Are 3TB drives worth it?

[Taer]

They're twice as expensive (230$ vs. 120$), for only 50% more space.

But is there anything else that's good/bad about the 3TB drives?

Are they faster in terms of bandwidth? Are they less reliable because you have more platters?

I'm going to be building a 5-10 drive NAS and I don't know if I should go for 2TB or 3TB.

 

[rmd3003]

I would wait........... It's too early

 

[vraa]

I would go 2TB

 

[Taer]

I would go 2TB

Why?

 

[vraa]

You said it yourself

Cost

I'll wait for 4TB or higher drives to replace the 2TBs

 

[Taer]

You said it yourself

Cost

I'll wait for 4TB or higher drives to replace the 2TBs

But cost is just one factor.

If you have 5 drives instead of 8, you need less drives for the RAID parity.

So I would be throwing 4TB away instead of 3TB.

I suppose.. 5 x 3TB = 12TB = 1,250$; 8 x 2TB = 12TB = 1,000$.

But then it takes three extra SATA ports.

*sigh* It's too hard to decide.

 

[BinarySynapse]

But cost is just one factor.

If you have 5 drives instead of 8, you need less drives for the RAID parity.

So I would be throwing 4TB away instead of 3TB.

I suppose.. 5 x 3TB = 12TB = 1,250$; 8 x 2TB = 12TB = 1,000$.

But then it takes three extra SATA ports.

*sigh* It's too hard to decide.

Assuming you're talking about RAID 5 in both cases, you'd only lose one drive regardless of how many drives you have. 8x 2TB would yield 14TB. RAID 6 needs two drives, so 8x2TB would give you 12TB that you listed.. but then 5x3GB in RAID6 would give you 9TB.

 

[MrCrispy]

With these larger drives, its always better to wait for reviews to come in. Also the platter size usually goes up, e.g. 2TB went from 4 to 3 platter and are thus more reliable.

Since you can get a 2TB for $100 these days, the only reason to go for bigger ones is if you're really out of slots.

 

[SumitB]

In my opinion, its always better to double your hard drives storage capacity as a balance. I would go from 500GB to 1TB to 2TB to 4TB rather than making the jump from 2TB to 3TB. Makes economical sense as well. However, if I were to go to 3TB, I would wait for the prices to stabilize and become more realistic.

 

[war9200]

What about if going from 1TB to 2/3TB?
Makes sense to go to 3TB Hitachi's for most capacity, except for the price premium?

 

[Krobar]

I still think they are too expensive for most current use cases.

Those of us with hardware raid cards and hotswap will be looking at a $60+ per drive bay cost so they dont need to be cheaper per gigabyte than 2TB; its just they arent worth more than about (1.5*$100)+$30 which is $180 (Assuming $100 2TB pricing). Those who are nearly out of bays may pay a higher premium, people with simple stacked software raid will likely pay hardly any premium at all.

If you are paying top dollar for data center rack space and are running low on room they might be worth $100+ premium per drive (Althought these users would typlically buy thep poper Entrerprise drives which are as yet unreleased)

 

[war9200]

I still think they are too expensive for most current use cases.

Those of us with hardware raid cards and hotswap will be looking at a $60+ per drive bay cost so they dont need to be cheaper per gigabyte than 2TB; its just they arent worth more than about (1.5*$100)+$30 which is $180 (Assuming $100 2TB pricing). Those who are nearly out of bays may pay a higher premium, people with simple stacked software raid will likely pay hardly any premium at all.

If you are paying top dollar for data center rack space and are running low on room they might be worth $100+ premium per drive (Althought these users would typlically buy thep poper Entrerprise drives which are as yet unreleased)

What are you using currently?
Will YOU upgrade to 3TB?

 

[Krobar]

What are you using currently?
Will YOU upgrade to 3TB?

I have a 20 bay, 10 bays filled with 2TB drives in Raid6 and only 1.5TB space left.

I went with the large array initially to copy my existing collection but am now down to new buys and HDDVDs to copy so will wait until the last moment to buy 6 3TB drives for a 5 drive Raid5 array. That should last me 2 years ish (Including the HDDVDs I have left to copy) and then I have 5 bays left for whatever my storage needs are after that. I hope not to need more bays (And if more than 8 the expander/ Raid card that would go with them) for 4 years+.

If I was out of space and bays now I would not upgrade 2TB drives to 3TB drives, more bays would likely be more cost effective.

 

[Taer]

I have a 20 bay, 10 bays filled with 2TB drives in Raid6 and only 1.5TB space left.

I went with the large array initially to copy my existing collection but am now down to new buys and HDDVDs to copy so will wait until the last moment to buy 6 3TB drives for a 5 drive Raid5 array. That should last me 2 years ish (Including the HDDVDs I have left to copy) and then I have 5 bays left for whatever my storage needs are after that. I hope not to need more bays (And if more than 8 the expander/ Raid card that would go with them) for 4 years+.

If I was out of space and bays now I would not upgrade 2TB drives to 3TB drives, more bays would likely be more cost effective.

Yeah, see.. that's why I've opted to BUY Blu-ray disks. Just 20 movies can take an entire 1TB HDD and I have hundreds.

 

[Taer]

With these larger drives, its always better to wait for reviews to come in. Also the platter size usually goes up, e.g. 2TB went from 4 to 3 platter and are thus more reliable.

Since you can get a 2TB for $100 these days, the only reason to go for bigger ones is if you're really out of slots.

I'm not. I have a 24-bay enclosure and two 24-port SAS expander cards.

It's just.. I don't want to have 48 2TB drives in a few years when you can get 10TB drives.

Although by then, 3TB would be just as useless.

I really don't know.

I mean.. you can get 1.5TB drives for an entire penny less per GB, but where does it end?!

 

[Taer]

Assuming you're talking about RAID 5 in both cases, you'd only lose one drive regardless of how many drives you have. 8x 2TB would yield 14TB. RAID 6 needs two drives, so 8x2TB would give you 12TB that you listed.. but then 5x3GB in RAID6 would give you 9TB.

And what advantage would RAID 6 have over RAID 5?

 

[BinarySynapse]

I'm not. I have a 24-bay enclosure and two 24-port SAS expander cards.

It's just.. I don't want to have 48 2TB drives in a few years when you can get 10TB drives.

Although by then, 3TB would be just as useless.

I really don't know.

I mean.. you can get 1.5TB drives for an entire penny less per GB, but where does it end?!

You also have to consider power consumption as a hidden cost. At some point it becomes more expensive to run more cheaper lower capacity drives than it does to run fewer higher capacity drives, despite the latter being initially more expensive.

And what advantage would RAID 6 have over RAID 5?

You can lose two drives and still have a functional array. So if you lost another drive during a rebuild, your array wouldn't be hosed.

 

[drescherjm]

You also have to consider power consumption as a hidden cost. At some point it becomes more expensive to run more cheaper lower capacity drives than it does to run fewer higher capacity drives, despite the latter being initially more expensive.

Depends on how much your power costs. Isn't the average power cost about $1 per W per year in the US so an 8 W hard drive would cost $8 per year to run. Neglecting the cost of AC in the summer or the reduced cost of heating in the winter.

 

[war9200]

So buy 3TB for $250 and bite the cost vs. $80-100 for 2TB?

 

[J Macker]

In my opinion, its always better to double your hard drives storage capacity as a balance. I would go from 500GB to 1TB to 2TB to 4TB rather than making the jump from 2TB to 3TB. Makes economical sense as well. However, if I were to go to 3TB, I would wait for the prices to stabilize and become more realistic.

What about going from 40GB to 80GB to 160GB to 320GB to 750GB to 1.5TB to 3TB ??

 

[drescherjm]

Only problem is I started at 40MB instead of 40 GB..

Edit: Actually less before that but that was either tape or floppy and not hard drive.

 

[sub.mesa]

The WD 3TB drive appears to have a rotational speed lower than 5400rpm; i would avoid it. It has 120MB/s or so transfers; very disappointing since the 666GB platter Samsung F4 can achieve 140MB/s already; then 750GB platters should be about 160MB/s instead. So it could be 4200rpm or so.

 

[BinarySynapse]

Depends on how much your power costs. Isn't the average power cost about $1 per W per year in the US so an 8 W hard drive would cost $8 per year to run. Neglecting the cost of AC in the summer or the reduced cost of heating in the winter.

Well lets say you need at least 20TB of RAID5 storage. You could get fifteen 1.5TB drives at say $60 per. Or eleven 2TB drive at $90 per.


Initial expense is going to be

1.5TB -- 15 x $60 = $900 for 21GB
2TB -- 11 x $90 = $990 for 20GB


now let's throw in power consumption

15 x $1 x 8W = $120 x 3 yr lifetime = $360
11 x $1 x 8W = $88 x 3 yr lifetime = $264

$900 + $360 = $1260
$990 + $264 = $1164

That's $96 in favor of the 2TB drives. (I'm not considering that you get 1TB more space with the 1.5TB solution.


Now, if you take the 3TB vs 2TB initial costs, power consumption over lifetime does little to offset the difference. So, that's why I said it needs to be considered.

 

[drescherjm]

The WD 3TB drive appears to have a rotational speed lower than 5400rpm; i would avoid it. It has 120MB/s or so transfers; very disappointing since the 666GB platter Samsung F4 can achieve 140MB/s already; then 750GB platters should be about 160MB/s instead. So it could be 4200rpm or so.

For the low power they quote I would bet that is the reason. I really hate that WD lies about what rotational speed they run their drives at. I mean all that variable speed crap that we know is not true. Now unexplained low performance for the rotational speed quoted versus platter size..

 

[odditory]

It's just.. I don't want to have 48 2TB drives in a few years when you can get 10TB drives.

Although by then, 3TB would be just as useless.

I really don't know.

I mean.. you can get 1.5TB drives for an entire penny less per GB, but where does it end?!

Just buy 2TB drives, this isn't rocket science.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I'd go with the 2TB personally. Bet the prices will drop even more as 3TB drives become more common.

In fact I recently added more space to my home server, I was wanting to add 4 2TB drives at one point and make a whole new array, then decided to just add 2 1TB drives and grow the existing array. I will add two more 1TB drives down the line. They are dirt cheap. If I was building new, I'd go with 2TB though.

 

[Krobar]

Yeah, see.. that's why I've opted to BUY Blu-ray disks. Just 20 movies can take an entire 1TB HDD and I have hundreds.

Much easier to stream particularly when you find the menus and copyright annoying. You should avoid making flase accusations (Implied or not).

 

[devil22]

Yeah, see.. that's why I've opted to BUY Blu-ray disks. Just 20 movies can take an entire 1TB HDD and I have hundreds.

Most blu-rays are not 50GBs. I have 72 blu-rays stored on my 2TB drive, they average 23.6GBs each. Even if you only get big money block buster releases, they typically range from 25GBs-35GBs. Much more convenient to not have to deal with finding and inserting discs and so on when you watch a lot of movies.

 

[Chimel]

Most blu-rays are not 50GBs. I have 72 blu-rays stored on my 2TB drive, they average 23.6GBs each. Even if you only get big money block buster releases, they typically range from 25GBs-35GBs.

I guess it depends on what kind of movies you watch, and if you go for cheap blockbusters with no extras. The 3 last BDs I ripped are District 9 (40 GB), House (46 GB) and How To Train Your Dragon (41 GB.)

If you're building a storage for video files, go for the biggest drives, it's better than piling Norcos on top of each other. Also, I was forced to buy all 8 x 1.5TB for my RAID 5 DAS, but my next storage will be FlexRAID, so you don't have to build the whole RAID array in one go, you can start small and add bigger and cheaper disks as needed.

The 3 TBs even now are not such a bad deal if you compare with the 2 TBs with 5 years warranty, the cheapest 5y 2 TB goes for $170. As for 3 TBs, the $210 7200 RPM Seagate is even cheaper than the $230 5600 RPM WD (search for "GoFlex 3TB" on newegg,) so it is cheaper per terabyte. Of course, no competion, no comparable warranty, no review and long term reliability data makes it a bit of an adventure. I got 2 of the 3 TB Seagate disks to play with, one internal (actually external taken out of its case,) one external. So far so good after 3.5 months of heavy daily usage, but for a DAS/NAS, I'd prefer to wait until the 5y models are out and have been reviewed.

As I understand, FlexRAID is also better for power consumption because only the disk containing the data being accessed is spinning, not the whole RAID array.

Edit: By the way, at $210 / 3 TB, the cost of storing a ripped 7 GB DVD is about $0.50, a 30-40 GB BD is $2.00-3.00.

 

[Red Falcon]

2TB drives are great for the cost and the performance is very good.

 

[vraa]

Most blu-rays are not 50GBs. I have 72 blu-rays stored on my 2TB drive, they average 23.6GBs each. Even if you only get big money block buster releases, they typically range from 25GBs-35GBs. Much more convenient to not have to deal with finding and inserting discs and so on when you watch a lot of movies.

Weird, all my 720p movies end up being almost perfectly 4.7gb.... I wonder why....

 

[Red Squirrel]

I've never seen a movie more then 1GB unless it was just a straight copy from the DVD with the vob files then it's in the 4GB range. What are you guys saving as, raw AVI?

 

[vraa]

I've never seen a movie more then 1GB unless it was just a straight copy from the DVD with the vob files then it's in the 4GB range. What are you guys saving as, raw AVI?

700mb / 1.4gb movies are typically xvid encoded (or divx or whatever, dvd style resolution blahblahx480)
4.7gb to 6gb (sometimes 9gb) are typically x264 encoded, 720p resolution, 1080p res are easily 10 to 15gb.
Blurays are roughly 22mbps, 20-40gb does not sound far fetched
Compression is your friend
Funny how in less than a few years we went from 4gb being uncompressed 480 resolution, now it's 480 compressed 720 resolution

 

[Taer]

So buy 3TB for $250 and bite the cost vs. $80-100 for 2TB?

It's not that simple. First of all, it's 230$ for 3TB and 90$ for 2TB. And the only reason why it's so cheap is because of Newegg's holiday season sale and because it's 5900RPM.

The 7200RPM version is not 110$, and I plan to buy it.

 

[Taer]

I've never seen a movie more then 1GB unless it was just a straight copy from the DVD with the vob files then it's in the 4GB range. What are you guys saving as, raw AVI?

Wow, are you serious? Are you living in 2004?

DVDs are way gone. It's all about Blu-ray.

DVD movies are 1GB. HD-Ready (720p) Blu-ray movies are 4GB. Full-HD (1080p) are 8GB+.

The "+" refers to how high quality the 1080p release is. The original files are 20-50GB.

 

[GeorgeHR]

It is really hard to determine the cost of a hard drive.

If it is necessary to add ports, most ports, SATA ports or USB ports, add about $25 to the cost.

If a new case is needed, add $100 to the cost.

If portability is needed, add $200+ for a NAS.

3TB drives are too large for my demands. So I use 2TB drives. But if the choice was to move 1 3TB drive around or 2 2TB drives, I would pay the extra for the 3TB drive.

 

[Taer]

I guess it depends on what kind of movies you watch, and if you go for cheap blockbusters with no extras. The 3 last BDs I ripped are District 9 (40 GB), House (46 GB) and How To Train Your Dragon (41 GB.)

If you're building a storage for video files, go for the biggest drives, it's better than piling Norcos on top of each other. Also, I was forced to buy all 8 x 1.5TB for my RAID 5 DAS, but my next storage will be FlexRAID, so you don't have to build the whole RAID array in one go, you can start small and add bigger and cheaper disks as needed.

The 3 TBs even now are not such a bad deal if you compare with the 2 TBs with 5 years warranty, the cheapest 5y 2 TB goes for $170. As for 3 TBs, the $210 7200 RPM Seagate is even cheaper than the $230 5600 RPM WD (search for "GoFlex 3TB" on newegg,) so it is cheaper per terabyte. Of course, no competion, no comparable warranty, no review and long term reliability data makes it a bit of an adventure. I got 2 of the 3 TB Seagate disks to play with, one internal (actually external taken out of its case,) one external. So far so good after 3.5 months of heavy daily usage, but for a DAS/NAS, I'd prefer to wait until the 5y models are out and have been reviewed.

As I understand, FlexRAID is also better for power consumption because only the disk containing the data being accessed is spinning, not the whole RAID array.

Edit: By the way, at $210 / 3 TB, the cost of storing a ripped 7 GB DVD is about $0.50, a 30-40 GB BD is $2.00-3.00.

Exactly. I do it for the cost. 3.00$ per Blu-ray JUST TO STORE. Not to mention internet bandwidth costs and time spent finding torrents.
I just go to Amazon, wait for their 3.00-6.00$ Blu-ray sales and that's it.
I only watch movies when it's the most meaningful. I don't just pop in The Matrix while eating breakfast cereal and getting dressed for school.
So, for me, having to put the disk in the computer, then simply playing the 'stream' files with no ads.. works just fine.

Also.. flexRAID? No way! I have an IT friend dealing with flexRAID.. I am not getting into something THAT complicated.

 

[Taer]

It is really hard to determine the cost of a hard drive.

If it is necessary to add ports, most ports, SATA ports or USB ports, add about $25 to the cost.

If a new case is needed, add $100 to the cost.

If portability is needed, add $200+ for a NAS.

3TB drives are too large for my demands. So I use $2TB drives. But if the choice was to move 1 3TB drive around or 2 2TB drives, I would pay the extra for the 3TB drive.

SATA ports? Well, you can get 48 for 500$. That's 10$ per port.

A 24-HDD case on Newegg is 400$.

Yeah, exactly, it's less of a hassle. But if I'm moving more than 5 drives around, I don't care if it's actually 10.