You'd be mad to use a 3tb formatted hdd as a boot drive.
cos backing up would be a painfully slow,, as I have my OS,apps and docs on a 90gb ssd and all my other rubbish on a 640gb hdd. So when I backup my main OS ssd every few weeks, it backs up nice and fast, cos atm Im only 29gb full. My 640gb doesn't change much so dont have to back it up that often.
But thinking about getting a 2 - 3tb drive in the near future to replace my 1tb hdd that stores my shared media around the house as Im almost out of space
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I did think about buying a NAS for my shared hdd, but it would use more power in the long run, as I dont have my pc on 24/7, only when needed, and I got the other computers to turn on my main pc automatically when needed to access my shared drive.
Why backup the whole drive? I backup my photos and code using Dropbox / Flickr, everything else can be reinstalled if required.

I do that that you say for my storage drive but onto another hdd. But if my OS drive failed, it would take my a few days of reinstalling and getting things back to how they were. But if I back up the whole drive, I can have it back up and running in a matter of minutes of having the replacement drive
Edit: Or I maybe just lazy![]()
Just speaking from personal experience, but I've only had 1 drive fail since about 1990! The hassle of requiring full/delta backups for me would outweigh the convenience of being able to restore in minutes.

I've only had one drive fail in recent memory ... and that was my backup drive!Yeah I haven't had any drives fail on me either. but its nice to know if you do, you have no need to wrorry.