20TB External Hard Drive

sii on 12/02/2016 - 07:39

Hi

I have been looking for external desktop hard drives. I work with lots of video files (not for editing / rendering) mostly. In my first project I ended up getting 5 *4 TB external hard drives. Although, at the initial stage i though I would need only 2 * 4 TB later on I kept buying hard drives.

I am planning to do my second project, so I would need at least 20 TB. What would be the best option to go. My priority constraint is the price.

Is going to a big hard drive (like Lacie 4big quadra) going to cost less or going to 4* 5 TB or 5 * 4 TB external hard drives is going to cost less?

Thanks in advance.

Computing

Comments

  • [Deactivated] on 12/02/2016 - 08:38

    personally i wouldnt look for the cheapest drives.

    quality over quantity ;-)

  • ozhunter on 12/02/2016 - 08:39
    +2

    Well look at the brand of hard drive you'd want to buy eg. WD Blue, then work out cost per GB.

    1TB = $69 = .069/GB
    2TB = $102 = .051/GB
    3TB = $137 = .046/GB
    4TB = $202 = .051/GB
    5TB = $285 = .057/GB
    6TB = $348 = .058/GB

    • jorf on 12/02/2016 - 08:54

      I wouldn't buy WD Blue again - out of the 60 or so that we've purchased, 8 have failed within 3 years, 3 failed within 1 year. Other brands/WD colours we have - zero failures.

      • shroomish on 12/02/2016 - 09:58

        thats some gold standard advice, thanks

      • ozhunter on 12/02/2016 - 10:17

        WD Blue was just an example.

  • sii on 12/02/2016 - 08:51

    @ozhunter Thanks for the comment.

    are these prices average or did you get them from any website? and what about WD RED prices?
    With the WD external hard drives. I had seen some comments saying that it comes with WD RED hard drives in it. Is there a specific model to look for?

    • miarn on 12/02/2016 - 08:58

      The prices are probably from MSY as they're generally the cheapest for an Australian shop. YOu can sometimes get drives cheaper off Amazon, but that's becoming harder with the dollar the way it is currently.

      Sometimes people get lucky with Reds in external drives but AFAIK they are usually Greens - and sometimes refurbs at that.

    • ozhunter on 12/02/2016 - 09:25

      Prices from MSY

      WD Drives are optimized for different uses. Red = NAS, Purple = Surveillance. http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/desktop/

  • derek324 on 12/02/2016 - 08:58
    +1

    You need build in redundancy - you need a NAS (Network Attached Storage). Building a solution based on one set of large disks holding a single copy of your files means that when your data gets corrupted you face a disaster. Many NASes offer natural upgrade path by means of expanding a base configuration by adding expansion units with additional drives: look for example here: https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS715 under "Robust scalability up to 7 drives" (this is just an example, there are many similar solutions from another companies).
    If you want large storage capacity and reliability… forget about inexpensive. Look at the costs in perspective: how much is it worth for me to protect myself against loosing my work? Disks do fail, it is not "if", it is "when". Plan to be ready for it.

    • epicttiimm on 12/02/2016 - 10:58
      +1

      DAS products do redundancy as well, and although they are great (saved my data once), nothing is replacement for a backup.

  • rbrb on 13/02/2016 - 09:37
    +1

    Get a promise thunderbolt array. Expensive but they are awesome.

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