How big of a hard drive would you buy

[Razeus]

With 1, 1.5, 2TB becoming the norm and going for insanely low prices, how big of a drive would you buy. I'm hearing that traditional drives will be 4TB offerings soon. After all, that's alot of data to lose if it should go bad. Also, it's a lot of time (relatively) to transfer to a newer drive should the old one start to act up. I think the most I could go is 2TB tops.

[-=Antimatter=-]

No matter what you buy now, it will seem tiny in 5 years. 1.5TB are the best price/GB but the 2TB are getting closer every day.

[Pepsin]

I've got 2640GB total:
C: 640GB WD (SATA)
D: 1000GB Hitachi (SATA)
E: 500GB Samsung (SATA)
G: 500GB Seagate (USB2, external)

I recently switched things around so that I have the OS, documents and programs on the 640GB drive instead of the 1TB drive that used to be primary - I never used more than 4-500GB on the C: drive anyway - music and video are stored separately on the 500GB Samsung.

I now use the 1TB drive for scheduled, weekly incremental backups of the C: and E: drives. Thanks to compression it can hold the data of both drives even if they were to be 100% full.

That's not 100% failsafe obviously, but it's a hell of a lot safer than no backups. I can also go back to a clean install of Windows7 with just drivers and important programs, in about 50 minutes total time, or choose any other restore point if I want. I keep them for about a month before consolidating the archives, except for the first restore point with a "clean" install of Win7.

I would never buy one, big drive (2TB) and only use that. I would buy two or three smaller drives instead, to be able to implement some kind of backup scheme, even if it's just something simple like manually dragging and dropping folders...

[moshpit]

For me, I buy all 120Gb or 750Gb now. 120Gb SSD's for the OS, and 750Gb for storage and if I need more then 750 then I just stack em up as needed. 750Gb drives can often be found for under 100 bucks, and ES.2's for 120-ish. I'll pay the premium for the enterprise level reliability.

[Auric]

Well, for personal data (and time intensive setups) I would always factor in clones (not waiting until it "acts up") and alas there is simply no alternative to the wretched slow speed. So I would not hesitate to choose larger capacity drives except for the cost per GB without increasing the quantity and thus hassle too much. For example, currently 1.5TB x 4 are significantly cheaper than 2TB x 3. And in the case where the data is replaceable and thus not worth redundancy, it does spread the risk.

[DaJMasta]

I've got a 500GB Seagate 7200.11 and an 80GB X25-M G2 in my main rig. I just installed mass effect and basically maxed out the SSD yesterday, but I've got just about half of the seagate left. Oh, and the seagate still has my Windows XP x64 install on it and all the games from that comp which I don't particularly care about (can be reinstalled or redownloaded as needed).

I'd consider another 500-750GB for backups and storage, but I don't really need it. My 250GB backups drive was full when I backed up the seagate before moving to windows 7.... I deleted some of the backups from 2007 to make space and all is well again.

[caveman-jim]

Originally Posted by Razeus

that's alot of data to lose if it should go bad.

This is the crux of the matter. It's not how much you lose when the drive fails, but how much you can afford to back up and protect. A solid backup and data loss strategy will be worth many times the cost of the drive it's on, if the data is important enough to you.

With the advent of high-speed (>10Mbps) broadband, a lot of data it used to be critical to back up is no longer so important. Also, streaming services are making physical ownership less important.

When considering drive space, you should break down your data and its usage so you can see what backup precautions you should take. Define whats irreplacable, what is important, what is useful, and what is convenient.
Work out how fast each of those change and increase, so you can understand how often to back them up.

When you've done that, you'll not only have determined how much storage you need for what purpose, but also where you need to spend additional money to protect it.

Likely that 2Tb drive will look less attractive when balanced against the need to protect 20GB of irreplaceable data, and you'll consider buying a 500Gb drive to store useful and convenient data, and a backup solution for your 20GB+ of irreplacable and important data (like an external Raid1 HD, and software to perform full, incremental and differential backups on a schedule).

[Quickstrike]

Originally Posted by -=Antimatter=-

1.5TB are the best price/GB but the 2TB are getting closer every day.

^

I try to buy the current best dollar per gig offering.

Own a couple of 1 TB drives - because at the time 1.5TB were much more expensive. Now I have moved onto 1.5TB. Pretty soon 2TB will be the most reasonable option, etc...

With close to 5 TB of 1080p movie material (and rising), I really benefit from the larger storage space available now.

[Qb2k5]

Size doesnt matter as long as the backing up doesnt take forever and isnt too expensive. Thank goodness for Sata 6.0, Esata, and SSD drives making drive to drive transfers much faster. I agree with Caveman about getting a Raid 1 external backup with the proper software. I'll add if you have multiple computers it would probadly be wiser just to get a NAS solution that connects directly to the router. With Win7 and Vista making backups easy, the software configuration shouldnt be too hard to setup.

[biscuitownz]

I would probably go with some SSD's for my windows drive, and a bunch of 1 tb external drives for other stuff.

[FX-Overclocking]

500gb min. IMO. Anything less is crappy to live on no matter the speed.

[Crisler]

The question is how big do you need?

I have put an OS, full office suite, benchmark utilities, a couple of games and the music I actually listen too as well as a few pictures, sound editing suite and a few more odds and ends on a 120 Gig SSD and still had around 60 gig left.

Now if you are a pack rat; ie a lot of music that gets listened to now and then, a ton of picutres, movies, a dozen games and more then you need a bigger drive. But you can leave clean and lean and get by just fine with a small uber fast drive.

[moshpit]

Originally Posted by Crisler

But you can leave clean and lean and get by just fine with a small uber fast drive.

I cannot. My steam account alone can eat a full 120Gb all by itself if I install every game I have on it. Then there's my Impulse games. For me it's less about having a clean and lean hard drive and more about having a clean and lean desktop. No icons on the desktop allowed except recycle bin. Junked out desktops are my pet peeve. And nothing gets installed to the OS drive except the OS, drivers, and minor utilities. All Office, music, movies, games, and other apps go on the storage drive OR the second SSD (if it's regularly played game, it gets on the second SSD).

[Nebuchadnezzar]

The best price/performance-space there is, which are the 1.5tb drives right now.

Before, they were the 640gb ones. I rock on 2x640 Raid-0 + 1.5gb + 500gb right now.

[Auric]

Originally Posted by moshpit

I cannot. My steam account alone can eat a full 120Gb all by itself if I install every game I have on it. Then there's my Impulse games. For me it's less about having a clean and lean hard drive and more about having a clean and lean desktop. No icons on the desktop allowed except recycle bin. Junked out desktops are my pet peeve. And nothing gets installed to the OS drive except the OS, drivers, and minor utilities. All Office, music, movies, games, and other apps go on the storage drive OR the second SSD (if it's regularly played game, it gets on the second SSD).

Ugh, I don't even use the Recyle Bin so don't allow it to clutter my desktop (which is blank).

I concur with the software organization except for apps seperate from the OS since they are sadly dependent upon so many registry entries and files littered all over it anyway. Only beeg schtuff like MAME, TTS, or various databases go on the storage drive along with the games and media.

[spajdr]

I would buy any size that you feel is enough and get a two pieces and make it RAID1 incase something bad happen to one of the hdds.

[Perky McGiggles]

I think my next purchase will be a 2TB drive. Possibly a second and set them to mirror each other just in case. I have a 1.5TB now and I'm getting down on space. I could delete some things but I don't wanna.

For OS and games I don't really need anything more than 640GB split in 2. Maybe when SSDs become affordable I'll grab one for OS and games, but my storage drives will still always have everything on them, and I don't care about speed with those. I just need them to be stable is all.