# Seagate 3TB External Drive



## naijai (Aug 19, 2006)

For those of you who do not have enough space on your computers, here is the external drive for you. This would be the perfect drive for those who wants to rip their dvd collection 
http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/29/seagate-busts-out-3tb-external-hard-drive-for-250/


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## durl (Mar 27, 2003)

Are there increased risks of failure for these larger drive sizes?

Right now, my ideal would be for 2TB drives to drop to around $50 rather than have an expensive 3TB.


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## dennisj00 (Sep 27, 2007)

The increased risk is the crapload of stuff you lose if it fails!


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## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

dennisj00 said:


> The increased risk is the crapload of stuff you lose if it fails!


Ding Ding...

I would never have an external of that size, that didn't at least have a mirror drive structure.


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## Hansen (Jan 1, 2006)

WHS is the way to really go for external storage. Up to 32 TB of storage and utilizes a very efficient duplication/mirror approach. Plus, lots of other benefits.


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

Just make sure you have the right OS. 32bit and XP need not apply.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/seagate_release_3tb_hard_drive


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

Also make sure the place where it is located doesn't get destroyed


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## Grentz (Jan 10, 2007)

Although with the growing file sizes of things, 3TB is not as hard to fill up as you might think. Though for most it is still way overkill.

I still have not even come close to filling my 1TB, but I try not to be a pack rat


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## funhouse69 (Mar 26, 2007)

I knew that they were going to come out this year... Now that means that the lower drives will all drop like a rock while these sit on top of the price list for a while.

As mentioned never depend on a single drive for anything that isn't backed up. If you want to use this drive as a backup solution to your or several computers then sure and it isn't your primary or only means of storage. 

I've mentioned on here several times that I build customer home Theater PC's for people and usually accompany them with servers to hold everything. I know the term "Server" is kind of getting blurred these days as all it is in a place to store movies. For me to build one with 10+ TB of storage isn't unheard of. I do whatever RAID they want me to do RAID 5 is cheaper both in the hardware and overheard but now that we are getting in to these insane amounts of storage RAID 6 is really the way to go but the cards are still pretty costly and there is the overheard (2 parity drives instead of one). In the long run you have to weigh the risk of loosing all that data as it is very hard to backup these days. 

If anyone out there has any brilliant ideas on how to back up these monster drives / RAID Arrays then you can be a billionaire over night. Nothing has kept up with the growth of hard drives. Take a look sometime and see how much it would cost you to backup that new 3TB drive with Tape, CD's. DVD's and even Blu-Ray. Its completely insane! 

I already said it once and will say it again - NEVER depend on a single storage device of ANY KIND for anything that can not be replaced.


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## Grentz (Jan 10, 2007)

Why not just backup to another external hard drive?

A lot of my clients have moved over to external hard drive backups since they are much more cost effective and tend to be easier to use/more reliable in the long run.


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## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

Grentz said:


> Why not just backup to another external hard drive?
> 
> A lot of my clients have moved over to external hard drive backups since they are much more cost effective and tend to be easier to use/more reliable in the long run.


For a business... that is very tedious and hard to maintain for daily backups.
At my previous job (and I am pretty sure my current one as well  )... We had a daily tape backup of all our systems.. 3TB each day... tape was made, and sent off site.

That would have taken some serious time and manual work to do it with external drives.

As for my home, everything is RAID for my data drives, and I "try" to make an optical backup of the most critical stuff (pictures mostly), and take the disks to my inlaws house so they are not here.

With these new drive sizes... I am seriously considering getting a DROBO or similar system, that utilizes minimum power and I can easily put in the basement.

I have a Win2003 server running 24/7 in the house, for file server and printer server functions. (I have 4 printers in the office, and a 5th that I bring out when needed). Two of them are fully networkable, 1 other is going bye-bye as soon as the cart is empty.. the other I am going to upgrade/sell for a newer model.

When that happens, they all can be on the network, and they won't need a host system anymore... so if I can move the file serving off to a more efficient mechanism... I can shut down the 500w power supply on the this Win2003 box, save some room and heat.


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## TheRatPatrol (Oct 1, 2003)

Will that even work with the HR's? Can they see the full 3TB?

Thanks


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

This is another thing with big hard drives, particularly once they can be the main drive in a normal system (though they are big enough now.) Programs just get bigger and bigger. Not necessarily for any good reason, but bloat. With systems having the amount of memory and space they have now, well optimized code is not necessarily a priority.


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## Grentz (Jan 10, 2007)

Earl Bonovich said:


> For a business... that is very tedious and hard to maintain for daily backups.
> At my previous job (and I am pretty sure my current one as well  )... We had a daily tape backup of all our systems.. 3TB each day... tape was made, and sent off site.
> 
> That would have taken some serious time and manual work to do it with external drives.


Sorry Earl, but I have to disagree depending on the specific situation. Multiple hard drives can just be subbed for multiple tapes. Plus you don't have to deal with the tape drives and each drive is independent.

We have had so many issues with tape setups in clients offices it is not even funny. As long as you don't need multiple drives in an autoloader type setup, hard drive is just as easy, if not easier, than tape. You also don't have to worry about tapes only being linear.

Our standard setup is to get a bunch of the same enclosures with the same drives. Then have one set of hookups that the client swaps the drives between for their daily/weekly/etc. backups. It can still be automated the same as with tape on the software side and has proven to be much more reliable. They just swap drives instead of tapes.


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## Earl Bonovich (Nov 15, 2005)

Grentz said:


> Sorry Earl, but I have to disagree depending on the specific situation. Multiple hard drives can just be subbed for multiple tapes. Plus you don't have to deal with the tape drives and each drive is independent.
> 
> We have had so many issues with tape setups in clients offices it is not even funny. As long as you don't need multiple drives in an autoloader type setup, hard drive is just as easy, if not easier, than tape. You also don't have to worry about tapes only being linear.
> 
> Our standard setup is to get a bunch of the same enclosures with the same drives. Then have one set of hookups that the client swaps the drives between for their daily/weekly/etc. backups. It can still be automated the same as with tape on the software side and has proven to be much more reliable. They just swap drives instead of tapes.


As always, the details to each setup is what is key.

My previous gig (the Jewelry company), we had financials and register activity that had to be backed up ever night. We went to a automated-tape system, that allowed us to take the tapes and send them offsite. (Dailys cycled every 31 days, months cycled once every 2 years, yearly's never cycled)

That would be a lot of hard disks to maintain.


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## drpjr (Nov 23, 2007)

With the only consideration being a D* DVR it doesn't matter how much memory, backup type or where it's stored until it's tied to an account and not the box you will eventually lose everything.


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