New Media Hard Drive options

[The Napster]

Hello I have run out of space on my computer and I've been looking at new hard drives to up my storage capacity. I would be using the new drives for video/audio mostly. The main problem I have is that I have filled all my SATA ports and also need a new cd/dvd drive (my old one is IDE and those are hard to come by now). I was looking at the 3 TB drives, but from what I've read they tend to be more fragile, fail more often, and some hardware has trouble dealing with much space, so I narrowed it down to two 2TB drives. I will probably just partition the new drives to match the ones they will be replacing so it doesn't feel like I actually "lost" a drive. My question to you guys is what drive do you recommend? I was leaning towards WD green for the price, but I hear the performance is horrible because of the power saving feature which dynamically controls the speed of the drive. I don't have much patience with seek times and I'm going to be transferring a lot of data onto these drives. I also don't want it to interfere with the playback of my media. My second choice was a Seagate.

I was looking over my motherboard specs from newegg and I noticed the description says it has 7 SATA 3 ports, however, I am only aware of 5 with one eSATA on the back panel. Where are they getting the 7th from and can I use it? I was also hoping someone could clarify eSATA because I am unfamiliar. Can I actually use more than 5 SATA devices with this motherboard? I always assumed that I could not use eSATA ports normally.

Motherboard Link
ASUS M4A79XTD EVO AM3 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard - Newegg.com

 

[PP Mguire]

See 7 ports just by glancing at the Newegg picture.
5 straight ports, 4 blue, 1 black, and 2 in the right angle.

There is nothing wrong with 3TB drives. They are no worse or better quality wise than 2TB, and speed should be virtually the same. You just can't use NTFS partition.

As for type, I prefer Seagate Barracuda. Exceptionally fast drives, without the price you give for Blacks.

eSATA is limited to one device, and requires additional power adapters for the enclosure you'd have to use for it. It's literally an external SATA port that usually you can't boot from.

 

[The Napster]

Ah, not sure how I missed the ones at the right angle. I must be going blind. I had read about not being able to use NTFS on the 3TB drives, and I havn't looked up what GPT is or how that would affect anything, if at all. I don't plan to boot from them, i have SSD for that. Since I have two more ports that my eyes have overlooked I'm thinking I might still opt for 2x 2Tb since it's only $50 more for almost another whole TB. Thanks for clearning up eSATA for me.

 

[PP Mguire]

In that case, it would be more feasible to simply buy a single 4TB, being 30 bucks cheaper.
Newegg.com - Seagate Desktop HDD.15 ST4000DM000 4TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

 

[The Napster]

I was actually just looking at that one. Thats a ton of data in one place if the drive should fail, but I do want to save money. I should bite the bullet and hope it doesn't fail. Would the fact that I would have to format it differently limit me in any way? If it does then could I break the drive down into two NTFS partitions.

 

[Joe C]

you can read more about 3 tb drives here

http://www.pcworld.com/article/235088/everything_you_need_to_know_about_3TB_hard_drives.html

 

[PP Mguire]

I was actually just looking at that one. Thats a ton of data in one place if the drive should fail, but I do want to save money. I should bite the bullet and hope it doesn't fail. Would the fact that I would have to format it differently limit me in any way? If it does then could I break the drive down into two NTFS partitions.

No, using GPT won't limit you, and yes I believe you can double format NTFS 2TB partitions on that drive.

I prefer Seagate because they are solid. I've had a single 2TB hold every single game I own (literally only 11GB left on that drive) since they were first released, and it's even a 5900RPM drive. No issues at all with it. My 1TB I've had since 2009 has sustained heavy abuse from LANs and such and still going strong 100% full. I don't believe you'll have any issues going with a single drive.

 

[The Napster]

Thanks for all the input. I just ordered the single 4TB drive. Glad I don't have to actually replace any of my existing drives and saved some money.