as a backup medium but never got around to it.

I am finding the discussion on operating systems interesting, I reckon we should all go back to CPM!!

I remember loading up programs from a cassette on my commodore. Then got a floppy drive - it was a massive thing but thought at the time that it was the bees knees. We are so free and careless with memory now and I think better for it! The things you used to do to get the most out of RAM was ridiculous! I seem to remember it was all about getting the first 64k right.

[geoffphuket]

My first computer was home made from one of Clive Sinclair's kits - the good old ZX81. This was back in my youth days whilst I was studying electronics....I was amazed when I plugged it in and it worked first time! From there the natural progression was to a Spectrum with its massive 16K of ram and, wait for it, colour! Atari 800 was next, soon followed by a 1040STE - with a real synthesizer built in. Now I could make sounds other than just plain old bleeps. Then I saw the light and followed all the other 'sheep' and bought a PC, a 486SX25 with 2Mb Ram and a 170MB hard drive (double spaced to 340!). I thought I'd never need anything more. How wrong I was.

So here I am now, tapping away on my 1.1 Celeron laptop, 256Mb ram, 80Gb HD and reading all the excellent replies.... but still can't help wondering where its all going. Surely by now we've got all we need in the way of speed and storage haven't we?.....well obviously not judging by your comments!

Edited July 29, 2006 by geoffphuket

[Jockstar]

Hey Firefox. How much roughly for a 250GB hard drive?

[Tywais]

How much roughly for a 250GB hard drive?

~3600.00 for 250GB IDE drive with 16MB buffer

~4500.00 for 300GB IDE drive with 16MB buffer

~2800.00 for 160GB IDE drive with 8MB buffer

a couple hundred baht more for SATA versions of the same size drives.

Edited July 30, 2006 by tywais

[bonsaimax]

~3600.00 for 250GB IDE drive with 16MB buffer

~4500.00 for 300GB IDE drive with 16MB buffer

~2800.00 for 160GB IDE drive with 8MB buffer

a couple hundred baht more for SATA versions of the same size drives.

What advantages would the SATA have over IDE aside from speed and the much slimmer cable? I've had two HDDs fail on me (both 1-yr old SATAs) and am wary of buying another one. Back to IDE for the mean time, but I know I'll be needing more storage soon anyway.

[Firefoxx]

SATA drives aren't any more or less reliable than their PATA counterparts. Their mechanics are the same, just the electronics board is different. You were probably just unlucky. I personally wouldn't buy anything but SATA from now on.

Advantages of SATA:

Faster bus

Slimmer cables

Easier to install (no jumpers)

Each has its own port

Can be multiplexed

Has support for better multitasking

Can be hot-swapped (if done correctly)

Has direct support for external connections

[Tywais]

SATA drives aren't any more or less reliable than their PATA counterparts. Their mechanics are the same, just the electronics board is different. You were probably just unlucky. I personally wouldn't buy anything but SATA from now on.

Advantages of SATA:

Faster bus

Slimmer cables

Easier to install (no jumpers)

Each has its own port

Can be multiplexed

Has support for better multitasking

Can be hot-swapped (if done correctly)

Has direct support for external connections

To expand a little on Firefoxx's comments and also to confirm that your reliability problem was probably just bad luck because the mechanics of the two types are the same.

Slimmer cables - means easier installation/swapping and better case cooling due to less obstruction of air flow.

Another issue is that PATA drives will probably be phased out and SATA will be the predominiant drives and prices will drop while PATA drive prices will probably increase due to availibility. In other words if you need to buy a new drive now and your mainboard supports SATA it would be better to get the SATA (future proofing). You can already see this effect at many sites where there are fewer PATA choices now and more SATA choices.