Opinions on 1.5 vs 2.0 TB SATA drives...

[TangoWhiskey]

I'm looking to upgrade my SATA drives in my NAS device, to provide more storage (currently mirroring two 500GB drives). I'm getting mixed reviews on the 2.0 TB drives, and am wondering what your thoughts are if you have experience with both 1.5 and 2.0 TB drives. The 2.0 is just an incremental cost increase, but if reliability is a big concern, I'll stick with 1.5 TB for now and let the 2.0 drives "mature" a bit. Also, vendor preference?

 

[mikea]

I'll only buy 2TB drives in the future. I've never heard that they're less reliable.

What are less reliable are the 7500.11 RPM Seagate drives that come from the former Maxtor junk yards.

Buy a Western Digital Green or Hitachi and you'll be fine.

For me the extra $75 for the additional 500GB (which isn't) is worth the time and space for content. I just don't have a compelling reason to buy at this instant.

One thing I've learned in everlasting addiction to content and hard drives to it is the prices keep dropping so it doesn't make sense to buy a drive and not install it right away (he says, looking at the 4 drives on the shelf.)

I'll add a pairs of 2TB drives to my Home Media Server and my PC tower when I need it. I'm about to spring for a 2TB for my new TiVo if I can't talk myself out of it.

 

[TMetzinger]

I've got 8 2 TB hitachis - 5 in a NAS and 3 used for offline storage, and I've had them for several months now with no issues.

 

[schmookeeg]

also running the hitachis (quantity redacted to avoid ridicule ), and they seem to do the trick just fine.

I won't buy a seagate ever again. Once bitten and all that.

 

[jesse]

also running the hitachis (quantity redacted to avoid ridicule ), and they seem to do the trick just fine.

I won't buy a seagate ever again. Once bitten and all that.

The 7200.11 series left a really sour taste in my mouth. I used previous Seagate drives for years and never had an issue. The 11 series still haunts me to this day as I have some large raid arrays filled with them.

 

[Ghery]

I need to get a couple 1 TB (minimum) external drives for data backup. The neverending struggle to have adequate backup space. My old XT clone had a 20 MB drive. Backing up to 360 KB 5.25 inch floppies was no big deal. Next machine had a 120 MB drive. Backed up to tape. Now I have 1 TB in one machine. No real option other than another drive (or off-line storage). It only gets worse.

 

[TangoWhiskey]

I wish they made affordable LTO4 or LTO5 drives for home use. Then tape would be viable as an option, especially when coupled with dedupe technology.

 

[TangoWhiskey]

I've got 8 2 TB hitachis - 5 in a NAS and 3 used for offline storage, and I've had them for several months now with no issues.

also running the hitachis (quantity redacted to avoid ridicule ), and they seem to do the trick just fine.

I won't buy a seagate ever again. Once bitten and all that.

Quite a few of the reviews on the 2TB Hitachi's at NewEgg indicate that the drives are LOUD--I mean, loud enough you can hear them from another room in the house. Have you experienced this?

 

[TangoWhiskey]

I'll add a pairs of 2TB drives to my Home Media Server and my PC tower when I need it. I'm about to spring for a 2TB for my new TiVo if I can't talk myself out of it.

What are you using for your HMS? I'm waiting for this year's expected upgrade of Windows Home Server to "Home Server Vail" before deciding... what other good options are out there? Something open-source, Linux-based, that offers file sharing to Windows clients on the home network, as well as multimedia storage/streaming, would be ideal. Anybody here using MythTV?

 

[schmookeeg]

I did not enjoy trying to sort out the common PC-based HMS options, and they never got me the features I wanted anyway... I use an Asus O!Play now and it will play any format I chuck at it, right off of the home LAN. Pretty cool device for movie-watching (it also does mp3s and some other nonsense as well), and very inexpensive.

 

[mikea]

What are you using for your HMS? I'm waiting for this year's expected upgrade of Windows Home Server to "Home Server Vail" before deciding... what other good options are out there? Something open-source, Linux-based, that offers file sharing to Windows clients on the home network, as well as multimedia storage/streaming, would be ideal. Anybody here using MythTV?

I bought the HP Home Media Server when NewEgg had them $100 off with a free SATA card (that makes no sense.) I'm running the TiVo app on it which like everything else I own, works mostly.

I'm getting concerned about power drain which is why I'm going for the WD Green drives. The irony is in some cases you have to disable the "Intellipower" head parking for them to work. They make TiVos hang at boot and I've read that the HP HMS doesn't like them.

I may go for my own media center one day but I won't have a TV source until there is the Cetron 4 tuner CableCARD card... and put up a helluva antenna for OTA.

 

[RJM62]

The 7200.11 series left a really sour taste in my mouth. I used previous Seagate drives for years and never had an issue. The 11 series still haunts me to this day as I have some large raid arrays filled with them.

Seagate's dismal response to the failures was probably more damaging to their reputation than the failures themselves.

-Rich

 

[TMetzinger]

Quite a few of the reviews on the 2TB Hitachi's at NewEgg indicate that the drives are LOUD--I mean, loud enough you can hear them from another room in the house. Have you experienced this?

I've not had that problem - the NAS enclosure is pretty good at insulation and it has a couple of noisy fans. And the raw drives that I just drop into a SATA bay for offline copies don't seem noisy either. Keep in mind that I was an early adopter and things change with each production run.

 

[schmookeeg]

Quite a few of the reviews on the 2TB Hitachi's at NewEgg indicate that the drives are LOUD--I mean, loud enough you can hear them from another room in the house. Have you experienced this?

I have a pair of them literally 16" from my ear right now, not enclosed, and I cannot hear them.

Some people are very sensitive to that stuff, though, and I'm not one of them. I blame Beechcraft for any hearing sensitivity loss

 

[TangoWhiskey]

I have a pair of them literally 16" from my ear right now, not enclosed, and I cannot hear them.

Some people are very sensitive to that stuff, though, and I'm not one of them. I blame Beechcraft for any hearing sensitivity loss

Thanks for the PIREPs; the two 500GB SATA's in my DNS-323 NAS enclosure are also Hitachi's, and they've served me well without issues, on nearly 24x7 for almost 3 years. I think I'll stick with the brand.