2x500gb external drives or 1tb drive

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s.joseph

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Topic # 23133 19-Jun-2008 14:15

I want to get a 1 tb hard drive but the prices seem a bit high for a good one.

I found two wd element 500gb hds for $170 each (incl gst) would there be any disadvantage? i have enough usb ports can i partition them together?

The 1tb eternal drive i want (wd drive in mapower enclosure) is $350 (NOT incl gst).

What would you recommend? would the 500gb drives have a longer life time?

tonyhughes

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Reply # 139178 19-Jun-2008 14:25

What do you want to achieve with the drive(s)?

There is a big difference is usability/space/power/transportability/required-ports when comparing one big drive to two smaller ones.

There should be no appreciable difference in lifespan, and even if there was, I had a single 750GB drive arrive, perform faultlessly for 30 minutes this week, then diediedie in a flaming meltdown - so any drive has the potential for short lifespan.

I would definitely lean towards 1 x 1TB vs. multiple 500GB units.

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gehenna

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Reply # 139179 19-Jun-2008 14:25

1TB internal 7200rpm SATA-2 Seagate Barracuda - $315 incl GST.
http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=356368

That's about as good as you'll get for an internal drive. If you can fit it I'd go for internal over external simply for speed - it's so much faster to move data on and off the drive via SATA. If you can't do internal then try for an external drive that has e-SATA instead of (or as well as) USB. USB is so slow to transfer large amounts of data.

It's also more common to find external hard drives amounting to 1TB that are actually a combination of 2 500GB drives in a singel enclosure. Some of these allow you to use 500GB in a RAID - ie mirroring your data from one drive to another in case of failure. Or combined into a full 1TB (well, slightly less once you format the drives).

If you've found a WD single 1TB drive in an enclosure then $350+ GST is really good. Is it a MyBook though? If it is I think you'll find it is actually 2x 500GB drives in the one case.

From what I can tell you're looking at around $400+ for a single drive in a single enclosure. So it may be worth your while to get something like the drive I mentioned above, and get your own external case to put it in if it has to be external. Most external cases will run you between $60-$100 depending on quality, and number of IO connections on the back (USB + eSATA + Firewire).

bazzer

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Reply # 139181 19-Jun-2008 14:34

pricespy seem to have some cheaper than that...

s.joseph

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Reply # 139185 19-Jun-2008 14:39

its for a laptop with no e-sata ports, its got 6usbs ports and it doesn't need 2 mobile.

the pricespy lists say they include gst but most of them don't.

So it's worth it paying $50 more to get 1 drive?? I just don't see many advantages apart from portability

gehenna

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Reply # 139187 19-Jun-2008 14:44

Depending on whether you get an external drive with 2 500GB drives inside, and you've got it set up to display as 1TB, then each time you write or read from it your computer has to find which drive the data is on. So if it's got two drives to look at then its going to take longer.

But if you're going to get 2 individual 500GB drives then you won't notice anything like that, because you'll be choosing the drive you're accessing yourself - not the software.

s.joseph

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Reply # 139189 19-Jun-2008 14:49

It'll be two individuals. Thanks for the help

freitasm

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Reply # 139194 19-Jun-2008 15:16

Are these the WD MyBook external drives? Don't buy then. They have strange sleep settings and if they do go to sleep you will need to reboot your machine to see them again.

My suggestion for external drives is the Seagate Agents.

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s.joseph

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Reply # 139196 19-Jun-2008 15:21

yeah I heard about that, no there 2 Western Digital Element Drives.

hellonearthisman

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Reply # 139222 19-Jun-2008 17:31

1 drive means less power, noise and mass.