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I just found an old blog post that I wrote a tad over two years ago:
Friday, November 18, 2005
The Affordable Terabyte
A terabyte is 1000 gigabytes.
I just purchased one terabyte of disk storage space in the form of 4 250 gigabyte hard drives. This cost me a grand total of about $320.
This amounts to 32 cents/gigabyte!
That's quite a change from the first hard drive that I bought: $400 for a 20 megabyte drive ($20,000 /gigabyte)!
I bought cheap. I found "refurbished" disks (Western Digital WD2500) at two sources: woot.com and geeks.com. Refurbished means that the disks were returned to the factory for some reason or another. They come with a 90 day warranty. My guess is that any failure is likely to be in the first 90 days, so I'm reasonable protected.
If I were shopping for new disks with new product guarantees, there are still ways to do this.
pricewatch.com: There are 250 gig drives are available for $95
tigerdirect.com: Has Seagate 250 gig drives available for $70 after rebate (but you can only get one at this price)
Look also at ecost.com, newegg.com, outpost.com
Look at slickdeals.net for other leads
Putting 4 250 gig drives in a single computer poses some problems. Almost every computer will let you install 4 disk devices. If you want a CD or DVD drive in a computer, you'll be limited to 3 drives.
You could look at 300 to 400 gig drives. These seem to be in the 'affordable" range. There are 500 gig drives available, too, but they are in a much higher price range.
Still ... even if you have to pay 50 cents per gig ... that's not bad and your terabyte will cost you about $500.
Looking back, here are some updates:
- Those "refurbished" disks with the 90-day warranty are still going strong (knock on silicon!).
- The price of a terabyte of storage has declined quite a bit over the last two years. A quick look on pricewatch.com shows several choices for 500 gig SATA drives at under $100, and with free shipping! So, I could buy another terabyte for about $200, compared to $500 two years ago.
Right now I'm looking at building a "Network Attached Storage" or NAS using an old computer. Perhaps I'll add a couple of large drives and consolidate. I might even add "RAID" for redundancy and safety. If I do that, I might even write about it. |
Joe |
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Please do [write about it]. 
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Rank: Advanced Member
Posts: 561
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I've had some additional thoughts about building a "Network Attached Storage" device. I think that it might must be easier/ simpler/ smarter/ less of a hassle/ etc. to simply have a single computer that is used simply for storage If all of the storage drives on that computer are shared, then it is a simple matter to "map" those drives to any computer that needs to use them.
I can create separate disks for:
- backups
- pictures
- music
- Tivo files
- I'm sure that I'll think of something else
And ... if this is just a "regular" windows machine, then I can also run Carbonite on that computer keep a current quality backup that is also an off-site backup. It'll take a while to create the initial backup (weeks or even a couple of months ...) but this back will grow as needed. And, should one of my disks fail, recovering it is a relatively easy process.
I can also run other "server" processes on this computer -- like the Tivo server, a music server, and so on ...
I'll add more details as I put this computer/server/storage device together. |
Joe |
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Rank: Advanced Member
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I had an interesting conversation with another IT person and they mentioned building a PC with lots of ram, but minimal hard drive space for operating system and basic programs only. Then connect USB hard drives to the PC so when you do your financial work, etc., the important documents are stored on the removable drives. When you are done, disconnect your hard drives and put them in a safe or other lockable place. Mind you, this was during a conversation after talking about a home invasion when someone had lost their laptop with of course, their banking/tax info.
Jeanie
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Everyone likes RAM and nice video cards! :) I could see the buy a backup hard drive and put into fire-proof safe if you have a lotta music/movies/large files of value. For smaller files and folders that you want to ensure availability in perpetuity for i might consider a service like carbonite.com.
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Thanks, Dave.
I was considering writing a separate note about carbonite.com, so I'll just reply.
For those who have never heard of Carbonite.com, it's a data "backup" service ... not quite a backup because it keeps a mirror copy of your data files. It costs $50/year per computer. It's a really good deal, too!
I have a Carbonite subscription for EVERY computer that I own! That includes the "server" computer with several hundred gigabytes of data. That's right, I have copied ALL of my CDs to disk, and I play music almost exclusively from disk.
While it does take a while for Carbonite to back up more than about 40 gigs of data, I do have the time. Once it's done, I don't have to worry. I have a backup, it's an off-site backup, and I don't worry about fires, water, burglars, etc.
Oh ... and extra credit to the person who can tell us what carbonite is ... |
Joe |
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I'm lazy, and would rather utilize a manufacturer's warranty than debugging/fixing the issue on the hardware. Joe - take a look at http://www.amazon.com/We...cs&qid=1201826081&sr=1-1 to see Western Digital's 2TB external drive. It supports RAID, automated backups, Firewire + USB connections.... and its self-contained and small enough to take nearly anywhere. For about $600. |
Michael Stigall |
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I'm not at all opposed to USB or Firewire external drives. When I started this thread (the original message pasted here was written a couple of years ago), I could put one TB into a computer for about $320. Now I can buy a 2 TB external drive for about the same price per TB.
Actually, I believe that with careful shopping you can find similar for a good deal less. I saw an ad recently for a 500 Gig external USB drive at about $90.
And, to be fair, most people don't need a TB, much less 2!
If I were buying a 2TB system, I'd probably be looking to spend a bit more money and go with a networked storage system. You plug it into the network rather than to a computer, and that works if you have more than one computer. And, as I write there are 6+ computers on my home network.
RAID is nice, but that's also overkill for most people.
I've come to appreciate Carbonite's service because it's install and forget. I also like the fact that my data is stored "off site." That offers another layer of protection ...
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Rank: Advanced Member
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My first computer used CPM for the operating system. When DOS became available, I purchased an external hard drive with 10MB of storage. It was about 12" x 12" x 6" high, came in at just under a ton, and cost $1,000.00. We partitioned it into two drives; one for CPM and the other for DOS. That was it; we would never ever need more that 10MB. |
Ken |
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Terabytes are getting cheaper!
I just purchased two 500 Gig SATA hard drives for a total of $150.
I'll probably spend the next few weeks reorganizing my data storage. There's a strong possibility that one of the drives will end up attached to the still new dual-tuner HD Tivo! |
Joe |
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Rank: Advanced Member
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Ken |
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