What is the largest capacity, fastest, hard drive available?

[pinkarmy]

Im completely novice of course... I want to buy my boyfriend an awesome hard drive or something even cooler and am willing to spend anywhere from $600-$1000. I want him to have the coolest & the best.

Ive been looking on google and the highest capacity ive found is a 320GB Maxtor, i cant find it listed on

http://www.maxtor.com

though. They have SCSI & ATA drives. I dont really know the difference between the two or what they are. I dont really know what the difference between hard drives and servers are either...

I ran into a $3000+ (some number)TB server which looked cool but costs too much.. He's been talking about a server too. So um. Please help someone. You dont even need to explain it all to me. Just tell me, what would you want if it was for you? and where do i go to buy it.

Thanks.

 

[pinkarmy]

maybe i should have reworded the title differently. :/

"help please"

 

[SYAR2003]

ATA/IDE (Paralell ATA drive)

I don't know anything about his computer
but if it's a normal desktop computer
it would be equipped with two IDE controllers .
Each IDE controller can have two ATA devices connected.

A normal setup is
One ATA hardisk at the first IDE controller
And a cdreader and possibly a cd/dvd burner at the second IDE controller .

This would give you the possibility to give him
a new ATA (Paralell) drive like this one
200GB DiamondMax Plus 9 .

He only has to mount it in the case and connect it to an existing cable.

For SCSI disks you would have to
by him a scsi controller card in addition to a harddisk
(If he don't already have one in his computer)
Then you can get the Maxtor Ultra 320GB you mention.

Another possibility is serial ATA disk
witch also need a controller card .

You will se all this needed components at
the maxtor web.

And please turn off the pink text , it's hard to reed.

 

[dakota81]

Unfortunately, there really is no "Holy Grail" of harddrives for us to drool over; they just hold data. If you're really looking for something spectacular, I might suggest a few alternatives.

You could purchase a clear acrylic case; here's a site I picked off google, they've got some nice server-size cases:

http://www.clearcomputercase.com/index.htm

Or could purchase the newest 64-bit cpu with a motherboard:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-416&catalog=343&depa=1

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-131-473&catalog=22&depa=1

And if he's big into gaming, there's always the top of the line video card which everyone wants but cannot afford:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...33856&type=product&productCategoryId=cat01151

Awesome video card, I would love to have it myself. And if it's bought from BestBuy, it can be easily returned if the, umm, unfortunate should occur... =)

 

[estesflyer]

personally I would love to have the "western digital 740gb"

its a 10k rpm SATA drive. really a great performer and even tops out some of the other 10k scsi drives.

its only 74 gigs, but hell, for what your talking about paying, just buy two of em. If he's heard of raid setups he'll know what to do....


anyway, just my opinion...



- Rusty

 

[cdogg]

For a fast, high capacity drive, I would be sure to get a drive with at least 250GB and 8MB of cache. The cache is important for overall speed. Popular 250GB models that have been rated high in benchmarks are:

- Maxtor MaXLine Plus II 250GB
- Western Digital WD2500JB
- Hitachi 7K250 (IBM)

The Hitachi is the fastest overall, although all three are top performers and it's debatable as to whether you can actually feel a difference. Hope that helps...


~cdogg
[tab]"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
[tab][tab]- A. Einstein

 

[dakota81]

estesflayer: you're off by a factor of 10, that Western Digital Raptor drive is but a mere 75gig.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

If you're prepared to spend serious money, you could buy a SCSI RAID controller, with huge cache, and attach a series of 15,000 RPM Ultra 320 drives to it. That way you could create an array running into TerraBytes that totally flies.

However, you're talking £500 or so for a dual-channel controller with a mere 64Mb cache, and at least £200 for a single 36Gb disk.

Alternatively, IDE or SATA RAID will allow the chaining of a pair of drives for great performance. Unfortunately, the 10k SATA drives aren't very big, comparatively speaking, as dakota81 points out. By comparison, Maxtor have produced a 300Gb IDE drive, the 4A300J0, which retails for a bit less than a 36Gb 15k U360 SCSI drive.

SATA is the way to go, though, as IDE is on its last legs as far as development of the technology goes. SATA starts at 150Mb/sec (peak), but is currently projected to attain 600Mb/sec. SCSI Ultra 320, as the name suggests, currently attains 320Mb/sec peak - but there's a long way to go before SCSI technology is exhausted. SATA drives are currently maxxed at 250Gb, for which you'd expect to pay around £190 for the Maxtor, £200 for the IBM and £240 for the WD. Performance-wise, there is but a whisker in it.

To sum up then, it's pretty obvious I'm going to suggest an SATA setup. You either need a mobo with SATA on-board, or a separate controller. So, assuming you're going to create a single volume from two disks, you are looking at 0.5Tb max - or if you create two volumes, you'll have the full 1Tb; but think very carefully about your backup strategy! If one disk in the array goes down, you lose ALL your data. If you mirror the disks instead, you cannot use half of that space.

Of course, you can get RAID 5 options for SATA - but these tend to be somewhat pricey. A RAID 5 array would allow arrays of 3-4 TerraBytes

http://www.robustdigitalsolutions.com/html/serial-ata-prices.html

(for an idea of just how pricey...)

Hope this helps

 

[TheGoatMan]

The hell with these guys. I tell you what I want. Just kidding. Your hard drives will only be as fast as your motherboard will transfer the data. How about this. For under $1000 assuming he doesn't have a very fast board you can do this. Buy a new board with SATA with RAID and IDE raid also. Pickup 2 SATA 10,000rpm Raptor drives. Run RAID and mirror it with a 7200rpm 8mb cache 250gb IDE. There will be plenty of room for porno and baby pictures. With cash leftover to buy me a present. If you two should ever split up grab the drives and head over TheGoatMan's palace.

 

[pinkarmy]

thanks for all your help.

 

[ceh4702]

Linksys sells some files server devices that are separate from the computer. However, you would need to have a computer network to use them. For instance with a simple router you could connect a small file server. It is an option to just buy a second computer. You might try to find out if he has the ability to use SATA Drives on his present computer or motherboard. Many motherboards came out with SATA in the last 6-12 months. A small Controller card that fits in a PCI Slot can usually hook one or two up. Then you could just purchase 2 250 Gig Hard drives and hook them up.

Almost all Computers have IDE drive cables/interfaces. They commonly use a protocol for ATA100 or ATA133. This works with all ATA100/133 Drives. Hard drives of this type are backward compatable. If you purchase a ATA133 it will work on a ATA100 or ATA66 interface. SATA drives are not backward compatible. You have to have a motherboard that supports them or a controller card designed for them.

Sound Complicated?

It is a bit. However, beware of helpful temporary computer salesman, that want to sell the latest junk that has not been selling well.

I would urge you to get the make and model of your friends computer and post it so we could just look up the specs and give you a more exact answer. Most likely it will not support SATA. I think SATA Drives may be the best buy for a high capacity hard drive. SCSI can be quite expensive.

Some people just take a second computer and just put 2-3 harddrives in it and use it for a server. A server computer does not need a fancy video card or sound card, so all that money is spent on hard drives. The only real drawback is you need a small network to hook up the server. For this a router and a couple cables is Ideal. Networking is not too hard.

It is really tough to purchase computer gear for someone else. You could just get a big computer box like a computer comes in and put a check inside it and let him find what he wants. If he knew exactly what he wanted it might be easier.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[cdogg]

Goatman,
"[blue]Run RAID and mirror it with a 7200rpm 8mb cache 250gb IDE[/blue]"

Don't all drives involved in the RAID array have to be of equal capacity, otherwise you waste space on the larger drive? Perhaps you meant RAID for just the two Raptors, leaving the 250GB drive by itself on it's own IDE channel?

 

[pinkarmy]

Actually when didn't get replies that night I talked to a friend of his. He told me that I shouldn't buy my boyfriend a hard drive and I should get him something else. So I got him some new rims and tires for his car already.

I hate to have wasted anyones time. I'll keep it in mind though for the future.