Advice on 1000 Gbyte external hard drive

[lilelvis2000]

Are these cheaper than just buying a cheap PC and putting 1TB disk in it?
I need a SAN in my new office...partly as I'd be transferring work from the desktops to my laptop and visa-versa. And partly to keep my wife's work on it as well. I've no need to transport it between home and office.

[Clippy]

I'm after a 1000 Gbyte external drive, and was wondering if anyone could recommend any to avoid - TiA

I I read recentlythat WD MyBook drives prevent you from streaming media files.

Doesn't sound like it would affect you as the range affected seem to be the networkable drives but it may be worth investigating a bit further whilst doing your research.

[AtW]

I am a big consumer of hard drives - have definately got over 100 now, of which 26 are 1 TB from Hitachi, 1 of which was not recognised by BIOS at start, and second developed similar problem shortly - this must have been early batch as further drives seem to be okay, though I had bad experience with Hitachi before.

I'd recommend to go for 750 GB disk instead though - I've got maybe 30-35 of those and only 1 had developed an issue, these disks are from Seagate who were first with perpendicular tech in 3.5'' disks, they now have got 2nd gen in new disks.

Also - if you keep this disk as external then make sure you have got good cooling, I use active cooling on all my disk drives, which I think why I get lower failure rate than otherwise. For you I'd recommend get drive with no more than 4 platters (Hitachi uses 5 in 1 TB disks), better 3 platters - I think you can get 750 GBers nowadays with that many platters. Less platters == less heat.

[TheFaQQer]

I think most that size will be RAID, although you can choose RAID 0 (or whatever it is to make them appear as one big drive).

I've just installed a WD myBook at home for backup, which was reasonably priced, but no idea on reliability since it's only been used for a day! It's a 1.5TB drive (2*750GB), so is the same size as the internal drive that I have.

[BrowneIssue]

I'm after a 1000 Gbyte external drive, with no fancy backup programs or any of that rubbish trying to take over my PC but just a single (non-RAID) vanilla USB2 drive to use as extra storage, and was wondering if anyone could recommend one with a good name, and any to avoid - I'd rather spend a bit more and get better quality. TiA

Not answering your question, but may I recommend you buy two? One as a backup of the other?

Otherwise you'll be posting a question in about 18 months to the effect of "How do I recover my terabyte of lost data?"

(I have 2 x 250 Gb as a backup solution for the home network. One is cheap and lives at home, the other is VERY ruggedised and lives in my laptop case. One is a mirror of the other.)

[OwlHoot]

I'm after a 1000 Gbyte external drive, with no fancy backup programs or any of that rubbish trying to take over my PC but just a single (non-RAID) vanilla USB2 drive to use as extra storage, and was wondering if anyone could recommend one with a good name, and any to avoid - I'd rather spend a bit more and get better quality. TiA