First 3TB HDDs released

Even though SSD HDDs are starting to gain ground as fast and silent boot/system drives, they still can't compete with traditional spinning magnetic HDDs for capacity, or price per GB.

The latest HDD from Western Digital is the Caviar Green 3TB with a 64MB cache. Initially this is costing £162 plus VAT, which is a lot when you consider a 1.5TB drive can now be bought for £46, so 2 of those totalling 3TB would be roughly half the price. And even worse, a Samsung 2TB drive can now be purchased with VAT for just £56, so you could get 4TB for just £112. Or twice the storage uing 3 TB drives for the same price; 6TB for £168. But for mass storage, a single drive is always nicer then 2 drives. And priced will definitely start to drop once they have been on the market for a while.

In review speed tests it seems pretty fast for a slow Green drive too, returning large file test results of 110MB/s and 169MB/s, which isn't as good as the Samsung F4 tests, which returned 138MB/s and 208MB/s. But it is still pretty fast, and more than enough for a media drive or general storage usage.

There is one downfall of a 3TB drive, and that is hardware and OS compatibility. Most existing NAS and media systems only support HDDs up to 2TB. And Another is that Windows can only boot from a disk larger than 2.19TB if you have a UEFI motherboard and a 64-bit OS. Such motherboards are very rare at the moment so these 3TB drives will mostly only be for secondary storage, and even then, a lot of motherboard SATA ports won't work with the drives and instead a special bundled PCI-E to SATA adapter will need to be used instead. In addition Windows XP doesn't support drives of this size at all, so only Vista/Win7 users can use them, plus recent Linux Distros. Also there are reports of compatibility issues with all 32bit OSs, so even 32bit versions of Vista and Win 7 could be effected.

Well finally. I was talking about this some days ago, I said that I wondered that there wasn't a lot happening lately considering HD capacity, that the 2TB drives are already for longer time on the market now, but not any news about bigger sized ones since quite some time.

The only thing that bothers me with bigger capacity disks, is that if they fail, there's really a huge amount of data lost, you obviously need to have 2 of them running, mirrored or in my case "manually vice-versa'd".

I would say that the speed is not that much important for these disks, at least not for me, mainly would use it like you mentioned as general storage or backup, wouldn't use a disk like that to boot from. Although with my 5 2TB disks I have, one is used to boot from. It's partitioned, 100GB is the system partition, the rest is storage. If I would buy a new PC now, I would definitely consider installing an SSD disk as system disk, albeit only a small one, like a 64GB, that's enough for a system partition, and the disks are affordable now, at the time I got my new PC (beginning of this year), they were still more expensive. And if one time I plan to do a fresh install, I would eventually get an SSD.

For me SSD's are stll too small for the OS boot drive. Specially for Vista/Win 7 as these OSs quickly start to eat up HDD space and will quickly run out of spare on a 100GB drive. The problem with Vista/Win 7 is updates. It stores all of them, with versions of each and every variation of each updated file. On my old Vista 64bit install it had eaten over 200GB of extra space just for these files, and you cannot delete them as it will damage the OS install. At the moment I have a faster 1TB Samsung HDD as the boot drive in my main PC, and some 2TB drives for data storage and video editing.

It is very true what you say about larger HDDs creating the danger of greater data lose. Normally for me the only files that remain on the HDDs permanently are rom/iso sets and these get mirrored between my download PC and my Emulation system, so like you I always have 2 copies of the files, on 2 separate systems. I'm personally still a bit paranoid about keeping 2 copies of files on 2 HDDs on the same system. It means both copies/disks are spinning all the time together, creating a greater chance of combined HDD failure. Also a PSU failure could take them both with it. It has always been a bit of a headache how to safely backup and store data/files and I think it always will be.

However, Blu-Ray writers are continuing to fall in price. Under £100 last time i looked, so 50GB BD-R disks are quickly becoming a viable backup media. Although the actual blank BD-R discs are still fairly expensive. But 50GB on each disk! It still amazes me. :)

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Originally Posted by Harrison

However, Blu-Ray writers are continuing to fall in price. Under £100 last time i looked, so 50GB BD-R disks are quickly becoming a viable backup media. Although the actual blank BD-R discs are still fairly expensive. But 50GB on each disk! It still amazes me. :)

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That's true, that would be a great solution for "smaller" sets, let's say for 100GB files, you would only need 2 discs. But as most of the sets are still udated, you should be able to use rewritable media, which is only a bit more expensive.

Didn't know that Windows 7 is taking up that much space! So I guess my 100GB partition will come to its limits soon.

I haven't seen Win 7 using up HDD space as fast as Vista was, and M$ did say they had optimised it greatly, so maybe (hopefully) they actually fixed this issue and you will be OK. I currently have a 400GB partition for Win7 and its still got 319GB free, and that is with a lot of software installed, including the full Office 2010 and Adobe CS5 Master Collection, which consumes a far amount of space. But even so, that is still taking a total of 80GB up already in total. Might be worth you using a partitioning tool and increasing the size a bit just to be safe.

As mentioned in the past, I'm no data whore so 2TB is plenty for me from a drive.

I have two 1TB drives in my main PC and an external 640GB for backup. Nowhere near full, but I don't collect films or huge MAME CHD files. Nor do I bother with console ISO images.

Once we get blueray writers as the norm, I may start collecting more stuff and just burn it to 50GB optical disks for storage.

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Originally Posted by Harrison

Might be worth you using a partitioning tool and increasing the size a bit just to be safe.

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I will do so when needed, at the moment I still have space free.

I just checked some reviews of BD burners, and the LG BH10LS seems to be very good according to some reviews. It's one of the cheapest also I found, you can get it already for 80£, I think I might buy one and replace it with my DVD burner.

The need for larger storage also goes hand in hand with internet connection speeds. With 56K dialup we were are quite happy with fairly small HDDs, but as soon as broadband arrived we all instantly needed large storage for the sudden collections of files we had access to. And if we ever get proper faster fibre connections we will suddenly all be faced with a lack of storage again! :lol:

Wow, Demon Cleaner - didn't realize they were getting down to that price. Saw Harrision mentioned they are now under £100, but it's getting into that mainstream zone now.

Do you know how much the media costs? I may have to get one too... :)

Just read that the LG BH12LS is due to come out soon and can burn rewritable BDs 12x and read 10x, whereas the LG BH10LS only burns 2x and reads 8x (rewritable discs). Don't know about a release date though.

Some prices I saw in an online shop:

BD-R 2x = 2.50€/disc
BD-R 4x = 3.50€/disc
BD-RE = 7.50€/disc

Thanks for the info. Well worth it - I think I'll avoid the complications of 3TB hard drives for now.

I'm sure I'll end up getting a 3TB'er or bigger one day however.

Want to get your opinions here:

I definitely now thought about buying a BD burner, so what do you think, should I buy the LG I mentioned before for 80£, or should I wait for the new model to be released, as it writes the media 10x instead of 2x?

The only question is that would you even burn at 10x, doesn't that affect the data written to it? How safe is it to burn at very high speed with BD media? And so far I only saw 6x media. And compared to the 2x, the 4x is even a bit more expensive.

EDIT: The LG BH12LS35 was due to be released in April already, but it's not been released yet. They were announced at the CeBIT this year! The only LG shop that has it listed so far is the one in the US, but not with any price or such. The shop in the UK still lists the BH10L30 as NEW. And nobody seems to know when they finally get released??

EDIT 2: But what about storing on HDDs? It would be cheaper, 2TB internal disks only being 75€, compared to 40(!) DL BDs, which would cost you at least 100€, plus another 100€ of course for the burner.

Where would it be safer to store data, BDs or HDDs? The only major problem is that when a 2TB disk would die, you would lose more data than if one of your BDs would die. But on the HDD, the data would be easier to access, would be faster, and of course updatable, in case you need it.

It's really a tough decision. Probably I should just get another 2TB disk, put the stuff I don't need to updated anymore on it, and put it away into a drawer.

Any opinions on that guys?

I personally wouldn't buy an LG drive based on reviews for their other prducts in the past, including DVD Writers.

At the moment I favour Sony writers, especially their Optiarc brand which is a Sony/NEC collaboration and they are very reliable. The Sony Opriarc BD-5300S-0B is a 12x BD-RW SATA drive selling for about £94.

Ok, I see. But what's your opinion between the BD and the HDD method? Would you rather buy and jump onto the BD train, or would you just buy another 2TB HDD and use that to backup? Everything has it's pros and cons of course.

For me, I don't consider an external hard drive as a safe method of backup if used alone. I've heard horror stories of them being dropped, or just failing as you mentioned - failures are even more common on these high capacity drives. And as Harrison said, the bigger the drive the more you lose. Of course you may have two hard drives containing the same data (mirrored backup) which helps a lot. In fact, it's probably essential.

Hard drives are for a fast backup, to put paranoid thoughts at ease, but optical disks offer a definite advantage as a once a month kind of fall back option for long term storage. I use a combination of RW media and read only. RW until the disk is full, then burn it to read only. With Blueray, I can even keep a copy round my parents house in case of fire or theft!

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Originally Posted by Bloodwych

For me, I don't consider an external hard drive as a safe method of backup if used alone.

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I meant internal, as I have an USB3 enclosure which I can use with internal disks. And I intend to not back up some stuff, as it's not so crucial to me, and it will probably never be updated. But that's basically all my BIG sets like Dreamcast, Saturn, CD-i, Sega CD, 3DO...

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Originally Posted by Bloodwych

And as Harrison said, the bigger the drive the more you lose.

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I mentioned that, and that's also my biggest concern about too big disks.

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Originally Posted by Bloodwych

Of course you may have two hard drives containing the same data (mirrored backup) which helps a lot. In fact, it's probably essential.

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There's stuff I wouldn't need to have a backup, just want it to be stored on safest possible media. The problem with BD discs would only be that some of my stuff is between 100-200GB, so I would have to restructure it to fit on the disc, whereas if I would use a normal HDD, I could leave it as it is, and I would probably find stuff back easier.

But just imagine having all your pr0n on one single disk, would be perfect and also easier to hide from your girlfriend :lol:

Btw, the Pioneer BDR-205 seems to be a great burner too, the Sony you mentioned seems also to be good, although slightly more expensive, and they don't have it yet at the shops I usually order. At my favorite review site, the Pioneer got the first place, and the Sony made it second, so I will go with one of these two.

Sorry Demon Cleaner, I got a few things wrong! :D

But that's my general feeling for my needs - so Blueray would be more useful to me for backup rather than another hard drive.

Pioneer is my fav manufacturer for optical disks. Never had a problem with them. *TOUCH WOOD* Good to hear they still get good reviews.

Pioneer definitely used to be the best on the market for writing quality, but always had issues reading discs; some of their DVD-RW's sometimes couldn't read a disc they had just written! Whereas the same disc could be read by other makes. In contrast Lite-On always had mixed writing quality but their drives could normally read anything thrown at them. The best of both worlds always was NEC, which made drives that nearly matched the writing quality of Pioneer, but also had very good reading capacity. Sadly NEC no longer make drives themselves, but that part of NEC was sold to Sony and renamed Optiarc, so when you see Sony Optiarc drives these are actually from the NEC development group. :) So for me I now always buy Sony Optiarc drives.

I also think Pioneer no longer make their own drives and instead rebadge others and add their own firmware. I might be wrong but I'm sure I've read that in a few places recently.

Regarding backups. I like to have both online and offline backups of data. HDDs being online have the huge advantage of speed, instant accessibility and quick mirror backups, but they are susceptible to damage and data lose. Offline backups such as DVD-R has the big advange of no moving parts and the data can be stored away to archive for safe keeping, but it still isn't 100% reliable and discs can corrupt or get damaged. So no method is 100% full proof, so both are better than one.

I'm currently not sure how reliable BD-R discs are for backup and long term archival. They haven't been around long enough to know. Blu Ray was also never designed with backup and archival in mind, whereas the dead HD-DVD format was and had better error correction built in. But the attraction of affordable single sided BD-R discs with 25GB capacity is appealing. The dual layer 50GB disks are still too expensive for all but the most important backups though. But saying that, even good quality (Verbatim) DVD-R DL discs are still around £1 each, compared to about 10p for DVD-R.

I will see, anyway, I think that the drives are not so expensive anymore, so owning one is always good, you never know what you would need it for. And I think to put some data on it that you barely use could be fine. I will check on eBay or other online shops to compare the prices between the Sony and the Pioneer, and then decide which one I will perhaps buy in the end.

I bought the Sony Optiarc BD-5300S-0B, which I eventually got for 108€, and I think that's very cheap. Together with the shipping (from Germany) I had for 120€ in total.

But today I ordered some media:

- 10 BD-R SL 25GB (Verbatim)
- 10 BD-R DL 50GB (Verbatim)
- 5 BD-RE DL 50GB (Sony, didn't have Verbatim)

And I checked in a lot of shops, this was by far the cheapest overall, but I had for 150€ (!!), for 1TB. For that price I could have had 4TB in HDDs.

So that makes a total of 270€. It's clearly not for free! I now regret a bit my decision, but hopefully it does prove me wrong, at least when the BD media starts to delve into reasonable prices.

Btw, as I got the retail versione, thus only getting the bare drive, what would be a good blu ray burning software? I know that the bulk version of the drive, the BWU-500S, comes with the Softwaresuite of CyberLink, which contains several applications.

http://www.imgburn.com/ supports blu-ray and is free.

On a commercial level, Ahead Nero has supported Blu-Ray burning since version 7 and I know that Roxio, Cyberlink, and Xilisoft have also all now added support for the format.

I have ImgBurn installed, I also always use it for ISO files or copies. It's good if it supports blu ray, then I won't have to install something else.