Can you believe this?!

<p>I know that many have remarked on the dropping price of storage, but this excerpt from an ad I just received in the mail just about blew my socks off:<br /> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://email.jr.com/a/hBKEBKgAJMkGtB7t5fw$H$NnWkf/wk9-3" target="_blank"><br /> </a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://email.jr.com/a/hBKEBKgAJMkGtB7t5fw$H$NnWkf/wk9-3" target="_blank">Iomega 1.5TB Prestige External Hard Drive </a> <br /> Was $199.99 <br /> This Weekend Only $149.99<br /> I won't show the retailer here directly, but I find this incredible. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.<br /> Any thoughts? Anybody know anything about the reliability of this brand?<br>

<br /> --Lannie</p>

<p>I would not get this drive as the USB interface is extremely slow (data transfer rate) compared to the typical sata. Western Digital 1.5tb internal drives are $150 normal price at Best Buy. Then you get a $30 housing from newegg with an esata port, and you have a drive that's <em>3-5 times</em> faster than this iomega, with a smaller footprint (this one is bulky relatively). My Western Digital 1.5 in its enclosure is the smallest external drive I've ever had, and is screaming fast compared to drives like this. Anyone who tells you "whatever, usb isn't much different" has no idea what they're talking about.</p>

<p>USB(1) is slow, but USB2 is adequate for nearly everything. I use an external USB2 drive to collect up to 16 channels of 24/96 audio or streaming HD video.</p>

<p>USB barely exists anymore. I'm talking about USB2. It's 3-5 times slower than sata/esata. So for a 30 minute copy operation in sata, you need two hours (give or take) in usb2. For me, usb2 is not adequte for photo or video work. It just a waste of time doing all your work at a much slower rate than you could be. If you have your lightroom catalog and/or photo files on a usb2 external vs. sata/esata for example, the performance difference is staggering. Getting an internal drive and putting in a housing is simple. You do have to have an esata port on your computer.</p>

<p>Brett, I can see where someone with really high file volumes to back up might have a need for SATA drives rather than USB2. But, I suspect that most folks can do OK with USB external drives. Part of the problem is that most computers don't come with SATA/eSATA ports for external HD hookup, and you have to buy the card as will as the drive and enclosure.</p>

<p>Otherwise, I agree completely about Western Digital drive quality vs. Iomega. Seagate is another good option.</p>

<p>It does go beyond backup. If you're constantly retrieving files for any reason - for batch editing, renaming, copying, etc. you see a performance boost. Basically for anyone doing high volume work with data of any kind, it's worth trying to get set up with esata over usb2. It is a shame that esata hasn't been more widely implemented. For me, for photo processing, the difference when I switched was stunning. Night and day.<br /> <br /> Officially stated transfer rates (AFAIK, I could have made a mistake)<br /> <br /> USB 1.1 - 12MBps<br /> USB 2.0 - 400MBps<br /> Firewire 400 - 480MBps<br /> Firewire 800 - 800MBps<br /> eSATA - 1.5GBps<br /> eSATA II - 3GBps<br /> <br /> Actual rates in practice are different, but esata is pretty consistently at least 3x faster than usb2, which is huge. For the OP, if you're getting a 1.5tb drive, you must have a lot of data to deal with, just saying if you can use one you'll be glad you got esata over usb</p>

<p>Data transfer rates are indeed the bottleneck with huge storage and retrieval--all the more when one wants to do backups of backups (and I am compulsive on that issue). Thanks for the suggestions, all, but especially to you, Brett.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>Sure, even if you have to get a card, I think the $40 will be long forgotten while you enjoy the benefits of the increased performance</p>

<p>Brett, USB 2 is 480 Mb/s and Firewire 400 is 400 Mb/s but USB has more overhead so in practice Firewire 400 is usually faster than USB 2. The standard convention is Mb = megabits and a capital B as in MB = megabytes.</p>

<p>1.5TB drives have been $130 for months on newegg. You can buy an external enclosure that has BOTH USB 2 and eSATA for $20. If you also buy this $3 bracket/cable then you can convert an internal motherboard SATA port to an external eSATA port.</p>

<p>http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812226006</p>

<p>The major problem I have with eSATA is that there are too many motherboard chipsets that don't support hot plug. There are also lots of external enclosures that don't support hotplug. Both have to have hotplug support in order for you to just connect an eSATA drive to an already running computer. Otherwise you have to reboot in order to detect the drive.</p>

<p>Brett, one correction. FW is 400MBps and USB 2 is 480MBps. However, Firewire is a <i>sustained</i> 400MBps while USB is a <i>burst-rate</i> of 480MBps. Thus, in most real world tests, Firewire 400 will beat USB 2. Another advantage to FW is that it is peer-to-peer, less computer overhead. USB's transfer protocol <i>must</i> have a computer to "re-assemble" the bits into actual information. Also, watch out when getting your 3GBps SATA drives- more often than not the jumper is set to limit performance to 1.5GBps. I'm not sure, but I think even 1.5GBps is more bandwidth than a single (non-RAID) drive can do. Finally, the main reason is like eSata is that it eliminates the "bridge" or chipset employed by either USB or Firewire to communicate with your computer. That has given me problems in the past!</p>

<p>If you're feeling adventurous, you can always crack an external drive open and retrieve the juicy, nutritious hard drive inside.</p>

<p>Just a tip if you know the external's hiding a good drive and is on sale for cheaper than a bare drive. ;)</p>

<p>What's the big deal about this? Office Depot has 1.5tb external drives cheaper than the one cited in the original post.</p>

<p>Like Jeff says, deals like this or better are available all the time.</p>

<p>-</p>

<p>i only use lacie drives :)</p>

<p>Seagate FreeAgent 1.5TB is at $140 this week at Office Depot. If you have an Office Depot rebate card (which costs nothing), it brings the price down to $126. Newegg is at $105 for the same drive. Others that are less than the price in the original post for the Seagate Drive include PC Connection and Amazon. FWIW, on the iOmega drive, which is in the original post, is cheaper from B&H than the link given due to the shipping cost differential.</p>

<p>All of this is available on one click at google, you shouldn't need to ask here.</p>

<p>More and more hard drives are falling into the same category: crap. Lately I've read enough stories of premature drive failures and DOA drives to curl my hair, what there is of it. I almost bought a Hitachi drive from Fry's a couple of weeks ago, but I backed off when I read about failure rates.<br>

I'm thinking that carefully chosen enterprise class drives may be the way to go until SSDs become mainstream.</p>

<p>-</p>

<p>Iomega is known to be very good in quality. I would not use this as a main drive because of data transfer speed, but I would not hesitate to buy this one for use as an external backup, though as said before, better deals can be found online.</p>

<p>Iomega buys drives from other vendors, probably Seagate for this drive.</p>

 

 

<blockquote>

<p>The poster has already expressed a preference for a fast interface and not usb2, so the freeagent is not relevant</p>

</blockquote>

 

<p>The Freeagent and the Iomega have the exact same speed and interface. You seem to want to argue rather than look at specs, especially since you said that you couldn't buy lower than $150 at that density. Interesting that you went back and deleted the content afterwards, isn't it?</p>

 

<p>Jeff. I also asked, "Anybody know anything about the reliability of this brand?"</p>

<p>As one who has had one "big drive" failure, I wanted the opinions of some of the members of the community on the issue of reliability, not just speed or cost.</p>

<p>Thanks to all for the info. I had no idea prices were getting quite this low.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p> </p>

<p>When I was looking for an external hard drive I read the reviews on Amazon.com. It seems that reliability is a big issue with these machines. I bought a highly rated Iomega which has worked perfectly since I bought it a year ago.</p>

<p>USB 2 is quite adequate in terms of data transfer rates for data storage purposes. I have even run some 3d games from an external USB data source - admittedly not the latest ones. As to failure rates, although I know there is a potential problem, I personally (touch wood) have had <em>far </em>more problems with failure of the HDD storage cases rather than the drives inside them. The circuitry in some of these is crap as is the power supply and I have had several fail on me.</p>

<p>Fortunately its easy to open the case retrieve the drive and then put it into a new case - or even connect it "naked" to your PC using appropriate cabling or a hot swappable dive bay.</p>

<p>Also I have found that the ones that come complete with drive and case from a name brand tend to be more reliable.</p>

<p>Speed on an external drive is not really an issue for me since I always use it for archival or backup storage. I start a transfer, then forget it.</p>

<p>Anybody here use mirroring systems involving two external drives?</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>