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1.6TB In a Shoebox, If You've Got the Money
zmcnulty writes "While not exactly a technological marvel in itself, IO Data Device's new 'HDZ-UE1.6TS' exemplifies the recent trend towards demand for higher storage capacities -- it's an external hard drive setup offering a total capacity of 1.6TB. Not much larger than four 3.5" hard drives, the HDZ-UE1.6TS goes to show that any (rich) consumer can now easily have a boatload of storage space. Here's the Japanese press release." (At current conversion rates, this would cost nearly $2,900.)
Seems to me like this will be one of those pieces of equipment we will all "laugh at" next fall. I mean the size is good and all... but it is huge.
Sorta reminds me of the 270gb MaxAttach file storage unit I have sitting in my rack @ work. The thing is huge... but 3 years ago it was "modern." Now I can buy a 400gb SATA hard drive that is 1/20th the size and has even MORE space.
Infact -- speaking of which -- with SATA getting bigger and bigger this thing is a "waste of money."
the recent trend towards demand for higher storage capacities
This is a recent trend?
6 250gb hd's a good controller for ~$1200? what is the point of this besides having another toy?
Hmm... $2900 for 1.6TB of storage? And no ethernet? Why not just build your own NAS unit that has the same amount of storage, includes ethernet, and would cost you about $1200-$1400? You could even put it in a fancy case for that price.
With the cost of IDE hard drives dropping, you could get 4 300 Gig IDE (or SATA) hard drives, and put them in an external case. I think you could shave a $1000 off that price. Even better would be if it was a network storage device.
The device is basically an external hardware RAID implementation. I'm just wondering what they do to help the reliability of the data. I also wonder if you can choose to change the RAID configuration of the device. For people that don't care too much about the preservation of data, 4 drives running in parallel, at 4 times the speed would be kinda neat :)
Then why does it clearly say 1.2TB on the front of the case?
I'm sure you already knew this, but obviously they figured it looks the same as an older model of the same line, seen here: http://www.iodata.jp/news/2004/12/hdz-ue.htm You can also see how much you save by going for four 300MB drives (over $600 saved), or four 250MB drives (nearly $1900 saved) on that page.
Since it uses SBP/RBC and USB Mass Storage Device class, what makes you think it won't work on Linux?
You want "real world" units?
:)
700 kbps video + 128 kbps audio * 2 channels = 410 MB per hour.
1.6 (marketing) terabytes / 410 MB = 3900 hours of divx porn.
"Real world" enough for you?
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
Who would have a use for this type of storage, yet would at the same time run Windows Me?
It was not that many years ago.... OK, it was a long time, when Radio Shack was selling a 5K Tandy hard drive (the size of two shoeboxes) for $5,000.
These 4 disks are striped (RAID 0), which is great for performance, but if any of the drives fails, you lost all the 1.6 TB of data. Given that there are 4 drives in the enclosure, your chances of a disk failure are about 4 times higher than that of a single drive.
Bear in mind that typically, these disk enclosures for home use have poor ventilation, so the likelyhood of a drive failing is higher than with the PCs internal drives.
For me, the odds don't seem good. I would much rather have RAID 1 + 0 (two mirrored disksets that are then striped) with half the capacity but better protection from data loss.
This is precisely the reason why I am holding off from buying one of these disk boxes, even though I like the idea of having a place to store all my CD images - and more.
Sigged!
So, I take it you haven't ripped any of your CDs to MP3/AAC/WMA/ogg/etc.? 'Cause, you know, it's just so easy to walk over to your wall, pull down a CD, pop it in your player... :-)
Even if I *weren't* so totally lazy, I'd *still* want to rip all my DVDs. First of all, as a TiVo owner, I *totally love* the whole "press a button and see a list of everything I have" thing.
Secondly, I hate media. That is, little plastic and metal things I have to move around. (Furethermore: I could care less about CD liner notes, and every DVD box is the same--picture of the actor on the front, and a back panel listing all the special DVD features like... interactive menus, and subtitles! ooh... But anyway,)
I hate taking out these fragile things and moving them into and out of the player (and then the bonus: that I *have to* sit through the bullshit red warnings in nine languages, and the 30-minute intro montage just to get to the fscking menus.) If I scratch one while taking it out of its shitty case (I never thought they'd find worse packaging than plain-old jewel cases, but here we are--press the center button, bend your DVD backwards, and hope it doesn't get scratched when it *finally* springs out of the vise-like holder) then yippee, I get to pay for it again!
I'd much rather have it all on HDs. I shouldn't touch anything but buttons. Plus, once it's all, y'know, *computerized*, you get all kinds of neat bonuses, like "Show me all the Harrison Ford movies I have" or "what comedies have I not watched in the last six months" and things like that.
And the randomness is a bonus. Sometimes I can't really think of what I'd like to watch, and I've even had this happen: I'll be flipping around HBO or Showtime, see a move on *that I own*, and I'll leave it on, just because it's already on and it's as good of a choice as I could have made on my own. So a "random play", just like all CD and MP3 players have, would be cool, too. Especially if my Humongo Media Server has shows as well as movies--maybe Used Cars, maybe The Simpsons, maybe Terminator 2, maybe Seinfeld, maybe Law and Order... just the thing to have on for a long Saturday of room-cleaning and slashdot-reading.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.