Cheap 2TB Drive for those in the USA

[Sime]

If you're in the US, Brett at ioSafe emailed me to say that the 2TB ioSafe is on special for a LOT less than normal...

Buy.com - ioSafe Solo 2TB Fireproof & Waterproof External Hard Drive with 5 Year DRS

2TB, can be run over by a truck.

Safe!

Sime

[kirbinster]

I would be very careful about trusting your data to those 2TB drive. I don't know whose drive they put in the box but all the 2TB drives are much more prone to failure than smaller drives. When I was building my system I was advised by two local computer firms to not trust data to a single 2TB drive. They have huge failure rates, and many are DOA out of the box. I built a system with four of them, but have them set as a RAID10 array which provides both striping for speed and mirroring for redundancy. I had one fail after five days, and had to have it replaced. Thus, if you must go with 2TB be very careful.

While it is nice this system comes with a data recovory service, in reading the website it appears to me to be limitted to a drive that has been exposed to a hazard - not one that just fails.

[Sime]

Who would trust their data to a single drive? 2tb, 4tb, 1tb... if you don't back up, you're asking for trouble.

[kirbinster]

Originally Posted by Sime™

Who would trust their data to a single drive? 2tb, 4tb, 1tb... if you don't back up, you're asking for trouble.

Very true. The problem with the 2TB variety is they have such high failure rate, that even if you backup regularly you have a higher risk of some data loss than with a small drive.

[Sime]

Hmm, not sure where you're getting this twoterrabyeaphobia, I have two servers full of 2tb disks at work - I don't look after them anymore - and we've had more failures in the regular 1tb array than with the newer 2tb drive array.. each to their own, I guess... I get around it by having two two TB WD disks in a G-Safe (mirrored) and they're backed up to a 4TB G-Tech... so, fail away mr. 2tb... fail away... (actually, don't!)

disks have two states - failed or failing, always remember that, be scared of it and you'll do just fine.

[kirbinster]

I'm just suggesting that it is probably better not to use these 2TB drives unless you are more careful than most home users about backing up data. That is all.

[Sime]

Sure, and i'm in no way affiliated with ioSafe, but I have no idea where your fear of 2TB disks comes from??

[Sime]

And one other note, The DRS does actually cover disk failure and this image is prominently displayed on the website...

[kirbinster]

My fear comes from what I was told by two people that build systems for a living, and the one I had fail in less than a week. Thanks for the clarification on the data protection plan - it was not clear on buy.com

[Sime]

No worries.. Yeah, I've built systems all my life and have worked managing about 25TB of live data for the last 6 years... I'm pretty happy with a 2TB disk, but as you say, it's only as good as your last backup (and restore!) --Sime