WD intros 4TB My Book Studio Edition II external hard drive
By Darren Murph 
posted June 9th 2009 10:46AM
posted June 9th 2009 10:46AM
posted June 9th 2009 10:46AM
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This is a BAD IDEA, unless you need very fast sequential write speed on an external disc.
If you want large-capacity *reliable* storage for backup and media purposes, get a NAS unit (preferably eSATA or firewire) that can support 3 (or more) 3.5" drives and has *hardware* RAID5. The total usable capacity will be equal to the capacity of two drives.
So 3x 2TB drives will get you 4TB of usable space. or 3X 1.5GB drives = 3TB usable space.
RAID5 is a great option for this type of home backup/media use because:
1) Because it generates and stores parity data distributed among the drives, It provides the ability to suffer a total drive failure in 1 out of the 3 drives *without losing any data*. All you do is swap in a new drive and you'll be 100% back to normal after the system regenerates the missing files from the parity data.
2) RAID5 provides 2/3 of the total disc array capacity as usable space, whereas RAID1 aka mirrored mode only gives you 1/2 as usable space.
3) Because data is "striped" across all the disks, RAID5 provides blazing fast read speeds similar to RAID0.
4) The only penalty for using RAID5 is slower data writes because after each write, the disk controller has to calculate and store the parity information. But this isn't a significant issue if you are using the drive array as a large capacity backup and/or media storage.
Well loosely_coupled, What is the best and most reasonable priced solution that fits your requirements?
you aren't going to get something with true hardware raid for less than $300 for the raid controller itself.
anything less is a quaasi software raid with raid controller and will require cpu cycles to run it.
not that that is a bad thing, but it is a drawback.
true hardware RAID cards have on board processors and should also have a built in battery backup to allow for completion of write cycles in the event of power failure.
not something you pick up for $50 or even $100.
so yes, you can get some really expensive NAs, or you can just build a cheap computer to do the same thing and have much more storage capacity and with a true hardware raid card have the option for on the fly expansion of the array and utilize real gigabit speeds.
however, you'll also have the power bill to go along with it.
I've got several DAS, NAS, and even a SAN in my corporate network. they all server different purposes.
and to those worried about drive failure, even on RAID 0, most people aren't experiencing drive failure before they simply replace the device due to needing more storage.
this will of course not always hold true, but it is the majority.
and USB drives aren't meant to run all the time anyway, they are meant to be turned off.
if you want one that runs all the time, get one with a good fan in it because heat is what kills your external drives.
especially the ones in these nice insulating plastic cases, so get an aluminum case instead.
*shakes head* I have real problems with the size of these drivers. Its one thing back when you have 500GB of storage that wasn't RAID 1. If the drive went bad you would loose a metric ton of stuff. But at 4TB of storage I think its borderline mandatory that such things be mirrored. And yes I know that to do it on a 4TB drive you would need 4 drives instead of two. But think about it. Devices like this, in many cases, wouldn't fill up for years. So redundancy is borderline mandatory. IMHO I personally would get two of these and use robocopy once a quarter to sync the two then drop one in a safety deposit box.
you'd be surprised how fast these devices fill up.
even legally.
let alone illegally.
I ripped my entire DVD collection that runs around 500 movies into less then 2TB of storage. As external storage its not like I would be installing games and apps on the thing either. I have a Canon 40D and even RAW I only fill up maybe 1GB per month and a half. And while I do download "stuff" of ob BT to fill up a 4TB drive I would have to be downloading crap I don't even want to watch or listen to...to fill up such a drive.
It has a button on it. Does that mean it doesn't power on and off automatically with the computer like my two MyBook 1TB Essentials do? That would suck. Power outtages mean you have to turn everything back on manually. I hate that!
False advertising, the customer is not getting 4TB of storage space.
I have a single terabyte drive that comes in as 918GB (NTFS-Defaults). If I were to apply that to a 2TB, of which, I have none, that would give me 1836GB of space. Times two, we are shy 328GB from the advertised limit. This is not like a 10GB HDD, which was shy 90 lousy megabytes, but a whole drive's worth of 328GB or more.
Nah... All set...
This time next year, 4 TB will be a standard external HD available to everyone at a very reasonable price. Win 7 will be the driving force!
worrying about losing data but not doing backups seems rather stupid