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

By: Serrin

Serrin — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 00:11:27 +0000

I have just ordered a WD MyBook Premium 750 GB external hard drive this morning… only to find out, after completing the order, that they accept “only major US credit cards”. Not sure yet if they’ll be able to honor my order with a VISA card issued in Romania. If they don’t, I’m certainly NOT going for a WD… I’ll look at either Iomega or Seagate.

My 4-year-old 160-GB WD external hard drive is perfectly fine, though, surviving multiple computers and a laptop HDD failure.

I’ve also been looking at the eSATA dual interface options. Do you think within 1-2 years Apple laptops will support eSATA?

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 23:51:50 +0000

Any opinions on the WD MyBook drives? I purchased the 500GB model for backups about 6 months ago.