Comments on: Angling for Terabytes: Unprecedented Deals on Storage

By: Data Storage Continues to Grow

Data Storage Continues to Grow — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 16:14:44 +0000

[...] for about $400. Incredible. I’ve always thought that was a lot, but according to Web Worker Daily, Microsoft Research says that is enough storage to archive audio of every conversation you have in [...]

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 06:27:55 +0000

I like the Western Digital Passport external drives. I wrote a post about them recently. The WD Sync software on these drives is very user-friendly and effective.

By: Brian Carnell

Brian Carnell — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 19:15:36 +0000

“Do you have any storage tips?”

Yes, buy two and use the second one to back up the first.

As HD capacities increase, backing them up is a real challenge if you are using a significant portion of that HD, especially since other storage technologies are not keeping up with the size/price ratio (for example, writeable optical media is starting to look smaller and smaller in the case of writable DVD, or outrageously expensive as in writable HD-DVD/Blu-Ray).

By: Brian Carnell

Brian Carnell — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 19:10:40 +0000

Sean Fenney wrote:

“Wal-mart is selling a 500GB WD external drive for $149.98 both in my local store and on walmart.com. Not sure why you chose the more expensive Iomega drive to feature in your post”

The HD featured in the post is a *networked* drive. Plug it in to your router/switch and it is accessible from other computers on your network.

An external drive without the networking feature is always going to be cheaper at the moment.

By: jeremy

jeremy — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 16:11:12 +0000

Is it me or do the programs get larger as the price of drives goes down? I installed the adobe cs3 programs the other day and realized my dream of an ultra fast 128gig solid state drive just is not a reality as adobe took a quarter of my hard drive (25gigs). Soon I’ll need a terabyte just to be able to use after effects, and maya on the same machine.

By: Sean Feeney

Sean Feeney — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:01:03 +0000

Wal-mart is selling a 500GB WD external drive for $149.98 both in my local store and on walmart.com. Not sure why you chose the more expensive Iomega drive to feature in your post :-)

By: chris

chris — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:18:53 +0000

I just recently picked up two external USB/Firewire (yes, both) Seagate Freeagent Pro’s at 500 gigs each for 149$ .. thats a terabyte for 300 bucks..

hell i remember when harddrives were 10$/meg. /end “back in my day” rant.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 04:27:02 +0000

I found a MyBook Pro Edition with Firewire 800 which I really wanted. BestBuy had them for $170 and they only had one in stock. I thought that was a good price. I have 2 older hard drive enclosures with only 150 GB in them. I went out and picked up 2 PATA drives 500 GB each to replace them. They were on sale at circuitcity for $109 so I went to BestBuy (going there anyway) and they gave me that sale price plus 10% off of the difference which is only $4 each. So I have 1.5 TB for $380.

I went with 500 GB because in my experience, the larger the drive the more time it takes to take care of them. When I have to do maintenance on a drive – the larger it is the longer it takes. On the other hand, I don’t want to have more outlets filled around here than I have to. this is good for now.

Also, the connections are very important. I think Macs or today’s hard drives don’t handle eSATA too well yet? Read MacWorld from May. It shows real world speeds with each connection type. USB 2 is slower than Firewire 800 but you can connect the USB up to an Airport Extreme and share the drive with another computer.

As for me. I’m a happy camper with my 1.5 TB.

By: Serrin

Serrin — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 02:32:09 +0000

Well.. I have a first-gen Macbook with a 60 GB main drive… two partitions are not an option; if I so much as dual-boot Vista, I’m completely out of space.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 00:32:10 +0000

My tip is to partition your main HDD into two partitions, one for the OS, the other for data. That way, when you reformat the C: drive and reinstall your OS, your data remains unaffected and you don't need to waste time transferring files over USB or FireWire. HOWTO: Never Lose Personal Data When Reinstalling Your OS