One large drive vs. Multiple smaller drives: which is preferable?

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Funkatron

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I have a question for you more knowledgable techheads. I'm looking to add more storage to my current Rig. SATA preferable (all my other drives are IDE). I was looking for something in the 400-500GB range. Someone told me that getting a large drive was a bad idea and it would be preferable to get multiple smaller drives due to higher failure rates. I was wondering if this were true? I know Perpendicular and ultra-high capacity drives haven't been on the market long, so I was wondering if there have been any studies to prove they are less reliable? Or is this guy just spouting FUD (among other things)?
 
Funkatron said:
I have a question for you more knowledgable techheads. I'm looking to add more storage to my current Rig. SATA preferable (all my other drives are IDE). I was looking for something in the 400-500GB range. Someone told me that getting a large drive was a bad idea and it would be preferable to get multiple smaller drives due to higher failure rates. I was wondering if this were true? I know Perpendicular and ultra-high capacity drives haven't been on the market long, so I was wondering if there have been any studies to prove they are less reliable? Or is this guy just spouting FUD (among other things)?
Click to expand...

More drives=More drives to fail.
 
Burning_Monk said:
In contrast, if a small drive fails it's only a small amount of data and not ALL your data that would be on a large drive.
Click to expand...

Redundancy is key. If you get a big drive, you'll need a big drive to back it up. If you have many smaller drives, how will you back that up? Many smaller drives? One big drive?
 
I have a 320GB that I just picked up, using it with a 160GB I was using earlier and also attached is a 40GB drive that I was using before the 160GB.

I buy the most I can afford (also depends on what the price /GB is) and then use the old ones for storage.

Since I can always use warranty and can always image my OS to the smaller drive while I RMA I never worried about failure rate.

Do price divided by GB and buy whatever one gives you the most is what I would say.
 
1 big drive = 10w
4 small drives = 40w

1 big drive = cheaper
4 small drives = usually more expensive ( at least these days)

1 big drive = quieter
4 small drives = louder

1 big drive = 1 set of parts to fail
4 small drives = 4 sets of parts to fail

1 big drive = cooler
4 small drives = hotter (see #1)
 
Funkatron said:
Someone told me that getting a large drive was a bad idea and it would be preferable to get multiple smaller drives due to higher failure rates. I was wondering if this were true?
Click to expand...
I doubt it. You may check the StrorageReview's Reliability Database to see if larger drives fail more frequently than smaller ones.

Funkatron said:
I know Perpendicular and ultra-high capacity drives haven't been on the market long, so I was wondering if there have been any studies to prove they are less reliable? Or is this guy just spouting FUD (among other things)?
Click to expand...

Aside from the Google Lab's disk survey and SR's reliability database there is pretty much no information available form third parties.

As to the underlying problem: You can achieve higher ``performance'' and/ or higher uptime with multiple drives. The drawbacks are the -usually- higher cost and power consumption, as well as system complexity.
 
Thanks for the replies, guys. Another opinion is always helpful. Going for a 400GB drive. Man, I can't wait to fill this sucker up :D
 
For the price, you might as well go for a 500GB drive, they aren't much more.
 
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