One terabyte drives

The time has come—with only 20-30GB of storage left on my multiple redundant backup volumes* (several 3X300GB RAID stripes and a few 2X500GB stripes), it’s time to rotate out three of the internal 500GB Maxtors, replacing them with 1TB (1000MB) internal drives. (Perhaps when writeable 30GB DVDs are available it will be practical to use optical media). I chose the Seagate models, and I’ll report on their performance after they arrive and I’ve had a chance to test them thoroughly with DiskTester.

The 1TB Seagate drives are a steal at $259 each at zipzoomfly.com. I bought the “SEAGATE ST31000340AS 1TB SATA 7200 RPM 32MB Hard Drive Bulk” ones, which showed the best test results at barefeats.com. Update: Reader Martin D points out that it might be worth paying another $40 for the ST31000340NS, which has beefier specifications, but the warranty appears to be 5 years in both cases. Using “enterprise grade” drives is the approach I’ve taken in the past with Maxtor, given the modest cost premium and day-long hassle should a drive fail. So I’ve cancelled and reordered with the Barracuda ES.2 ST31000340NS. See Feb 20 entry for more.

* A “volume” is composed of one or more hard drive partitions (or whole drives). An N-way “striped” volume means that N physical hard drives are involved. A single hard drive typically is presented as a single volume, but can have 2 or 3 or 10 or N volumes, each occupying some portion of the storage area, sort of like cubicles for data. (And preferable to the sound of cuticle grooming I once endured in a cubicle!)