[finaldiet]

TigerDirect has a SimpleTech esata 1TB for $169. It can be set foer either 0 raid or 1 raid. Being not that tech savvy on, which is best way to run this drive and is it a decent one? I have seagate 750 now that works great. Thinking about picking this Simple Tech up.

 

[1948GG]

Point your browser over to:

http://www.amazon.com/SimpleTech-1T...?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1216303689&sr=1-17

and read the comments. Generally, I'd say take any with a grain of salt, but the comments are pretty uniform.

 

[cover]

I don't have any experience with this particular drive, but I'd stay away. This appears to be two 500GB drives in one case. I think these types of drives are a kludgey way to market a "higher capacity" drive at a lower cost. If you don't really want/need RAID, I wouldn't use it.

If you run it as RAID 0 (striped) to get the full 1TB capacity, you'll double your chances of a hard drive failure. (If either of the two hard drives fail, you're out of luck.) On the other hand, if you run it as RAID 1 (mirrored), you'll lose half the storage capacity. Either way, you're doubling the heat and noise that a single 1TB drive would generate.

 

[DarinC]

One thing to keep in mind with a drive like this with the choice of either RAID0 or RAID1... RAID0 combines the two drives into one in a way that maintains capacity (so in this case, you get 1TB out of the two 500GB drives) at increased performance (which is not realized in a DVR) at the sacrifice of reliability (if either drive fails, you lose the whole set, so you've effectively doubled the chances of a failure). RAID0 uses the drives "in parallel", such that they each store the same data, so if one fails, you still have the other. This significantly increases your reliability, but it's now a $160 500GB drive.

So unless you are interested in $/GB penalty for doing the RAID1 mirror setup for increased data security, for a DVR you are better off getting a single drive rather than striping two together.

 

[gregjones]

MOD: Isn't there a better forum for this hardware discussion?

 

[JLucPicard]

There probably is a better forum, but I learned something today that I would not have had it been where it should be.

I don't mind a rogue topic from time to time because I spend very little time checking out the other forums unless I have a specific question. Once it's moved, no more "clutter?".

 

[finaldiet]

Thanks folks. I think I'll stay away from the Simple Tech. I learned something from this also. I'll go with what working for others on this forum.