Are 2TB drives worth it?

Ranger07 · 10 Jul 2009 at 08:11

I'm weighing up my options on the best way to achive 2TB's of storage space with a further external 2TB drive as a back up.

I'd like it all on one partition if possible. As a bit of a noob on storage can someone explain the best way to achive this, either 2x1TB internal and 2x1TB external which comes to about 200 quid from ocuk or the easier but more expensive 1x2TB internal and 1x2TB external which costs just over 400 quid.

Is it as simple as these options or should I be looking at these external HDD enclosures which would allow for future expansion?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=1240&subid=1239

AbsenceJam · 10 Jul 2009 at 09:13

With 1TB drives you're paying less than 2/3 price per/GB than you are with the 2TB ones, with 1.5TB disks it's less still. I'd suggest going with 2x1.5TB disks and a decent eSATA enclosure for now and then increasing on that when the need arises.
If you want more future proofing build or buy a 4~ bay NAS or DAS for backups. You don't have to populate it with drives right away but you can just use one or two for now and since it's for backups rather than storage you needn't bother with RAID.

lopkinfop · 10 Jul 2009 at 10:52

a 4 bay edgestor external drive is about £140, an 8 bay is £250.

Ranger07 · 10 Jul 2009 at 14:21

I've just gone for 2x1TB WD10EADS and Seagate FreeAgent XTreme 1.5TB for the mean time and I'll upgrade to an 8 bay edgestor when the need arises.

Can anyone tell me if the 2x1TB drives can be made into one partition using raid settings without it messing up my current systems OS drive etc?

AbsenceJam · 10 Jul 2009 at 16:05

Ranger07 said:
I've just gone for 2x1TB WD10EADS and Seagate FreeAgent XTreme 1.5TB for the mean time and I'll upgrade to an 8 bay edgestor when the need arises.

Can anyone tell me if the 2x1TB drives can be made into one partition using raid settings without it messing up my current systems OS drive etc?

Yes, though the controller will be in RAID mode drives can work independently. You can set the two drives up as RAID 0 or JBOD, although if you're just spanning not striping I'd suggest doing it in Windows. I think that's what you meant?

Ranger07 · 10 Jul 2009 at 16:42

Yeah I'll probably just set it up as JBOD in windows.

Thanks for all the pointers guys.