Advice on External Storage

My home office setup includes an HP M9150F desktop (750gb HD) and a Toshiba P305D-S8818 laptop(250gb). The Toshiba has a 17.1 inch screen, so I use it as a desktop replacement for "work" purposes, ie record-keeping, phone logs, etc. Both computers are on my home network. The HP desktop is my "play" and recreation computer.

I am looking to put a good portion of my sizable DVD collection on hard drives. I have a number of portable Toshiba 320GB hard drives, but I keep those for traveling purposes.

I have two 750GB personal media drives for the HP desktop. These plug into the the personal media drive bays, and I use one for backup, and the other for media storage (videos, pictures, etc.)

I just purchased two 1TB Cavalry external drives. I was going to use one for backup (backup #2), and the other for media storage (movies, videos, pictures).

Last week, I had purchased two Seagate FreeAgent 500GB externals because they were on sale at Officedepot. I ended up returning them, and getting two 500GB Western Digital MyBook Home externals (Firewire, USB, and ESATA) which were on sale at Frys. The reason that I returned the Seagates was because of some of the things I have read about Seagates' reliability.

The Western Digital MyBooks caught my attention because I can use Firewire on my HP desktop, and this frees up a USB port. I also have a 7 port USB hub, through which I will route the second Cavalry 1TB drive.

I purchased the Western Digital also because I have heard concerns about the larger drives (1TB) having a high failure rate, and wanted to have these for backup.

I really would like to get two more of the Western Digitals...still on sale...for more storage. Since I would be using them with my desktop replacement which does not have Firewire, I might as well opt for the Western Digital MyBook Essential 500GB, which only has USB, and is also cheaper....89.99, as opposed to the MyBook Home which is 119.99. The Essential only has a one year warranty, as opposed to the Home which has a three year.

My DVD collection is really extensive, so I need a lot of storage. Is this overkill? I would go for one of the 2TB drives, and be done with it, but I am concerned about failure rates.

Any suggestion about rationalizing this mess? Or is this the way to go (with this proliferation of externals)?

So, in the end, I would have:

HP Desktop...

2 1 TB Cavalrys (1 for backup)
2 750GB HP Personal Media Drives (1 for backup)
2 500GB WD MyBook Home

Toshiba desktop replacement...

2 500GB WD MyBook Essential (unless it's worth spending more for the Home, even though this computer does have firewire)

Other than the backup drives, the rest of the storage would be for media/entertainment.

 

Have you considered NAS?

 

I don't know enough about NAS and figure I can always upgrade to that as they come down in price.

I am still planning on what I am going to do. I was considering daisy chaining the two WD drives on my desktop.

I ended up getting two more WD drives for my desktop replacement.

I guess you can never have enough storage. I was really tempted to get another couple of 1TB drives, but I have concerns about reliability.

I've read reviews on other sites where people review a certain drive and say, "I got 3 of these..." so I don't feel so bad about having so many.

 

NAS can simply be an old computer loaded to the gills with hard drives, it's not new nor is it expensive. If you're not running NAS for an entire company, the connection limit on home versions of windows doesn't matter.(vice windows server, which doesn't have the 20 concurrent connection limit)

One of the reasons for this is speed. The extra computer will bear the brunt of cpu utilization and increases transfer speed(USB 2.0 has a hard limit of 20 MB/s, divided amongst all your USB connections. Firewire is about the same. eSATA probably only provides ONE connection if you even have one) NAS allows you to plug a computer into the network and push/pull files instantly. And you have the option of going media server, maybe pushing video/music to your xbox 360 or PS3 hooked up to your home entertainment center.

Think about buying a cheap media center comp, a few terabytes of storage, and upgrading your storage away from portable drives. Portable drives were designed around the idea of one portable drive per comp, and only for occasional use. NAS is on demand storage per LOCATION(i.e. home or office), and is a mature, reliable, expandable, and fast technology that is cheaper than portable drives(esp with the amount of drives you have)