Big Disks (for now): Seagate 1.5TB and Samsung 1.0TB

I have no idea what I’ll do with 1.0TB, as I don’t store movies on my computer.  I’m still a DVD disk as source and backup kind of guy.  But there are terabyte hard disks out there and two of the most cost-effective are from Seagate and Samsung.

As hard disks go, the Seagate Barracuda ST31500341AS is big.  This is 1.5 terabytes in size.  With a 5-year warranty (which until recently is a lifetime for most hard disks), Seagate is staking out some major territory.

Designed for gamers, home office, high-end PCs, mainstream PCs, workstations, desktop RAID and USB/Firewire/eSATA personal external storage, it has a 120MB sustained data rate and consumes only 8 watts when idling.  Running at 7200 RPM, I think this should be a solid backup or file server hard disk for a home office/small office setup.  However, I would think twice about running making it as a file server for a video on demand on a small LAN.  I’m not worried about the data throughput, I’m more worried at the size of this thing and how many concurrent users would want to read from all the files it contains.   This hard disk retails for around $170.

Released in the first quarter of 2008, the Samsung F1 RAID class 1TB hard disk was designed for “demanding applications such as database, email servers, web servers, super computing, software development, data warehousing, surveillance, call center and nearline/backup storage systems.”  Though nowadays, if you put it into a USB/Firewire/eSATA enclosure, you have a personal external storage system which can meet most backup needs, and more.

The Samsung 1TB is a SATA 3.0GB/s uses three spindles and has a maximum media transfer rate of 175MB/s.  It also has very low power consumption figures of 6.7 watts in idle mode and an average of 7.2 watts in random seek mode.  This would go well in server environments, data center operations and other heavy-duty applications with 24/7 requirements.  And if you set your data backup software on a regular automatic backup cycle, this would work out just fine as well.

Me, I’m okay with my two 300 GB hard disk.  For now.

Official Seagate website: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB

Official Samsung website: Samsung F1 RAID class 1TB