Isn't 3Tb too much? :P

I got my sister to buy a laptop, 1tb portable external drive and a 4thgen itouch.

(budget for laptop is 1500$, bought a g73jh refurb for 999$, so i still have a couple of hundreds to spend)

She told me that the itouch is only a want and that it's not a need. so she went on to buy a 3tb WD together with the laptop.
I do video editing/rendering, 3d animation, graphic designs, photography, multimedia stuff. I know my files are gonna be humongous, but isn't 3tb too much?

Plus i'm always on the go. so i'd rather use a portable drive than this 3tb that needs to be plugged in.

Questions!
How much can i sell this 3tb Western Digital? It's good as new! plugged it in my laptop only thrice.

Do i really need 3tb of space? I'm still a student, and only have at max 10GB of works atm. I also plan on building my own rig in the near future. So storage wouldn't be a problem. What i need atm is portability

 

You ask questions... and answer them yourself shortly after that

The thread is quite useless I think.

 

You'll see yourself a year later and ask yourself, "Why did I sell that 3TB HDD? Now I need to buy another external..."

No? Well I can see myself saying that though...

Anyway, you can always use it as a backup for the laptop.

 

Exactly. Keep it. Don't worry about it. Though I like to divide my storage and have a bit of redundancy. Losing 3TB of data would totally and complete sux0rs.

 

You noticed! I sorta answer my questions because that's what i think the answer is. I made this thread for others to think about and comment on what i thought the answer is. I may be right, I may be wrong. That's why i ask here 'cos the NBR people are amazing in computers


Thank you for the answers! will keep my 3tb and just buy usb's for the on the go.

 

That is the right chose AsILayDaing

 

All told, I have about 6TB in my faux-server and 8TB spread out over two external drives.

There Is Never Enough Space.

 

Wow. :| what do you use those for?

 

Rather than just focus on what you currently do and how that relates to the 3TB, imagine what you COULD do.

Do you have a DVD collection? A CD collection? You could archive either or both in case the physical discs were to be damaged or lost. You could rip your CD's into lossless formats such as WAV or FLAC, which is very useful for archiving.

That's what I do with my 2TB + 500GB + 500GB of storage space.

 

Backups. And backups of my backups. Server. The works.

 

I have 3 2TB drives in JBOD in my HTPC currently, along with another 1TB drive for the OS and games, and room for one more storage drive the next time they go on sale. All those episodes of Law and Order have to go somewhere...

I also have 2 drives in each of our desktop, one for the OS, programs, and all data, and the second drive purely so Acronis will have something to store its automatic backups on. And don't forget the 2TB external hooked up to one of them where I store my "archive" data, the stuff that's nice to keep around but isn't accessed all that often (for instance, images of game DVDs, Steam backups, close to 20gb of raw footage from our wedding, an extra copy of all the DVDs I've transcoded in case I accidentally erase an entire 2TB drive trying to set up a JBOD array again, etc...).

 

Stop it, you negatron! I'm used to IE.

 

As if FF has never crapped out. Puhleez.

 

Lolz. Another question! is it better to have 3 1tb's or just one 3tb? I have a 320GB portable drive that's going loco atm. idk how it happened but after months of using it, it takes a lot of time to load and get stuff from the hdd. and when the files i need are too big it will stop in 50% completion, then it will resort to "not responding". is there still hope in getting my old important files in the hdd?

 

Depends on how you split your files up, if at all. Obviously, with 3 single TB drives, you'll need to be plugging them in or out (or setting them up in some sort of server) to be accessing the appropriate files. Of course, at that point, you also have 3 separate points of failure, instead of one (if the 3 TB drive fails, you might lose everything on it, but if a single 1 TB fails, you only might lose what's on that one).

As for the 320 GB portable, I'd try running a disk checking program on it, and if that checks out alright, maybe a defrag program as well. I suspect the disk check might come up with errors, though.

 

Well, how often do you want to swap them around? That's a downside to several smaller.

Hmm.... I wonder if there's a bad sector or something on the HDD. Have you check the SMART information or run a full disc check? My OEM 500GB HDD had a bad sector from the get go. Couldn't move large files either. Took a 4 hour diagnostic/repair to find and relocate said sector. It's been functioning just like new ever since.

 

i plugged it in my new g73jh and it did an automatic diskchek while starting up. after that it did get easy to access files a little, then it started going crazy again. and sometimes i hear the disk jump.

 

Youch. Sounds like what happened when my old WD 160GB gave up the ghost. It still had a few weeks of warranty left, haha.

But anyway, try to get your most critical files off that thing for safekeeping.

But like I said, backups of backups.

 

Nooooooooooooo! sigh, will do!


Do you guys know of any disk check repair defrag program that i could use for this baby one last time?

 

Get your data off first and then try whatever you want with your dying HDD.

No utility will repair it and running a defrag program on a dying platter is just asking for data corruption!

If anything can repair it, Windows can too:

Right click on the drive in explorer, select properties, select the Tools tab, select Error checking, select Check Now, check both boxes on the dialogue box that comes up and click okay and reboot your system (and go watch a movie).

Anything that can be fixed will be fixed; if you still have issues with the drive, a hammer and the nearest trash can will fix the drive permenantly (get your data off first before resorting to this 'final' method.

 

Yeah, you can never have too much storage. I currently have 12TB on my Windows Home Server. Between backups, archived data, photos, videos, and duplication of everything, it consumes over 5TB right now. I have a 4TB external backup for the WHS critical data, and Adrive and Dropbox online storage for my most important files (namely personal photos and videos). Plus I have a couple WD portable hard drives for easy carry of important files like ISO images, portable apps, etc.

Lesson here? You can never have too much space or too many backup options.

 

LOL you guys are horrible.

You could try chkdsk, but as stated a failing drive is a failing drive.

You can never had too many backups, just finite amounts of dollars.

 

Yeah. But 2TB @ $80 each, buy four = $320 + $100 WHS + $250 PC components = ~ $700 for long term security. I've had my WHS for close to two years now, and can see the same hardware lasting me for another 2-3 years easily. Adrive and Dropbox are free.

I've seen too many people whine and cry about losing data, but balk at spending the money to ensure they have it backed up.

 

If storage is a concern, they should be managed like what business does it.

get a server chasis(mainly for the hot swappable disk feature) like Dell PowerEdge

install a version of linux/solaris/bsd and set it up for RAID 5/6 or ZFS

have a network with Gbit or 10Gbit wired connection and you have a safe and fast storage system on premise. Then think about off site in case of fire, earth quakes etc.

 

That's a little extreme, WHS is set up for the home user in mind, easy to add storage, and inexpensive. Dell Poweredge is a little pricey.

 

The point I want to make is that without a RAID(or ZFS which has its own raid at file system level), your server is not safe in terms of data loss. hot swappable chasis is mainly for convenience and you don't need to buy it new from Dell.

The financial crisis results in many surplus in terms of stuff from bankrupted companies.

And linux/opensolaris/freenas etc. are all free.

edit:
a quick search on craigslist shows that you can get one in the range of 200-400.

 

You are absolutely correct. I see too many people at my workplace, well what do you mean an external costs 80 bucks to back up my data??? Then 3 weeks later their hard drive craps out and they complain to our managers...and we are like well we told you so...

I mean even just buying 2 external 250 GB drives for ~40-50 bucks each and keeping your data safe versus you know close to 2 grand for physical data recovery...I keep telling people lol.

 

3TB to be too much?

Not in the slightest.
Given the premise that you will be doing plenty of multimedia stuff that has a tendency to get a bit 'humongous' as you so eloquently stated, I think it would be prudent that you keep the 3TB hdd as it will be excellent for long term storage.

Even if you cannot imagine it now, just wait and see.
Our requirements keep growing by each passing year (as revisions of techs are released and higher quality stuff becomes more available).

 

ONE 3TB HDD is not good choice for long term storage, too much thing in one single basket.

I would rather have a RAID 5 of 4x750 which has less storage space if we are talking about long term.

 

Right. Whatever it takes. Most people don't even backup to an external HDD. I just like things like WHS because the backup is automatic, and don't have to think about it. I tend to store my documents and photos directly to the WHS as well, and that data gets backed up periodically.

 

Storage
Free Space: 521.52 Gb
Storage Space: 6.37 Tb

so i'm using around 5.8Tb right now. 3Tb is not "too much".

 

I knew a guy at my former workplace who had a basement full of servers with thousands of movies stored. No I'm not exaggerrating, thousands of movies.

The root of the problem though lies with the time stamp of the data you store; if you're not using the data for years, then whats the point of keeping it? Aside from backed up data, of course.

 

Even for personal photos and videos?

 

I don't know, but he once sent me an Excel file with records of thousands of movie titles. The guy described himself as an addict (actually his wife described him that way).

 

I can't take off most of the big folders. if i take them one by one the hdd hangs. and now it's asking me to reformat it.

What do you guys do for a living that you need that much a memory? most of the people i know are satisfied with a 4gb usb stick. )

 

Most my stuff is personal photos and videos, music, ripped movies, software I've bought and downloaded over the years, ISO files of application and games disks, patches and updates (glad I kept the older stuff, lots of it hard to come by anymore). Then there's daily system backups of three PC's.

 

When you back up your pc's sir, do you delete the previous ones?

 

Depending on how often you backup, you often want to keep a few backups from "further back". What if, for example, you had a virus, and that virus ended up on your latest backup because you backed up before you found it? Then you'll be glad for an available earlier backup.

 

What if you want it later? Mass storage at this point in time is so relatively cheap that I don't see a point in not keeping stuff that might be useful some time down the line.

 

exactly. i don't watch movies normally more than twice a decade, if at all. but as i have the storage, it's there for the random moment i could want to.

 

Depends on a person.
I store only movies that I enjoy and don't mind watching them another time soon.

 

WHS does it automatically, depending on how much history you want to keep. Nice thing about WHS is it saves by cluster level, so if the same data in a cluster exists it only puts a pointer to that cluster instead of saving it over and over again. So if you have four PC's with Windows 7 backed up, your Windows 7 may be 20GB, but to save all four PC's might take up only about 22-23G total for all four PC's, basically to make up the differences in files, etc between PC's. Same thing with your backup history, so you don't have sixty copies of 100GB of data, you might use 200GB total for that full sixty days history.

 

The longer you don't use something, the less likely you're going to use it at all. You can draw the line where you want, but at some point your back up needs to have cut-off date or something... keeping everything is cheap, but its not practical. I know I don't want to waste my time backing up terabytes of data.

 

I sort through my stuff once a year. Personal photos, videos, and documents stay forever.

Patches and software I haven't touched in two years goes into an "archive" backup which I sort through and anything that I haven't touched for like 4-5 years goes bye-bye. But if it's something I paid money for I keep forever more or less.

I also have a huge archive of game patches and mods, and glad I do because I can't find a lot of that stuff online anymore.

 

Keeping important files in such huge drives scare me a bit. How long does it take for these storage drive until it dies?

 

You never know when a drive will fail -but usually there are very apparent signs several weeks to several months before it does (loud and constant clicking noises, very slow access times, some files becoming corrupt, ect...)- but that is why you have multiple backups (I keep most all my data on 3 500GB 2.5" portable external drives, but have the same data on 2 1TB 3.5" drives so everything is redundantly stored. Some people do more than that, but I prefer to keep my data off of any network storage, and I just don't keep CD/DVD copies of the data)

But is there ever enough storage? I would say no, because needs keep growing and growing

 

Ohh... can a virus contribute to a failing hard drive?

 

In theory. In practice, I think the closest ones are the ones that wipe sectors and basically erase your hard drive, which means you don't have a failed hard drive, just an empty one that you can re-use.

 

I got 500gb early on and I filled it up very quick. The got 1tb thinking it would be enough..that filled up early too.


So I got the WD My Book 3tb hard drive now to keep all my stuff. I've already used 2.1tb already...and all I'm thinking about right now is I need more.

I keep my bluray movies/tv shows/games/pics/software/anime and all other extra stuff. And I got a lot of it backed-up.


It keeps filling up. I wish there was alternative to store your files.


OP keep it at elast for you it will take a lot of time to run out.