(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best internal hard drives

You have a few options at that price point.

Plex needs a pretty powerful processor for transcoding - for 1 stream, we're talking a reasonably recent i3 (I think Sandy Bridge would do it), for more than that... that's into Xeon territory (or i5 & i7 quad cores).

The cheapest server I'd trust would be the $17USD Kimsufi with an i3 and a 1TB drive. Bump that up to $19USD and you've got a 2TB drive. Don't hold me to that, though; I've never tried the particular processor that they use. I'm just basing this off the usage that my own personal Plex server encounters under load. That's probably the best option on the Kimsufi side of things. Of course, this doesn't meet your space requirements, but you can always buy multiple of them - and the advantage there is that you have multiple processors (for transcoding) as well as multiple network interfaces (for seeding, watching movies, all that jazz).

E3-SAT-1 ($42USD) is a good option for SoYouStart (16GB RAM, 2x2TB, E3-1225v2). I would trust the E3-1225v2 to handle Plex just fine because Geekbench puts it at a similar performance level (perhaps a little higher) to the processor I use in my Plex machine (i3-6100), and that can handle BD remuxes just fine. I've never had multiple streams of super high bitrate stuff though, so that's always something to look into. E3-SAT-2 and E3-SAT-3 aren't worth the high extra cost, because you won't be needing that RAM. Hyperthreading on E3-SAT-3 would help with transcodes, but not worth the huge price premium IMO. Of course, this storage config is still lacking for your requirements. Which brings us on to the "big daddy" of servers on SYS, haha.

E5-SAT-2-32 ($66USD) gives you a kick ass 6 core processor (Geekbench is mostly dominated by the v2 version of the processor but the few v1 benchmarks I've seen put it at 17k-18k multi core, versus the 9k-10k multi core score of E3-SAT-1), 32GB of RAM, and two 3TB drives. This will handle encodes just fine. It also has just the right amount of storage.

Those are really the best options I can think of in any given price bracket for OVH. These servers all give you great price per TB (very near to $10 per TB for all of them) and I think the CPU power scales pretty linearly with the server cost. So it really depends what you want to do. You could get multiple cheap servers (for $76USD you'd get 8TB with Kimsufi, $84USD for 8TB with E3-SAT-1). Two of the E3-SAT-1s would certainly beat out one of the E5-SAT-2-32s in transcoding power - the Kimsufis would probably be the same. Your bandwidth is also split over multiple ports, so you have a higher throughput. Also, if one server fails, the other ones should be unaffected. The disadvantage is that you have to manage all of this, and it is without a doubt easier to just get one big server and stick everything on that. To be honest, it's probably best to just keep everything on the one server, so the E5-SAT-2-32 is probably the best option if you want to get the full 6TB of storage right now. Now is a very good time to buy a SoYouStart server, too; they usually have VERY expensive setup fees (closer to $100 than $0, I don't recall the exact numbers, but it's quite a bit), but for this month they have decided to waive the fees, so it might be best to jump on it now if you want to avoid that.

You can have some really elaborate setups if you separate things, but that generally costs A LOT. A friend of mine had a setup with a rendering server with an amazing CPU and port that is connected to numerous mass-storage servers that have lower costs per TB of storage but not very good CPUs. It was a neat project, but it cost a lot.

In the long run though, if it's just for personal use (and if you have the ability to do it), I would advise just buying a NAS and sticking everything on there. It's a high upfront cost, but it is totally worth it in the end, because hard drives will cost you about $25USD per TB on Amazon. It'll have paid for itself in a few months, and the advantage is, it actually belongs to you, whereas with dedicated servers, you'll have to continue paying forever... I'd only consider a dedicated server if you have a very nomadic lifestyle or if you don't have good internet uplink and want to host for your friends.

Haha, yes you did wait long enough, there's some good P67s on the market now. That's a good build but a few changes: (Looks like you have a total now of $730, I'll stick to that)

CPU: Intel i5-2500k The whole point of waiting for P67 boards is to be able to overclock your CPU, which the 2500k is much much much better at overclocking than the 2500. (And it gets you Shogun 2: Total War free!)

OR

This RAM and CPU combo gives you the i5-2500k along with 8 GB of slightly cheaper/better (as it's two sticks instead of four so easier upgrading)

HDD: Samsung F3 1 TB The Seagate is what I have and it works, but the F3 is a bit faster and is $10 cheaper!

RAM: You don't need 8 GB I imagine, 4 GB will work fine, but if you want it, go for it. If you will go with 4 GB This one is good


Case/PSU: The Challenger and Raidmax are good choices, however this combo for the Challenger and PSU is $4 more but gives you 70W more power and an 80 Plus Bronze PSU, which means it's more efficient and will save you money in power bills.

Mobo: The one you have is perfect for your current purposes. The only downside of it is that it has little upgrade room in terms of SLI or Crossfireing the GPUs. This Mobo costs $15 more but would let you Crossfire your GPUs, but that in turn would make you have to choose a different graphics card. And then there is this Mobo and RAM which would up your total to about $750, but I think it's worth it for an even much better Mobo.

Another option is this combo which contains mostly the same parts you chose, but a better Mobo.


Finally in terms of GPU, there are a couple ways you could get more oomph out of this. For $10 more total you could get the original Mobo you had and a GTX 460 1 GB a very good choice. If you wanted to Crossfire, a 6850 would be best. The one you had is very good too, but at this price range it'd be nice to get you something with some more power.

Anyways I've been rambling and making all sorts of changes. Let me know what you like and dislike about what I've said and I'm happy to help modify it some more and help you find good deals.

> My main purpose for it is really to do backups with a RAID setup and photo and other file storage.

RAID is not a backup solution. It is simply a way to utilize multiple disks to increase storage space or overall performance. You will still need some kind of backup, whether that is some kind of external USB drive like a WD Passport or using a cloud-based service like CrashPlan, that's up to you.

> I’m willing to spend about $300-$250 on the case and any components needed for it.

If you're planning on building your own server, $300 won't get you very far at all. Depending on the size you're looking for, the hard drives alone will cost more than that.

> If I wanted to “build my own” how are NAS cases usually sold?

Unfortunately there aren't a lot of NAS-centric cases around.

The SilverStone DS308 is kinda neat. It has 8 hot-swappable drive bays.

What a lot of people do is go with some sort of tower case and some hot-swap trays like these.

>Is it likely that I’ll need to buy a power supply, RAM, fans, or any other components for them?

Unless you already have an old PC laying around that you can use, then yes.

>If I built my own how hard is it to install software, etc. to run it?

Do you have experience installing an OS on a PC or laptop? I would recommend going with some flavor of Linux like Ubuntu Server. The installation process is very easy, especially if you're doing it on a brand new computer where you don't need to worry about overwriting anything important.

>What’s the minimum processor speed and memory I should aim for?

Unless you plan on doing things like Video Transcoding or running Virtual Machines, CPU speed and RAM aren't really that important. What's more important is the network hardware and your SATA controller. You want to make sure it has a good 1Gbps network card (Intel is preferred). You also want to make sure that it has SATA-III and that there are enough ports for each hard drive.

>Am I likely to get better performance by tailoring it to better specs (faster processor, more RAM) by building my own then buying a “diskless” setup?

Almost certainly. It will also be more flexible and able to do more things. It will also give you valuable knowledge and experience that you can use in the future.

>Even if I buy a "diskless" system am I going to need to buy an OS? Which one would be best?

No, you will not need any separate OS. These systems are basically little self-contained PCs with an ARM (or sometimes an x86) processor and some sort of Linux-based OS running on them. They're pretty much Plug 'n Play, just load them with some hard drives, set up networking and they're good to go.

> If I just wanted to buy one that’s completely setup, or a “diskless “ that I would add my own NAS HDs too what would you recommend?

Whatever is the least expensive, highest rated and has the features you require. The rest does not matter.

Ultimately what you decide to do depends on your goals. Do you want to learn about building and configuring a server? Then you might consider sourcing the parts and building something yourself. This will be the more expensive approach but it will also be more flexible, have much more performance than a pre-built solution and give you knowledge you can use in the future.

If you want something that Just Works™ then I would go with a prebuilt NAS like the DS216, it looks like a decent system and will give you the features you require.

Hope that helps!

Here's how I'd approach this:
Parts list:
The descriptions next to the drives are what they were used for, not necessarily the proposed purpose. Thought this would help you know where the drives were coming from. I used what you had listed in your OP.

AMD FX-8350 Eight-Core 8958 Passmark
FX RAM 16 GB
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Four-Core 3916 Passmark
PHE RAM 12 GB
SSD (was OS) 256 GB
SSD (was OS) 256 GB
SSD (was Empty) 512 GB
HHD (was General Storage) 4 TB
HHD (was Movies) 2 TB
HHD (was TV) 4 TB
HHD (was Empty) 2 TB
HHD (was Empty) 1 TB
HHD (was Empty) 1 TB
HHD (was Empty) 0.5 TB
HHD (was Empty) 0.5 TB
HHD (was Empty) 0.5 TB
HHD external (was Backup, General) 6 TB

You're running "plex, sabnzbd, sonarr, etc" so most of your data is disposable. You can setup a list of what you want and those services will download it all again. I'm guessing the real critical stuff is only about 1TB. Make sure that 1TB is on the 6TB external drive (which it sounds like it already is). The rest of the space on that 6TB is just gravy, use it to store anything that's hard to download again.
I'm also guessing, that of the 1TB of important stuff, there's probably a 1/2 of that, that is super critical, as in, you lose this shit and you might cry a little inside. Take one of the 500GB drives, connect it to your Windows machine, with the 6TB external, and make another copy of the data on the 500GB drive. This is now your "Oh Shit" backup if everything starts on fire. Save this someplace like your night stand. If you ever need to get the hell out, at least you have this drive.

PC 1 - Freenas on baremetal parts list
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Four-Core 3916 Passmark
PHE RAM 12 GB
SSD (OS) 120 GB $22.79
SSD (OS) 120 GB $22.79
Raid Z1
HHD (General Storage) 4 TB
HHD (TV) 4 TB
HHD (NEW) 4 TB $71.99
HHD (NEW) 4 TB $71.99
HHD (NEW) 4 TB $71.99
Raw 16.87 TB
ZFS usable storage capacity 13 TB

PC 1 - Freenas on baremetal
The Freenas box goes on the Phenom Four core machine because it has a lower Passmark score. Freenas does not need a strong processor to run well. This will do fine. The 12GB of RAM you have for the machine is also fine. The performance of the machine will not be AMAZEBALLZ, but will be enough. All this box does is securely store your data. There's no Apps, VMs, etc. to consume performance/resources. It just holds shit.
Use these two drives in Raid1 (configure the raid on the motherboard) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G3L3DRK/?coliid=I10WJEEOATUUU8 This is where your Freenas OS will be installed. These drives are great. I've used 100's of them at work. And at $22 a piece, it's better than installing Freenas on a single thumb drive.
The existing 4TB drives you have, with 3 proposed 4TB drives from Amazon will give you almost twice the usable space you have now, and a single drive can die because the setup is Freenas RaidZ1. The proposed drives are WD blues, Reds are better, but your workload is mainly reading movies (one time write, many time read), and this will work well and save some money. https://www.amazon.com/WD-Blue-4TB-Hard-Drive/dp/B013HNYV8I
You now have a Freenas box with 13TB of usable space. Safe and secure. Plus all the bells and whistles ZFS has to offer.

PC 2 - Unraid parts list
AMD FX-8350 Eight-Core 8958 Passmark
FX RAM 16 GB
SSD (OS) 256 GB
SSD (OS) 256 GB For OS
SSD (Empty) 512 GB
HHD (Movies) 2 TB Raid1
HHD (Empty) 2 TB Raid1
HHD (Empty) 1 TB
HHD (Empty) 1 TB

PC 2 - Unraid
This is your fun box. Here you install your Main windows/Ubuntu OS. You have "plex, sabnzbd, sonarr, etc" installed. You can spin up VMs. With PC1 storing all your data, make a share that PC2 and the VMs can access. The majority of the storage on PC2 will be for OS, ingesting data, maybe handbrake, etc. All of this is happening on 100% SSD environment thanks to the 3 SSDs you already have.
The 2x 2TB and the 2x 1TB can be spanned using Unraid. Use this space as a backup of data on PC1. Expand as needed with single drive purchases which works great with Unraid. This acts as yet another backup of your data. Data on PC1 is the primary and can sustain one drive failure. Data on PC2 is your secondary, can sustain 0 failures, or make some rules in Unraid for certain folders to have redundancy.
Once everything is setup, connect the 6TB external to the Unraid box and start copying the data over to the Freenas box. You can setup a copy job that makes sure that data on PC1 is in sync with data on PC2 daily (PC1 is always the primary). Keep the 6TB drive as a third backup. This you will need to do manually, unless you use Unraid to manage the external. You're now pretty close to having a "3-2-1 Backup Rule", along with a 100% SSD playground for productivity.

Total cost: $260
Time: 3 days

Generally, USB 3 drives are SATA drives with a SATA->USB3 bridge chip and an enclosure. You can buy a branded enclosure from one of the big/known companies but you don't have any control over the drive they put in there. Often, they just buy the cheapest drives they can find so one company/box/brand of external drives may not have the same drive under the hood. If you want to guarantee you're using a particular drive brand, you're better off rolling your own. You can buy a 1TB, 2.5" Western Digital "Blue" grade SATA drive on Amazon for $60USD and pop it in an inexpensive ($10) SATA->USB enclosure.

I just picked up one of these to put old spinning disks I had laying around for a friend to use as a Time Machine backup drive. So far so good.

I'm pretty far removed from this business now but I used to for for Oxford Semiconductor a decade ago where we designed bridge chips for direct and network attached storage. We worked with the big kids at Seagate, WD, Samsung, etc. My understanding of meantime between failure rates tends to favor WD for spinning disks as you've discovered. But I'm working with pretty old info. :)

>I didnt get an SSD with my computer that I built a couple weeks ago, I've been meaning to upload pics but I haven't gotten around to it. Anyway I currently have my OS on a mechanical hard drive and just want to know if I can move my OS easily. I haven't really played around with my motherboards BIOS at all.

It is not hard at all. I did it last month and it was a breeze. You have several options.

Depending on the company you get the ssd from, some offer transfer software (seagate's worked flawlessly for me a month ago). If not, there's some you can buy for pretty cheap.

If that's the case, you just pop it in, wire it up, and make sure the bios sees it. Load the software up, if it sees the drive, just transfer it over. With seagate's software it doesn't even have to be the same size or larger, as long as the in-use space is less than the size of your new drive. Once you're done, switch the cables on the drives, and it will be booting off your new one, or you can change the bios setting to boot off the new drive.

That's the easy way, and I'd be happy to give a beter breakdown of how to do it if you need to, but its not too hard.

Now if you don't have space (say you got a laptop) there's little kits you can buy that will turn your new drive into a sort of exterior hard drive briefly, connected by USB. If the software you have is cool with this (seagate's is), then its like above and a breeze.

While there are advantages to a fresh install, there's a lot of disadvantages to. And you can always do a clean install at a later date.

Here's what I bought:

SSD (hybdrid, but its super cheap and almost as fast):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00691WMJG/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00

exterior unit (this worked as a test, but i didn't end up using it this time. I will when I upgrade my wife's laptop)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002JQNXZC/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i01

and don't forget mounting hardware if your drive isn't setup for a 2.5"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0064VP70W/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00

What you say makes sense... I had a 2TB originally as I stated and after it was all set up it was actually 1.7TB. I don't ever recall going below 1TB and tbh I haven't got many games (especially not 130!). There is a handful of games I want to play I'm not a gamer I just play now and again but I literally have no space for even a single game update. As the Seagate/Samsung 2TB I had before stopped working after a while (could just have been that I got a faulty drive), I'm a bit off on the idea of going again for another Seagate internal. But it seems to be different for each user... Some have no issues as you don't either.

I would like to download all the free PS+ games even though I won't play any of them just so it's there and I don't have to wait to download or install it.

Also, the 5TB externals I was referring to are both desktop drives with AC adopters and are the 3.5" type if I remember correctly. Here are the links:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elements-Desktop-External-Drive-WDBWLG0050HBK-EESN/dp/B00NAQG0VY



https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/433/Seagate-Expansion-Desktop-inch-External-Hard-Drive/B00UNA1O0W/ref=pd_lpo_vtph_147_tr_t_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=9G4W82253RRC5K9VX7BX

The advantage of having the internal is the SSHD even though only slight difference it's a difference nonetheless if I'm right. And it comes with 5 year limited warranty. And you're right I know I won't use the 2TB up right now. Like I said only a handful more games id play right now until newer titles are released. If on average a game is 50GB that's an extra 20 games if not more I can install on the 2TB compared to the stock drive.

The advantage of the 5TB external drive is well it's 5TB so extra £40 for 3TB more than the Firecuda. I don't know about the read write speeds though which is a question I have for anyone. Don't know about the robustness of these hard drives as they seem "affordable". Would these drives go slow as the drive fills up? I know I said load times don't matter as much but would it be significantly affected as more applications are installed?

Is USB 3 better than the internal option? I know I keep asking this but I can't get my head around it. I could buy both but there's no point. Not for now anyway. Maybe in a years time or end of this year I could get a external if I went internal now. It should be a easy decision but I keep going back and forth. Some people say the SSHD is good after a few loads, does this mean say if I regularly play GTA would the game load up faster if I kept closing the game and re-opening it? Or does it mean when I switch the PS4 off if the next day I play GTA again it'll load faster? I'm assuming the latter is incorrect. I make my mind up to get the internal but the fact that I can literally go down the road to pick up the external is tempting.

Could someone please compare all three? Here is the link to the SSHD

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-ST2000LX001-Firecuda-Internal-Hybrid-2-5-Inch/dp/B01M1UQQT5/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1499382385&sr=1-1&keywords=firecuda+2.5

Apologies for the long reply! I'm a tech guy but I know nothing when it comes to this I keep going back and forth as I want the best deal and the best option.

Are you compiling large projects regularly? How long does your biggest build take?

If your not doing anything intense the the i5-2500K is an awful lot of CPU. For most people an i5 will just sit around spinning its wheels at 20% utilization.

First the K is for overclocking so if you're not overclocking then the Intel i5-2400 ($10 off coupon HARDOCPX4X6B ends 4/12) at $180 is a much better deal. If you are just doing normal computer things and non CPU intensive software development then the Intel i3-2100 ($10 off coupon EMCKFKE29 end 4/11) for $115 is a really great processor at a great price. Computer parts are so powerful now that you just don't need a top of the line CPU except for special applications like 3D rendering, video encoding and large project compiling.

Second you can get a much less expensive mobo like the ASRock H61M-VS for $67 or the Biostar H61MU3 H61 uATX to get USB 3.0 for $87. Either of these boards will give you integrated graphics too so you can drop the GT 210.

Almost any PSU will work as this is not a power hungry system. If you might want to add a gaming GPU later then get the OCZ SXS2 600W ($10 off coupon OCZAPRIL713 ends 4/13) (review) for $30. Otherwise the Antec Basiq 350W PSU ($5 off coupon EMCKFKE25 ends 4/11) for $15 will be fine. The Antec is not very efficient though so get the OCZ if efficiency is an issue for you.

The Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB 7200RPM for $60 performs about the same as the WD black and is bigger too.

Few people can make use of more than 4GB of RAM. Mushkin 4GB DDR3-1333 for $40.

You're going to need a case if you aren't recycling an old one. NZXT Gamma, Cooler Master Elite 430 and HEC Blitz are all $40.

The bottom line is you just don't need to spend very much to get a great computer anymore. $1000 is a huge budget. You could build two very nice i3 systems for $353 each and still be spending less.

The part in your edit doesn't sound familiar at all.

While you did say you don't feel like building one, but have you seen/heard of the Intel NUC? if not i'd look into it. They're great little PC's and while there is some assembly required it's definitely nowhere near as much work as a build from scratch. The NUC comes with most things pre-installed the only components you have to install are the RAM, HDD and/or SSD (m.2) and screw the lid on.

To answer your main question neither the one you have listed nor any off-the-shelf systems have extra drive mounting spots in most cases.

I did go ahead and price a NUC setup for you. You can get a NUC8i3BEH which has a comparable cpu to the one in the dell you linked,
a Samsung 970 EVO 250 GB NVMe m.2 drive, 1 TB 2.5" HDD, 8 GB of DDR4 memory, and a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse combo for $488.35 and while yes there is a little work involved, and you'd have to install a copy of Win 10 on it, It'd be a better setup than what that dell would be. Plus it takes up a lot less space.

I've built like 10 of these for my company and they're fantastic.

First, yes, an SSHD will work in the PS4, but is it worth it? I don't think so.

I think an SSHD will have mostly no noticeable benefit in a PS4. An SSHD has 8GB of solid state cache designed to speed up an operating system on a computer. The PS4 OS will reside in RAM, so no benefit there. The 8GB cache will learn the important files for a particular game, and that game will see an improvement until you play a different game. Then the entire contents of the cached will be flushed and the system will start over caching the new games contents. So every time you play a different game, the caching will start over. Do you play more than one game at a time?

Remember that SSHD's are 5900 rpm drives. I think it would be MUCH better to get a 7200rpm 1TB HDD.

1. It's a reasonable cost... ~$100
   
2. Storage increase
   
3. A minor speed increase
   
   http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Travelstar-2-5-Inch-7200RPM-Internal/dp/B0097LG9U8

I would avoid the firepro GPU, personally.

Designed for Computer Aided Drafting applications. My understanding is that they are great cards, but they aren't really optimized for gaming. For what they do they have an awesome cost per performance ratio, but for gaming it will be kind of the other way. If you're doing CAD applications your processor will bottleneck you before your GPU regardless.

Buy the beefiest card you can listed here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gpus,4380.html

That being said, I think NVIDIA just announced their new line of cards, and Amd is supposed to right away. They very well could top this list for cost per performance when they are released. Supposedly they are a big deal. When you building?

http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/5/7/11615806/nvidia-gtx-1080-1070-pascal-specs-price-release-date

The GTX 1060 might be right in your wheelhouse. I am sure the amd cards will be pretty good too.

Also, you might get a better deal by buying one large hard disk and creating 2 seperate partitions on the drive. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00EIQTKAS/ref=mp_s_a_1_11?qid=1463014938&sr=8-11&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=hard+drive

On Synology, using PhotoStation, you can tag: Location, People, and generic tags. So, outside of the location and people in that photo, you can tag specific qualities of the photo (landscape, car, dog, animal, black and white, birthday, etc etc)

You also have the option to share the photo or add the photo to a shared album so you can share multiple photos at once.

At the top of the linked page, you can click a link for a live demo of DiskStation Manager, of which PhotoStation is a part of. And you can explore it on your own. They don't give you a username and password, but I was automatically logged in after I waited a short while. Once logged in, click the set of four squares in the upper left and select PhotoStation. Play around with it and see if that's what you want.

Keep in mind the the 2-bay Synology's don't come with hard drives, so that'll be a separate expense:

• $150USD - https://smile.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS216se-Diskless/dp/B014SKVQR8/
  
• $84USD (x2) - https://smile.amazon.com/Red-2TB-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B008JJLZ7G/
  
• $318USD - Subtotal (doesn't include tax)
  
  I linked to a WD Red HDD because those are rated and designed for use in NAS systems, it's a drive I'm familiar with, and a brand I trust. But, in the end, you can go with whatever drive you want. For what it's worth, the 2TB Seagate IronWolf, another HDD made for NAS systems, is only $79USD, bringing the subtotal down to $308USD.
  
  I'm going to assume you have minimal knowledge of NAS systems so I'll add some additional info. You also may need more than 2TB drives, depending on how you set up the volume, RAID1 or RAID0, you'll have 2TB and 4TB of space respectively. I’m not saying you’ll need 3 drives but if 2TB or 4TB isn’t enough space, you’ll n Ed to purchase larger drives. But, that should be plenty of space.
  
  RAID1 will mirror the drives, so all the data is both drives. So if one drive fails, all the data is still available. Just put in another 2TB drive and the system will copy the data over to the new drive. RAID1 has redundancy and you're protected against a drive failure.
  
  RAID0 will combine the drive space. So, two 2TB drives is now 4TB of space. However, if one of those drives fails, you lose all the data. RAID0 is particularly useful for speed, and for program scratch discs. I would never keep important stuff, like photos of my family and vacations, on a RAID0 NAS system.
  
  Of course, RAID is not a backup. Just because there is redundancy doesn't mean your data is safe. I'm not sure if it's the same in Canada but if you have Amazon Prime, you can back up all your photos to Amazons Cloud Drive. Depending on how/where PhotoStation stores your photos, you may be able to set up a backup task to copy the photos on the NAS to Amazon Cloud for you. That way, should the RAID1 array fail, and you need to replace both drives, your photos are still secure & safe and you'll be able to download them off Amazon.

I can't find any info on this on Western Digital's website. Is there a place that lists the OEM drive inside of different external enclosures? I realize that a manufacturer like Western Digital might put different OEM drives (Hitachi/WD) into the same enclosure as long as the specs are the same. But still, it would be nice to have somewhere to check to see what you're getting inside that plastic.

Edit: finally found a phrase that gave me what I wanted on Google. "what drive is inside wd my book" was it.

>We can only guarantee drive capacity. We cannot guarantee a particular internal hard drive model, data interface, rotational speed, or cache size in the external hard drive enclosure.

Source from WD's website

That's crazy to me. That means that the $130 4TB WD My book might have a $128 5400 RPM Drive or potentially a $200 7200 RPM Drive.

They only guarantee capacity? That's crazy to me. I assume they do this so that when they buy another manufacturer's stuff like they did with Hitachi, they can get rid of old stock without having to worry about matching specs. That's honestly great news as long as they're selling the External at about the same price as their cheapest OEM drive. Some lucky guy is getting free random upgrades.

The seagate slim external 2tb you can buy on Amazon or Best Buy for 79-99 dollars. You just have to pop it out its external case, but that's easy. Only decent priced 2tb that's gonna fit for a good price. Now if you're going 1tb you have a lot of choices in the ssd,5400,7200. I think the best rates one on ign and most games site was this suprisngly, even up against hybrids and ssd. Based on all the reviews I've seen the travel star out does the hybrid, out does the stock one and fits comfortably up there with some top end ssd load times by 2-5 seconds...though limited to 1tb.The seagate slim is slightly better load time than stock but nothing significant, just more storage. I'm in the process as well and you really have to ask if you want slight speed,big storage or somewhere in the middle. There's really no affordable ssd that covers all bases right now.

http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Travelstar-0S03563-SATA-Drive/dp/B0097LG9U8

Safe options to avoid modifying your existing Windows drive:

• Buy a Sandisk USB3 16-32GB flash drive, and perform a conventional install to it. You would be amazed at how fast Arch boots and runs this way!. Be careful about your /dev devices during this process. It's really pretty easy. It also functions as a rescue tool, and as a way to easily demo Linux on a non-believers laptop for them.
  
  
• Buy or find an inexpensive ($50) hdd (for Arch, temporarily) and swap your Windows drive out.
  
  
• As others say, try VirtualBox under Windows to host your Arch guest.
  
  I still use the first option everyday even after years.
  
  The first two options will safely get you into Arch, and since they are hardware installs, they are exact practice for your final SSD install. (In my experience, VM's "hide" the (maybe slight) complexity of storage, network and graphics).
  
  Good luck.

4tb is probably way too much but 2tb can easily handle 30+ games

If anyone is looking to upgrade, I'd recommend the best value for money upgrade which is Seagate's FireCuda 2TB SSHD that was released just a few months ago. Not only you get a huge storage boost, you also get better loading times. I swear my Witcher 3 loads now take 20-30 seconds less

UK link I got it for £99, it is now being sold for £120 the price fluctuates according to orders I think

US link cheaper than in the UK

Hi I wanted to know when with upgrading, with the 8 GB DDR4, 2666 MT/s (to make it 16GB), a usb portable hard drive (I kinda like this as I also use Xbox, it’s good for space on there too) or an 2.5 ssd 1TB?
Can I use any? Is there a limit? Is there any good but for a good price? Because I’ve seen a

For the 8GB DDR4;

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B071KNKBQ1/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_L5f4DbP439D6A

And the 2.5 ssd;


Western Digital Blue 1 TB SATA 2.5-Inch Hard Drive https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B071F9MLJJ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_C9f4Db7T9B71D

Like and the hard drive is a hard drive really 😂

I just need a 2ed idea of it these won’t work or this there one I need? Because it’s a pretty good price and I don’t mind spending £80 for an upgrade 😂

As /u/just_insane has mentioned, plex is a good option for streaming. I'm an opponent of freenas, in favor of using something homebrew (zfsonlinux with debian or ubuntu, in my case, gentoo with zfs) to do what you need. I don't like how finicky freenas can be even with server-grade hardware. It's just not my thing.

That said, for someone who's new, it may be a good idea to try out freenas or nas4free. I just finished building a 16TB usable (20.5TB raw) system last week. I'll link my items below.

2x iocrest controllers

1x16GB kingston ECC ram

1xNZXT source 210

5xHGST 4TB deskstar NAS

1xsupermicro mbd-x9scm-f-o - Great board. Loving it so far. dual onboard nic is nice.

2x850 Pro 256GB that I had laying around

1x 550W PSU laying around.

total ran me about $1300 and I'm able to max out a 2x1GB LACP setup writing and reading directly on rust.

EDIT: my recommendation, in most cases, is to at least do raidz1 (RAID5). RAID is no substitute for backups though, so invest in something offsite and make sure it's staying backed up. I use CrashPlan for offsite and local backups and it works like a charm.

"Revit Server" is an application that sits on a Windows Server 2012 R2 system to help keep large Revit projects in sync with many designers working at the same time. From what I've read, this is a requirement to keep files synced between multiple designers if any designers are offsite. There appears to be some debate on Revit forums if it's a necessity/requirement for even local groups, if there's a large-number of designers on the same project/server.

The alternative is simply a central File Share that can sit on a NAS device. QNAP and Synology are my 2 goto pre-built brands for small work-group NAS. If the local network is fast enough (i.e. all designers on wired gigabit, not high latency or unreliable wifi), it looks like a central file share is enough for most small teams. Looks like this is the approach by most teams on the same site of less that 10 designers.

It's important to realize that just centralizing files in a Revit Server or a NAS are NOT backups. That's live files you are editing. You'll still want a backup solution. In it's simplest form, a large external USB for the offline backup of your NAS. A more elegant and automated solution would be a second small 2-bay (i.e. cheaper) NAS to backup to remotely. Or even automated Cloud backups if that's your thing.

Onto the parts detail help. If you are just looking for simple, centralized storage NAS: There are now pure SSD solutions. QNAP has the TBS-452A you can fill it with 4x 500GB or 4x 1TB SSDs, giving you 1.5TB or 3TB of RAID 5 storage on your network.

Here's the QNAP TBS-453A SSD NAS shopping list:
------------------------------------------------------------

• $450 - QNAP TBS-453A-4G-US - [B&H Photo] (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1249544-REG/qnap_tbs_453a_4g_us_tbs_453a_4_bay_m_2_nasbook.html) / Amazon
  
• $40 - 8GB RAM Kit - Amazon
  
  ... Storage Capacity Options ...
  
  
• $640 - 1TB (RAID10 or RAID6) or 1.5TB (RAID5) - 4x Samsung 850 EVO 500GB - $170 each - Amazon
  
  or
  
  
• $1040 - 2TB (RAID10 or RAID6) or 3TB (RAID5) - - 4x SanDisk X400 1TB - $260 each - Amazon
  
  
  
  2nd NAS for Backup (Onsite or Offsite):
  
  
• $310 - QNAP TS-251+ - Amazon
  
• $480 - 6TB (RAID1) - 2x WD Red 6TB Drive - $240 each - Amazon
  
  
  
  
  -------------------------------------
  
  *Quick RAID Primer:
  
  

• RAID 5 - 1 drive can fail and you keep running fine. Some processor overhead and added latency for the parity calculations. Capacity is Total Space minus 1 Drive's Capacity
  
• RAID 6 - 2 drives can fail and you keep running fine. Some processor overhead and added latency for the parity calculations. Capacity is Total Space minus 2 Drive's Capacity
  
• RAID 1 - Limited to 2 Drives total. 1 drive can fail and you keep running fine. Almost no latency and processor overhead. Capacity is half Total Space.
  
• RAID 10 - 1 drive can fail and you keep running fine. Almost no latency and processor overhead. Capacity is half Total Space.
  
  ___
  
  
  
  If you actually want a "Revit Server" full Windows Server 2012 R2 Application server, then you are looking at something with far more involved software setup and maintenance. You may want the help of a local freelance Windows Server Sysadmin to get it all configured and maintained. If you are looking for a parts-list for something like that, let me know.

i think it is superior, but like on the iMacs, your paying an extra 200 dollars to go from an 1tb fusion drive to a 2tb fusion drive, that cost differential is only 20 fucking bucks on amazon.

So yeah, screw the people down voting me for whats true lol, apple is overpriced and they know it, I'm just willing to pay for it because of the OS and i love the form factor.

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Desktop-3-5-Inch-Internal-ST2000DX001/dp/B00EIQTKAS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467514611&sr=8-1&keywords=fusion+drive

1. Unless you already have purchased it I would not go for that SSD. Currently shows as 32GB? Expensive and small capacity. I really would suggest an SSD which a little higher capacity even if it's not NVMe such as this.
   
   
2. Are you going to be using this in a certain RAID set-up?
   
   
3. Going for 24/7 operation? If so they're a little more expensive but I would highly suggest NAS certified drives as in my experience they really are worth it if you want something that can be on nearly all the time without having to worry about it. 4 1TB drives cost you £138 currently, a 4TB NAS drive goes for around £110 or this
   
   Saying that I still suggest going for 6TB NAS drive as they're a little more expensive but better such as this WD NAS.
   
   Hope this helps!

Sure thing, here you go:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/jPCsqk

Those are the actual parts I used. I think with PCPP you could pick a few cheaper components if you can find them. It looks like some of these are more than I paid. Like my case was $42, not $48, for example. Also, PCPP lists the HDD I bought for like $98 which is crazy, it's Western Digital 5400 RPM 1TB drive -$47. Also, I only paid $34 for the RAM on Amazon, dunno why it's so high now but just pick something cheaper if you go PCPP.

Some parts go for a bit less on eBay if you're patient, and I shaved price off with a few Amazon Warehouse deals (I think the CPU was open box and the case was a return due to dented box. It was slightly dented but easily corrected), so that's how we kept the price lower than retail.

I wanted to keep a power constrained build. If that's not important to you, you can also have good luck with ebay deals on an i5-4590k, which you could definitely turn into a performer. It's already high performance and has Overclocking headroom. Only caveat is that it's 95w, not 45w - 65w like the AMD chip I used (though Intel has good efficiency so actual power draw is up for debate).

Making your own external is a good way to go (its easier than you think).


You just have to decide if you want to go with a 2.5 inch drive or a 3.5 in drive.


2.5 inch drive

• Small and portable
  
  
• Only requires a USB cable (no mains power adapter)
  
  
• Up to 2TB in capacity, but only 1TB if you want 7200RPM instead of 5400RPM (Faster)
  
  
  3.5 inch drive
  
  
• Much, much larger and heavier
  
  
• Up to 6TB in capacity (3TB is usually the sweet spot for price)
  
  
• Most are 7200RPM
  
  
• Unfortunately required mains power as well as USB to Xbox
  
  
  If you want to go 3.5 inch, I'd recommend This Drive and This Enclosure
  
  
  If you want to go 2.5 inch I'd recommend This Drive and This Enclosure
  
  
  Its really easy to install the drive into the enclosure. Basically just slide it in and plug in the cables. Both enclosures and drives come with all the necessary cables etc. Both should work fine with the Xbox and both are incredibly reliable. HGST came out as one of the most reliable drives in a 3 year test of 27000 total drives.

That build is a bit strange. 2300€, but the core performance parts are pretty medium, a GTX 970 and a i5-6600K.

Let's change this up:

pc-kombo shared list

Type|Item|Price

----|:----|:----
CPU | Intel Core i7-6700 | EUR 314,13 @ Amazon.de
Motherboard | Asrock H170 PRO4S | EUR 96,92 @ Amazon.de
Memory | Crucial Value DDR4-2133 (4x8) (32 GB) | EUR 115,32 @ Cyberport
Storage | WD 4TB Blue (4 TB) | EUR 136,95 @ Amazon.de
SSD | SanDisk Ultra II 480 (512 GB) | EUR 124,99 @ Amazon.de
Video Card | Radeon R9 Fury X | EUR 638,47 @ Amazon.de
Case | Fractal Design R5 | EUR 105,44 @ Amazon.de
Power Supply | Antec Edge 550 (550 W) | EUR 106,89 @ Amazon.de
| Total | €1642.10
| Generated by pc-kombo 25.03.2016 |

Way better processor, that is a better fit for VMs. More ram, same reason. A better gpu that could drive a high resolution display. A big HDD for your files, combined with one solid SSD. All that in a quiet case, and with a silent psu. If "on the office desk" means that it has to be a small form factor, both the mainboard and the case would have to get switched out.

Perhaps the SilverStone PS07B-W?

Found this very long video of TTL with a review of the case. It's possible to get the 120 RAD inside this case, but you have to remove all the HDD cages in the front (wich makes it look much cleaner) and place them in the 5,25" drive bays. You can buy 5,25" to 3,5" adapters for this. And you can just ducktape your SSD or use double sized tape OR get an adapter for it. It's also in black, but a little more expensive.

Ow I just found out that the SSD can maybe be mounted when the radiator is in there. (Found a picture with the SSD mounted this way, but without a radiator) When you remove the cage there are still 4 screws there left to mount the SSD. 8 Screws total, 4 for the cage, 4 for the SSD.

Wow, sorry for the rant.

Hope this was helpful! I honestly really like this case myself. But as /u/jasonsan pointed out the Phanteks cases are as well awesome.

Do you mean the Super Slim? The 12 GB model doesn't have a hard disc drive installed, just flash memory, so you need to buy and install one. It's pretty easy. Just make sure to also buy a hard disk mounting caddy like this one. As for hard drives, Western Digital drives are pretty reliable. Here is a 1 TB drive, though if you want to look for a larger drive, I believe PS3's support up to a 1.5 TB drive, not 2 TB.

On your advice I'm going with your build, but I just realized the case you suggested doesn't have any front facing drive bays. Since you convinced me to go with a bigger case I'm keeping this from my old computer and would like to be able to access it from the front. Do you know of any good cases at this size that have that? I really like the design of the one you linked and of course the Bitfenix Prodigy, if that helps you suggest one.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/436734U-IBM-Xseries-X3200M2-Xeon-E3110-Dual-Core-3-0-GHz-1333-MHz-6-MB-L2-cach/152490497509?hash=item23812455e5:g:sGcAAOSwA29Y3FAD - $232 shipped

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Kingston-PC2-5300-4GB-DIMM-667-MHz-DDR2-SDRAM-Memory-KVR667D2D4P5-4G-ECC-Reg/362064073086?epid=170095040&hash=item544cb3517e:g:tA0AAOSwvv9ZiNOG - $35

https://www.amazon.com/ADATA-ISSS314-Industrial-Grade-Solid-ISSS314-032GB/dp/B07577DBBQ/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1522170666&sr=8-13&keywords=32gb+ssd - $37

https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Desktop-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B013HNYV8I/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1522170697&sr=1-4&keywords=4tb+hard+drive - 2x $98

Wow, that came out to exactly $500 even!

The drive size is going to be the biggest differentiator for this and can send the price to over $500 easily.

You can also use a different base system than the x3200 M2, or find a cheaper variant of it. For example, a lot of people really love the HP MicroServer line, which has some great older models, like this guy:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-ProLiant-MicroServer-Turion-II-Neo-N40L-1-5ghz-4gb-RAM-4x-Trays-Sound/372254921378?hash=item56ac1f52a2:g:9nUAAOSwTO9aN~VZ - $120 shipped, and includes the RAM.

Basically, you don't really need a super speedy processor for this to saturate a Gigabit network connection. So find a machine that has other features: enough RAM, lots of drive bays, etc.

I made some assumptions that you want a NAS and not an htpc that plays media but rather just hosts it.

This is sort of a tough one, If you're just looking for a nas there are commercial options available and windows 7 is not a great nas OS. Linux is much better for the sake of configurability and options. and its great free cant beat that.

with that being said you could go out and build a pc but i think a commercial solution would fit you better. simply because its easier... and if your business documents are important you're gonna want to raid

so i spent about 20 minutes trying to find the right hardware and then found this

http://www.amazon.com/Cloud-EX2-Diskless-High-performance-reliability/dp/B00I2P53NY/ref=sr_1_5?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1416612983&sr=1-5&keywords=nas

according to the description it comes with 8tb (two 4tb drives) in a defualt raid 1 which means that you have a total of 4tb of storage but both drives are a mirror of each other ie. if one fails the other is fully intact.

the only problem with this is that it doesnt allow for expansion.

what you could do is get the diskless version and then put two 6tb drives in it and be set for a while it is about $35 over your $650 budget though.

http://www.amazon.com/Cloud-EX2-Diskless-High-performance-reliability/dp/B00I2P53NY/ref=sr_1_5?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1416612983&sr=1-5&keywords=nas


http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LO3KR96/ref=twister_B008VQ8IKY?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

I´ve a Acer Revo One with a i3 and i can handle 1080p. It´s also available with two hardrive slots and a i5 so you can stack it up to 4TB in that. But its 2,5 inch harddrive so i added a simple My Cloud 4TB NAS. Turned off all the BS from WD, so its i can Write with about 70Mbit/s.
So, my Setup

Revo One i3 368$

2TB WD Red 89$

With this Setup for 457$ you have 3TB plus you have a Windows PC.
So, for me that was not enough so i bought a
My Cloud 4TB NAS for 168$, so i´ve a bit more Space, and that is more than enough for me.


The Windows was for the most important thing, because i can easily run everything on that i need like JDownloader etc..
Plus, that PC is connected directly to my Router, nothing else. So i can connect via Remote Desktop from MacBook or any other Windows PC and just administrate everything there. That for me was a big plus.

If i3 is not enough for you, there is a i5 as well, and you can insert there 2 harddrives instead of just one. But it cost 545$.

Also, instead of and old PC, that little things just consumes 16W in idle. I have a meter on it to check.

Seagate and WD routinely compete for the position of 'least reliable drive in the industry'.

The best going right now is HGST, probably followed by either Toshiba or Fujitsu. Get a 1TB -- the price difference for smaller drives is negligible, I'm pretty sure the PS3 can't use drives larger than 1.5TB, and 1.5TB drives are less reliable on average. 5400rpm vs 7200rpm doesn't matter much -- 7.2k drives load games about 10% faster at a cost of about a 2 degree increase in system temperature. And be sure the drive is 9.5mm tall or less -- larger won't fit.

Long story short, buy an HGST Travelstar 7k1000

If you save while making it work now, I would suggest the WD Red line. I bought 4x 4TB WD Reds to form a Raid-Z2 for my FreeNAS build.

WD Red 2TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD20EFRX https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008JJLZ7G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_0cl5AbFYGQG0M

If you are running a server, I’d recommend going with a NAS specialized disk like seagate’s ironwolf. They are optimized for always on, heat and vibration resistance, long life time, etc. You can get a 10TB drive off of Amazon for pretty good dollars.

Also I think Seagate’s ironwolf that’s 10TB and above are helium filled, which is a pretty big plus.

Intel celeron nuc: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HVKLSVC/

Ram (4gb): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CQ35GYE/

Disk: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C9TECFO/

Sidecar: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ELQZD10/

Cost of RAM + Disk: $83.99, leaving $216. If we use the Celeron NUC, we have $81 left, enough for a small SSD or Wifi. Bump the cost up to $350 and we have enough for an i3 + wifi when we use the i3 NUC ( http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HOJAVDG/ ).

The SSD can easily hold an OS if you're using it purely for the OS, but there's some Intel trickery you can use to make it into a cache, or just use it as a storage disk for "Things that are small". Like uh, Business Documents. Plus, it's upgradable to anyone with a screwdriver and a copy of the manual. Plus, the NUCs make the little intel Ding-Da-dun-da-ding sound whenever you open the packaging.

Oh, and 1080p up to 4k. A friend of mine uses a NUC to run his dual 4k coding setup. Oh, and play quake in glorious 4k 120fps.

I'm a little late and so is this article, but its a good read.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-q1-2016/

Everyone had made solid suggestion regarding the WD blacks, however I highly suggest you check out HGST(Hitachi). They are bullet proof drives. I have this one:

https://www.amazon.com/HGST-Deskstar-3-5-Inch-Internal-0S03664/dp/B00HHAJRU0

And it's a beast of a drive. Yes I know you are looking at 8 to 12tb, but I wanted to bring awareness to this brand that doesn't get enough attention.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00NP6ANY4/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1506712990&sr=8-4&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=hgst%2B8tb&dpPl=1&dpID=41ezze%2BouuL&ref=plSrch&th=1&psc=1

There is an 8tb hgst. These are typically NAS drives, so reliability is key which should be your number one concern when it comes to HDD storage devices.

c010rb1indusa is right. No need for those Seagate desktop 7200 RPM drives here. I like HGST's "Deskstar NAS" line. The WD Red drives are a good choice, too.

You want something built for the way you are using them. Reliability and failure rate are super important here and the drives built for use in a NAS will give you that. And I don't think you'll see a performance gain with the Seagate drives.

Have you considered a backup plan? If you're going to use RAID for redundancy but don't have plans for a complete, regular backup (RAID = redundancy ≠ backup), I would really think about the MTBF and design of the drives.

c010rb1indusa is also right about the NAS drives providing plenty of performance. Your bottlenecks will be elsewhere.

Going to be nice system, though. I like Noctua products, as well.

PS4 Hard Drive: Tech Specs, Upgrade Advice, and more.

Intro

Lots of posts on the PS4 hard drive (HDD) right now, so I wanted to consolidate this info and share my experience. Hope this helps. The PS4 is shipped with a standard HDD running 5400 rpm to keep costs, heat, and noise down. To those looking at putting in extreme RPM drives (10k+), I would strongly discourage it.


Basic PS4 HDD Info

• Make: HGST
  
• Size: 500GB
  
• RPM: 5400
  
• Form Factor: 2.5 inch
  
  
  Upgrade Options
  
  
• Type: SATA based 2.5 inch laptop HDDs
  
• Height: Max 9.5mm
  
• Prices: At the time of writing, the sweet spot is 1.5TB drives (in my option). There is essentially no premium on larger drives right now, they're running about $40 per 500GB (or thereabouts)
  
• This is the largest drive I can find right now: 1.5TB HGST (9.5mm high) @ $125 - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EDIU5IW
  
  
  Performance
  
  
• Higher RPM doesn't mean faster load times. Platter size (the disks that are inside the HDD) play an equally important role. Here's a quick rule of thumb; 1) Drive size, 2) RPM, 3) cache, in that order. For example, a 1.5TB 5400RPM will have higher performance than 500GB 7200RPM.
  
• To go a little deeper; if you have 4 platters in a HDD and the size of Drive A is 500GB and the size of Drive B is 2TB, then Drive B has a higher platter density (125GB vs 500GB). That means the HDD has to do less work to grab data because wherever the "head" reads the disk ("grabbing" data off the platter), it's going to "grab" more data per read from Drive B than from Drive A.
  
• Hybrid drives (large HDD mixed with a small SSD) doesn't suffer from TRIM concerns, but may not be much of a performance boost unless you play the same game regularly. They get their speed by caching common files in the smaller SSD section, but they're usually not bigger than 8GB. For reference, Killzone:SF looks to be a 40GB install.
  
  
  Warnings
  
  
• PS4 does not appear to currently support TRIM. If it does support TRIM, it's yet to be validated. This means that if you install an SSD drive, it will likely suffer from seriously degraded performance that it wont be worth the additional investment.
  
  
  TL;DR
  
  
• The best bang for your buck HDD for performance, cooling, and size will be a big 2.5 inch HDD. The biggest right now is 1.5TB (see above). If you've got extra cash, pop for a Hybrid drive but be aware these are untested right now (and caching probably will happen for OS files). Avoid SSDs until the PS4 is confirmed to support TRIM.
  
  
  Edited based on feedback in comments. Thanks!
  
  
  http://www.reddit.com/r/PS4/comments/1ou33c/ps4_hard_drive_tech_specs_upgrade_advice_and_more/

The Seagate External Hard Drive I have, well I have 2. If you take the shell off the drive, inside is a Samsung SpinPoint M9T 2TB HDD ST2000LM003.

When I first got the OG PS4 for my son I swapped drives, I opened the Seagate case, removed it & put it in the PS4.

I bought a PS4 Pro & this Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD 2TB ST2000LX001. Both are coming today. Right now I’m I have my 2nd Seagate/Samsung External HDD hooked up to my OG PS4 via USB. Says 3 hours to transfer almost 1TB.

The once my sons Pro comes today I want to remove the 1TB drive from the Pro & put in the FireCuda in. You said you don’t like Seagate well hopefully I luck out, this is most recommended 2TB drive for the Pro. I checked several sites, unless you’re getting a 2TB SSD this is the next best thing.

> this would finally let me expand to another two drives without needing the external enclosure

Considering your storage needs, you should not be buying anything smaller than 10TB hard drives in the future::

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IA9GU0Q/

The modular power supply you picked is a good idea considering your space constrains and the possibility of needing more SATA power cables in the future.

> I've been working on freeing up space using Plex Cloud on my Drive account over the last month.

Isn't buying cloud storage a lot more expensive than buying physical hard drives?

> He knows the socket type, but not the exact model i7, so I filled in a place holder.

If it is socket LGA 1151, then it will be a Skylake or Kabylake Core i7. Any of those CPUs are powerful enough for 4 Plex transcodes, maybe more. That is a sweet deal if you're getting it for $250 or less. If he's giving it to you for free, he's a hell of a friend.

Looks fine.

You can double your storage for only $10 more if you wish. (maybe, just saw the .ca)

I have that same GPU. You will be able to run everything out right now on high at 1680x1050 and most things on med-high at 1900x1080.

edit: wow that hdd you linked has $10 shipping, normally it's free on those drives. DEFINITELY recommend you get the 1tb from amazon for the same price. edit2: lol canada

First, if you're going to post a build you need "money help" with I suggest posting individual prices or links in the future.

In the HP build a GT 440 will NOT do well for games and a 350w PSU doesn't leave much space for upgrades.

Here's a few places you can cut costs on your custom build. Take some or take all and see if you can work your way down to something more acceptable.

• drop to an i5 2500k which will be more than enough for the games on the market. It has less multi-threading power beyond 4 threads but most games barely even use 4 right now so you'll be fine.
  
  
• You can do with 4gb of ram for games. Try the Kingston HyperX blu set. You can always upgrade later if you want.
  
  
• For a hard drives it may or may not save you money depending on where you look. But the Samsung Spinpoint F3 1tb is a generally better hard drive.
  
  
• Get the HAF 912. It has fewer lights but overall is nearly an identical case for cheaper.
  
  
• You don't need 850watts of power. I have two options here and both are excellent. Try the CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-650TX or the more premium options SeaSonic X Series X650 Gold.

Ubiquiti has free software for an NVR.

Here is the hardware I used.

Intel NUC: Model Nuc5ppyh
(There may be better ones out now, but this one works just great)
Memory: Crucial 8GB Single DDR3L
Hard Drive: Seagate 2TB Laptop HDD SATA
OS: UBUNTU 14.04 (DO NOT USE version 16, I don’t think it is supported yet, that may have changed)
Direct Amazon Links to the same hardware I got:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B006YG8X9Y/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XPVQHDU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01C4W2P18/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Keep in mind, the hardware has improved a bit since I bought my stuff, so you can get better prices or faster hardware.

With that money you can either build a mini itx build (small PC) or a quiet PC, both with respectable performance.

(excuse the price, from the UK so I don't really know the many different sites to get cheaper components)

Mini-ITX build

Type|Item|Price

----|:----|:----
CPU | Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor | $219.00 @ Amazon
CPU Cooler | Stock cooler | $0.00
Motherboard | ASUS Z97I-PLUS LGA 1150 Mini ITX Motherboard | $159.99 @ Newegg
Memory | Corsair XMS 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory | $69.99 @ Newegg
Storage | Transcend 256 GB SATA III 6Gb/s MTS400 42 mm M.2 SSD | $150.33 @ Amazon
Storage | HGST Travelstar 2.5-Inch 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6GB/s 32MB | $80.77 @ Amazon
Video Card | MSI Graphics Card N760 | $379.00 @ Newegg
Case | Cubitek Mini Cube ITX Computer Case | $99.99 @ QuietPC
Power Supply | Corsair CS Series 450 Watt ATX Semi-Modular | $62.08 @ Newegg
| | Total
| | $1,221.15

This is sorta the build I personally want. It's a small setup but powerful enough. Hopefully more manufacturers will be Mini-ITX-ing higher end graphics cards.

You probably want to get a m.2 SSD (faster than your standard 2.5" SSD) which is only supported by Z97 and H97 motherboards.


_____

a quieter build will be using Nanoxia Deep Silence series cases and this beast of a CPU "fan".

That sounds perfectly promising, thanks for providing one complete reasonable setup, thats pretty much what I wanted to see under my post :)

So just for my conclusion:

I buy the TS440 (standard version 4GB RAM/ NO HDD)

1x Crucial 16GB Kit

1x SSD 120GB

1x HDD 3TB

• I currently only have 1TB of media, and MC/CSGO won't fill the rest that fast, so I guess 3TB is more than enough
  
• I know 20GB RAM might be much, but I "helped" hosting a public minecraft server external and there it ate all the RAM it could get :P
  
  I still have one more quesiton:
  I think I'll just buy one standard lenovo 3.5 inch caddy to start, but where do I put my SSD? It's 2.5 inch. You said 'laying on the bottom' did I understand it correct you just wrapped it in somehow? xD
  
  Second question:
  I can't find the TS440 that cheap anywhere else, amazon won't ship it outside the US, and I don't live in the US...any ideas where to get it?

>Much easier to buy official HDDs.

easier for sure, but not cheaper. the official 500GB drive is currently $110 on amazon.

meanwhile, a bare 500GB WD 2.5" drive is only $48 delivered, and a proper enclosure is $6 delivered.

So you can spend $110 and be good to go right out of the box, or you can do some work on your end and have the same thing for half that price ($54).

> basically an argument against surveillence.

No, no it isn't...

Answer this: What intrinsic value is there of recording someone taking a dump?

> large companies to small business to home owners have access to surveillence solutions that offer various retention models.

Yes, but that's not at all comparable to police video. This video needs to be stored in strict accordance with local and federal law. It needs to be stored on private servers (or government authorized servers). As do all of the backups. That increases the costs exponentially compared to what you do at home.

> wouldn't police departments benefit from additional evidence to help win those cases

Yes. I don't think anyone's arguing the benefits of recorded video.

> small IT cost

Small? Let's break this down because maybe this is where the disconnect is.

The average file size for a high def recording is about 10GB depending on the codec, frame rate, etc.

Say an officer only works 8 hours a day. They're recording 80GB per day. 5 days a week is 400GB/week. 48 weeks (guessing they take 4 weeks off a year) is 19.2TB for each officer.

According to this wiki there are about 1,000 officers. We're now saving 19.2 PETABYTES of information every single year.

Now, let's take a rough look at how much that's going to cost to store: I'm gonna make this super simple here This drive on Amazon is 10TB at 299.99 (and you in now way want to actually use this drive in any office environment). We would need 1,920 of these at a cost of....$575,980.80. And that's just the drives. Not including the server, the enclosure to keep the drives, the redundancy, etc. Additionally, you'll need at least one backup of all of that data.

Let's not forget that officers generally get large amounts of overtime, and we're looking at substantially over $1million for the FIRST year (and realistically over 2mil, but again, keeping it simple). Now, this compounds since we can't delete any of that data for at least 10 years (if ever) so, across those 10 years, we've spent $55million to store video. And again, it's extremely important to remember that these numbers are absurdly low to simply show how this grows out of control.

Let's say an officer has actual interactions 70% of the time (seems high to me, but I don't know what it actually is), we would be saving $38.5million in those 10 years by eliminating video of officers drinking coffee and taking a leak.

> let's be reasonable about where those costs are coming from.

Let's be reasonable on what those costs actually are.

Neither, I use ICY DOCK and like devices, you can get Icy Dock for single SSD/HDD to multiple drives. I use it to change my boot drive to transferring data from my PC to laptop and so on. So the 2.5" part is to insert a boot SSD (Window or a Linux distribution OS) and the 3.5" I use to transfer data or back it up to a 6T HDD.

For my desktop I use: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00834SJ8K/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-5-25in-Trayless-Mobile-3-5in/dp/B000KS8S9W/ref=pd_sbs_147_1/145-7509564-3873745?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B000KS8S9W&pd_rd_r=eef1512f-6959-4fde-9177-ce62c8768090&pd_rd_w=RY63p&pd_rd_wg=xKSNf&pf_rd_p=5873ae95-9063-4a23-9b7e-eafa738c2269&pf_rd_r=AQ0G50CK9G4ZQWMVKEFQ&psc=1&refRID=AQ0G50CK9G4ZQWMVKEFQ that needs https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002Z2QDNE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1 if I want to use a 2.5" drive to transfer info.

For my laptop https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07HY1QLJX/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 so I don't have a DVD any more but any hot swap SSD port now. :-) Or press my keys to select a boot device and boot another OS.

Icy Dock does offer this same technology https://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=245, just an idea, a flexible idea to me. Win on one NVMe SSD, a Linux distro on an other NVMe SSD, and have as many as you want this way, I do.

My PlayStation 3 is irreplaceable. The PS4 still lacks many of the media features the PS3 has natively (which is crazy). And just this week I've played AC:Rogue, GT6, Stick of Truth, UMvC 3, and TTT 2 on my PS3. So, it gets a lot of use.

At this point, I think the best PS3 setup to have is a super-slim model (smallest, most quiet) with this HDD swapped in:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00691WMJG/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3I8SIV4ZMJMWX

Honestly though, Fallout and Elder Scrolls are night-vs-day better on PC.

This looks pretty nice! Thanks! If I wanted to add some extra storage on top of the SSD, would you recommend this hard drive? https://www.amazon.ca/Blue-Desktop-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B013HNYV8I

Edit: I'm also looking at the potential issues/incompatibilities on the PC part picker page, I guess these are not too problematic?

With regard to your questions on SSD/HD there is 3 options:

• Have an SSD with your OS (Windows/Mac/Linux) and then a larger 2nd Harddrive for files such as movies and music. This second HD can be fitted to MacBooks with an adaptor in the optical drive bay, all T/W thinkpads also have the option to have an extra HD instead of optical drive. So you can have a 64GB SSD for OS and a1TB with your data.
  
• The other options is an mini-PCI SSD on a card like this, this is a tiny SSD (up to around 60GB) which is the same size/socket as a wireless adaptor in most common laptops, again thinkpads have a second empty slot (sometimes for WWAN card) for this use.
  
• Final option is to get a hybrid drive, these are a fairly new idea and are a SSD with a Mech drive tacked on, so the most commonly use stuff is kept in the fast access SSD Cache, they are quite small (the SSD part) and I have no idea how well the perform. example
  
  Not all these options will fit every laptop and the first is probably the best. As to a recommendation on a Laptop I'm not sure which stores/websites are the cheapest in AUS, I know ThinkPads are hella expensive (compared to US). Look on their student AUS site or Amazon/ebay/resellers, the T430 or T420 would fit your bill perfectly (with the 1600*900 screen upgrade).
  

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

Type|Item|Price

----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor | $159.99 @ Newegg
CPU Cooler | Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler | $29.98 @ Outlet PC
Motherboard | Asus M5A97 R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard | $94.98 @ Outlet PC
Memory | Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory | $54.99 @ Newegg
Storage | Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk | $89.99 @ Newegg
Video Card | Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB Video Card | $169.99 @ Newegg
Wireless Network Adapter | Rosewill RNX-N250PCe 802.11b/g/n PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter | $19.95 @ Amazon
Case | Rosewill REDBONE ATX Mid Tower Case | $39.99 @ Newegg
Power Supply | Rosewill Hive 550W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply | $59.99 @ Newegg
Optical Drive | Lite-On IHAS324-98 DVD/CD Writer | $16.98 @ Outlet PC
Operating System | Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) | $89.98 @ Outlet PC
| | Total
| Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available. | $796.81
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-07-24 17:22 EDT-0400 |

Just a bit of re-arranging.

Good deal on 1600 Mhz RAM.

A 7870 is a better deal than 660 at this point, comparable performance (and even better in some games)

Modular PSU + a deal with the case.

However, if you don't aim to keep it as low as possible, you can get a GeForce 760. If you are - might as well drop the SSD. A nice compromise would also be to get a hybrid drive like this one.

> je cherche aussi un disque dur externe 3 To 3,5 pouces

WD ou HGST. Les Seagate ont la facheuse tendance à mourir vite (cf. blog BackBlaze). Achète-toi un DD + une coque, ça se trouve facilement, c'est moins esthétique, mais au moins, tu n'auras aucune surprise !

(Perso, j'ai acheté 4x WD40EZRZ - 4To Blue à <100€/pce sur Amazon : https://fr.camelcamelcamel.com/WD40EZRZ-Disque-dur-interne-SATA/product/B013HNYV8I?context=search )

EDIT: wow, merci u/GrenobleLyon pour le gold ! je doute de réellement le mériter, mais merci ;)

Everything powers up and I'm discovering the joy of the remote console through IPMI. Super cool.

I can't seem to get my WD Red drives to be recognized by the machine. It's my first time with SAS connectors and wondering what I'm doing wrong.

I have these WD Red NAS drives connected in the DS380 drive cage. The drive cage has 2 molex power connectors plugged in along with the the 8 SAS connectors. I'm connecting to these connectors which clearly state "SAS" underneath them, as shown in this photo.

What stupid thing am I doing wrong? Do I perhaps need a mini-SAS to SATA connector instead of using what came with the motherboard?

Sure, man! Here it is


Everything went ok. I've already done that with my now deceased PS3. Sony hasn't changed things.

The original hdd had around 360GB of data to back up. It took me around 3hs to back up. Restoring the data was much faster, 1h40min.
Good luck!

Honestly, I would invest in a small hard drive for each of the computers, 37 gigs isn't enough at all, my iphone has more than that. You can get a 500GB HDD for literally 50 dollars. After that I would invest in upgrading them to Lion, and getting some more ram, which is even cheaper.
Ram but actually I really only think you need about 2GB which will be MUCH cheaper than this.
and an HDD which you can actually get for much cheaper but this one is quite good. Once these are both upgraded I would buy some small security cameras, which are pretty cheap. Also you really only need one of these computers.

Shitty image.

Just finished building the $350 24-thread powerhouse, with a few minor adjustments. I picked up the Thermaltake F31 instead, as I really wanted a non-LED case, and this one has sound-dampening material which cuts down on the dual CPU fan noise.

I also had to pick up an EPS splitter since the 650 only has one. Would have been better to go with the EVGA 750 for power instead, as that has everything this motherboard needs.

Had 24GB of RAM from an old desktop build, so I didn't need to buy that. HDD is a 256GB Crucial M100, and have 10TB of spinning rust for larger amounts of data storage.

Media is stored on a DroboFS w/ 5 x 4TB WD Reds.

If I were doing it all over again, I'd also replace the CPU fans with Cooler Master 212s, as the Intel ones are so large (and square), that they overlap with one another and I needed to remove the fan shield in order to get them to fit.

Currently running Plex, SteamCache, DNS, and a few other things, all running via Docker and provisioned via Ansible.

You need to go into the playsation store (on your ps3 or I prefer on a PC: https://store.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com) and "purchase" the games for $0 and then they'll be available in your account to download whenever your PS+ account is active.

As I understand it, you can have a lapse too, so activate it today, pick up the january titles...then grab the february titles. Then if it lapses before you install a new drive, just re-activate it whenever and you should have access to the titles from both of those months.

Also, you should consider throwing in a 1tb instead. The price difference is less than $20 at this point and you'd be set for life. Here's the one I threw in mine:

WD Blue 1 TB Mobile Hard Drive: 2.5 Inch, 5400 RPM, SATA II, 8 MB Cache - WD10JPVT

$62 It's worked perfectly. Looks like they have a newer model for a buck more so I'd probably go with that one today (looks to be compatible with all models):

Western Digital Bare Drives 1TB WD Blue SATA III 5400 RPM 8 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Notebook Hard Drive WD10JPVX

That's a fine drive, but you need to find the 2.5" model like this one to fit into your laptop. For a bit faster drive, there's the WD Black line

If you can afford and squeeze into an SSD (~$80-90 for 240-250GB), then you will be much better off as they are not as prone to damage from movement. They're also leaps and bounds faster than any mechanical hard drive.

If you want something easy and capable, look for deals on the Lenovo TS140. Depending on your intended usage, you can get something very usable for $250.

For example, on this link the i3-4130 has a ~4700 Passmark that is capable of about 2 simultaneous 1080p transcoding streams. It has 4GB ECC memory so that's about the least amount of memory I would want for a server.

The Xeon E3-1246v3 CPU has about 10k Passmark. That's a badass home server! With 8 or 16GB ECC configurations for about $500-550, it's a steal. That would afford you an entire suite of server apps running without any performance issues all while transcoding up to 4 to 5 1080p streams.

EDIT: Note that you will need to buy storage and an OS (if you want Windows). I personally use Ubuntu.

• 6TB HGST NAS $270
  
• 6TB WD NAS $267

It is! I saw the results, but didn't connect the dots when I saw it again on Amazon. I've decided to buy the Acer E15.

I also want to buy a hard drive to expand my storage space. I've never installed a hard drive, and really know nothing about hardware. Do you think one of these would work? I think they're the right dimensions

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-BarraCuda-2-5-Inch-Internal-ST1000LM048/dp/B01LYNQXCP

https://www.amazon.com/WD-Blue-1TB-Hard-Drive/dp/B071F9MLJJ

And which one would you recommend?
Thanks in advance

SSDs are still more expensive than HDDs, for example:

> WD 500GB HDD - $35 (https://www.amazon.com/Blue-500GB-Mobile-Hard-Drive/dp/B00C9TECFO)

> WD 500GB SSD - $64 (https://www.amazon.com/Blue-NAND-500GB-SSD-WDS500G2B0A/dp/B073SBZ8YH)

See, SDDs are still more expense than HDDs and that fact that my dad's laptop is running very smooth without reformatting and defragging says that EXT4 is better than NTFS.

Any 2.5 9mm drive will work.

5400 or 7200 RPM.
I use the WD Black 750GB

But for more space I would get a 1.5TB drive. HGST is a good brand. WD based.
http://amzn.com/B00EDIU5IW

that drive would work, but honestly, if you spend $25 more, you can get a way nicer drive:

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Momentus-Internal-Notebook-ST9750420AS/dp/B004MME0N0

750GB (not 320GB), NEW (not refurbished), 7200 RPM (not 5400 RPM) drive.

or for even better performance, spend a $1.50 more and get the 500GB hybrid drive:

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Momentus-Solid-Hybrid-ST95005620AS/dp/B003NSBF32/

that's the one I am using.

You would do well with an Acer Aspire V7. It has an i5-4200U, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD, and an Nvidia GT 750M dedicated graphics card to help you run SolidWorks.

It also is very light for a 15.6" laptop at 4.8lbs and gets over 6.5hrs of battery life.

There is also a 14" version with more battery life and is even lighter.

As for your Toshiba Satellite... they are pretty low quality machines, and they use pretty cheap parts, which is most likely why your HD died. You could get This HD, slap it in there, and use it as a backup or just sell it and get some of your money back.

So I'm assuming you want to put this inside your computer.

Both of those drives are 3.5", they are sized for desktop computers. You want a 2.5" drive for laptops.

Something like this 1Tb 7200rpm drive would work well.

What is the size of your current drive that is full?

You should also consider upgrading to an SSD. A good 500Gb SSD can be had for under $200 and will give your machine a huge performance boost if you don't have one already..

My concern with these drives is that with games running they need high ventilation. I encourage anyone with or without tech savvy to get themselves an enclosure and an internal hard drive and build the drive themselves.

Enclosure I use, 3.0, with a nice fan, drive never gets hot.

4TB Internal HD

Tons of tutorials online, including the instructions that come with the enclosure.

It's super simple, literally open the enclosure, pop the drive in, plug it in to your xbox, and turn it on.

Right now I have I only have a CD/DVD drive in my drive bay which is pretty useless sooooo I've been thinking about rearranging my case innards to take advantage of my drive bays more and improve case airflow!

I have a Fractal Design Define R4 and I'm currently using the bottom storage drive rack inside the case. However, this is removable which would allow my front fans push more intake air. I'll have to remount my SSD and HDD first though. I can mount my SSD to a special side mount behind the motherboard. For the HDD I'm going to get a 3.5" to 5.25" drive bay adapter mount and remove my CD/DVD drive. In my second drive bay I'm going to put a simple drawer to help me organize my desk up a bit :P.

When it comes time to archive projects, I'll buy 2x bare drive for whatever size will hold it + 1TB for any future needed space.

Just like this: https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Desktop-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B013HNYV8I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1525213914&sr=8-1&keywords=bare+hard+drive

I have a dual bay HD dock connected with thunderbolt. Like this: https://www.amazon.com/OWC-Drive-Dock-Solution-Drives/dp/B0187YINL8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1525213997&sr=8-1&keywords=owc+hard+drive+dock


I backup all of my media and project files on one drive, and then duplicate that drive onto the other with MD5 checks to make sure it got it ALL.


I label and store those in jewel cases that look similar to VHS cases like this: https://www.cdw.com/product/StarTech.com-2.5in-Anti-Static-Hard-Drive-Protector-Case-hard-drive-prote/2472117?pfm=srh

One goes on a shelf and the other goes in a different room.

PS4: I got this one

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MPWYLHO/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It has been really great, and pretty good price atm.

Hybrids do sort what it thinks you need in and out of NAND which means for files you randomly open and access its no better than a normal HDD. However for sound files I think SSD is not ideal.

Sound samples for music likely aren't going to be too big, not enough to get a massive boost out of using SSD for at least over a 7200 RPM drive. Unless your dealing with files larger than 100 MB you won't even notice a SSD vs HDD unless your nitpicking with a stopwatch. If you do video editing there is a good argument for SSD as even though you can't usually fit raw footage you can use it for temp files which massively speeds up editing.

Another downside to using it to store audio is usually end up having a lot of audio to mix (same problem with video though much less space). This usually will take up all your spare space on a SSD drive with little benefit. The drive I use is this with a 250GB SSD. However you can always add a SSD really easy to setup so I would suggest going with a hybrid and seeing if you want to upgrade. The hybrid drive will boost startup speeds, opening your common apps (web browser, audio editing programs, ect.), and still save you money. It's also not much more expensive than a typical HDD with lots of benefits.

Also the prices are in USD for my links but the AUD is pretty close to us now, its only 13% more in AUD then USD for all the prices.

Are you a wizard?! I only saw the two original posts and was shocked when i saw all of this information in here haha. Anyway...while I'm here I might as well throw in a question I have.

I've been looking up SSDs and came across this: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Momentus-Solid-Hybrid-ST95005620AS/dp/B003NSBF32/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348372777&sr=8-1&keywords=ssd+hdd+hybrid

Does anyone use these hybrid drives in their gaming rigs? It seems like a way to save some money.

Drives made for "NAS" or "Enterprise" operations are a good idea. The people on /r/DataHoarder will give recommendations, but generally the WD Red, SeaGate IronWolf, or "enterprise" class drives are what you're after. I used to buy external USB drives and then remove the enclosure, but that gets you drives that are meant for backup use and not 24/7 operation, so those tend to die prematurely.

Just ordered a pair of these guys, they're supposed to be good :)

Reall, anything? Dang. So just the current WD Reds should work?
Amazon: WD Red 6TB NAS Hard Drive - 5400 RPM Class, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD60EFRX

Also, your point is well taken about going for something larger, but my budget is fixed...and I am like 99% full on all volumes! :7)

Also, I'm as thrifty as the next guy, but by the time I fill up those new TBs, this device will be like eight years old -- and even I will be able to justify an upgrade by then.

It's funny you mention the 418j, that's what I was looking at as well lol. That or the 918+. That 5th bay would be nice, but I'm not sure I'd care to pay another $150 for it.

​

I know this is probably an ignorant question, but I've never actually worked on the administrative side of NAS before. Can the drives within the enclosure be referenced individually, or do they show up as a single network entity? For example, if I wanted to use 3 bays for Plex storage, and a 4th for backup purposes that I directly manage myself, is that doable with an enclosure like that?

​

Additionally, are there any particular HDD compatibility issues I should be aware of with Synology enclosures? For example, if I wanted to toss a few of these in there, should I expect any speed bumps? Am I also correct in assuming that, for these purposes, the impact of a larger HDD cache or anything above 5400 RPM would be nominal at best?

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Drives-Notebook-WD5000LPVX/dp/B00C9TECFO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407442805&sr=8-1&keywords=laptop+hard+drive

There is a 500 GB one for 50 bucks but honestly, all you gotta do is shop around for a laptop hard drive. You might be able to find a better one for cheap or whatever the like.

that setup WILL work for basic network storage like you've described, though it's not what I would describe as ideal. I'd get an enclosure for it at very least, that was the drive isn't sitting out exposed. as far as a drive goes, I'd suggest a WD Red drive as they are designed for NAS use (basically just always on operation)

I'd also suggest making sure the laptop you're using is usb 3. (if you care about transfer speeds)

I'm leaning towards one of the new hybrid drives (http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Momentus-7200RPM-Hybrid-ST95005620AS-Bare/dp/B003NSBF32) but I wish there was an easy solution with fewer compromises.

To solve that decision making process off ssd or hdd. Also, double the storage.

2tb:
Seagate 2TB Desktop Gaming SSHD(Solid State Hybrid Drive) SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive (ST2000DX001) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EIQTKAS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_IKhAxbTDBHZNJ

Thought there was a cheeper 1tb version but Amazon doesn't seem to have it atm. Good luck on the repairs dude.

This Lenovo/IOMEGA NAS plus two 2 TB WD Reds set me back about $300 USD

Here's the NAS on Amazon

Here's the 2TB WD Reds

There are users reporting that an SSD greatly improved their load times and such, especially in games like Skyrim. I don't think hybrid drives are worth it, I'd either go with regular HDD or SSD if you want to spend extra money (but get less storage).

5400/7200 rpm probably won't matter if you go HDD. I think initial drives for PS3s are 5400.

If you want a simple HDD this is my recommendation. Cheap and will get the job done.

If you want an SSD this is a very solid option.

Ugh. May you HDD rest in peace.

But it should be fairly easy to replace the HDD with a new 2.5" drive, which aren't too expensive now a days^[1] ^[2], or swap out the CD-drive (if it has one) with a 2.5" drive as well (with a converter like this one).

But if you don't want to spend any money on it at all, I would suggest installing an Linux distro on a USB drive and use it run something like pihole

Do you think this one would be good as well?

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Laptop-2-5-Inch-Internal-ST2000LM007/dp/B01C4W2P18/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1473941062&sr=1-1&keywords=ST2000LM007

Appreciate the help & link!

3 3TB drives. I can install every game I own on it, plus shows and movies, and I keep a lot of git repos on my drives locally. I also have another 3TB acting as a server. These drives were pulled from a drobo after it wasn't needed where I work and I got to keep them, and I already had a 3TB drive so that became the server.
I have a 256 GB ssd from like 2012 that I want to replace with a NVMe SSD as my OS drive, and then use that one (a samsung evo) as my games SSD.

And honestly, hard drives are so goddamn cheap right now that you could get an 10TB for only a couple hundred, but I think 4TB are more efficient for price/performance.


But the short answer is - I like being over-the-top with everything in life, and especially with my PC

My calculation is as follows:

Western Digital 1 TB HDD ($50) + Samsung 860 EVO 500 GB SSD ($90)= $140 expense -> 1.5 TB storage, of which 1 TB is a relatively slow HDD

• https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Mobile-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B071F9MLJJ
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-500GB-Internal-MZ-76E500B-AM/dp/B0781Z7Y3S
  
  Samsung 860 EVO 1 TB SDD = $170 expense -> 1 TB storage, all of it very fast storage
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Inch-Internal-MZ-76E1T0B-AM/dp/B078DPCY3T
  
  Depending on your total storage need, I'd consider going for the 1 TB SSD. The alternative would be a significant reduction to 500 GB fast storage + 1 TB slow storage, in total that's more storage (+ 500 GB), but in practice those slow loading times you'll face from the HDD once your music has occupied the entire 500 GB drive (remember: you already have 400 GB worth of music) will kick in very early.
  
  > Also, if you know, is it possible to have a program installed on one drive and its extra files, like plugins and samples, stored in the other one?
  
  I honestly don't know if that is possible, as I have never tried such a thing myself. I'd tend to say that you should run the main application and plugins related to it from the same drive, as those plugin files might try to install themselves in the application folder anyway.

RAIDZ2 made up of

• 6x 4TB HGST Coolspin avg price $97/each on sale
  
• 2x 4TB Seagate Desktop $114 each
  
  RAIDZ1 local backup made up of
  
  
• 3x 3TB HGST Deskstar NAS
  
• 2x 3TB Seagate 3TB could-die-at-any-moment model
  
  mirror offsite backup (most important datasets) made up of
  
  
• 2x 2TB Seagate LP
  
  mirror offsite backup (most important datasets) made up of
  
  
• 2x 1.5TB Seagate
  
  .
  
  $ sudo zpool list
  NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE EXPANDSZ FRAG CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT
  tank 29T 11.8T 17.2T - 7% 40% 1.00x ONLINE -
  
  Keep in mind there is a 5.03% discrepancy between the reported size (e.g. sudo zfs list) and the actual size (du -b) based on the computations in this google sheet. For instance, my 800GiB file appears as 760GiB according to this zpool. This is not the case on my raidz1 backup and everything is represented accurately. It's just a matter of the vdev/blocksize/recordsize configuration chosen.
  
  You'll want to setup your pools using these options:
  
  sudo zpool create tank -o ashift=12 raidz2 <disks>...
  
  and your datasets with these options:
  
  sudo zfs set compression=lz4 tank
  sudo zfs set recordsize=1M tank
  sudo zfs set atime=off tank
  sudo zfs set xattr=sa tank
  
  So, to answer your question,
  
  24 10^12 bytes / (1024^4 bytes / TiB) (31/32 zfs overhead) = 21.1457 TiB
  
  If I do sudo zfs list -p I get
  
  Used | Available | Total
  ---|---|----
  |9,208,112,973,696 | 12,752,323,246,208 | 21,960,436,219,904 |
  
  (but this is the 5.3% affected value).
  
  So to go in reverse, 21,960,436,219,904 1.053 32/31 = 23,861,934,092,934 bytes, which is pretty damn close to the expected 24 * 10^12 advertised.

You are looking at something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-DS1815-Station-Network-Attached/dp/B00P3RPMEO/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1495907881&sr=1-1&keywords=nas&refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_two_browse-bin%3A6792682011

with 8 of these :
https://www.amazon.com/Red-3TB-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B00LO3KR96/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1495907648&sr=8-2&keywords=wd%2Bred&th=1


that's 48Tb , 24 mirrored. And there are expansion modules if you want to expand later.

https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Expansion-Increasing-Capacity-DX513/dp/B009EMFXGG/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1495908341&sr=1-1&keywords=Synology+DX513


it has apps that you can use to mirror to cloud storage as well.

user friendly.

Oh OK I see. The better one is actually the cheaper one.

I just found this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0097LG9U8/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_2/184-2770424-1796039?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_r=1ST1T0FKSF30MF2CW6BC&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=1535523722&pf_rd_i=B007PFQ23C

Same price as the SATA 2 except it's a SATA 3 with good reviews. I googled my z570 and people are saying it is SATA 3 compatible

edit: I guess it wouldn't hurt getting the SATA 3 even if it can't run it, it'll run it at the SATA 2 speed huh?

Sure, but it's two years old...
Intel G3220-dual core on a ASUS H871-PLUS MoBo (with 16GB DDR3) in a SilverStone Tek Premium Mini-ITX and eight 2TB WD NAS drives.


Running FreeNAS.

> 2.5 inch drive

Ok Gotcha,

So could I get like a 2tb hard drive for storage (Like this for example: https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Laptop-2-5-Inch-Internal-ST2000LM007/dp/B01C4W2P18/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1465644756&sr=1-1&keywords=internal+hard+drive&refinements=p_n_feature_keywords_three_browse-bin%3A4990425011%2Cp_n_feature_keywords_four_browse-bin%3A8067152011%7C8105676011%7C8067153011%7C8067154011)

And have like a 500mb SSD to run programs with? (then put one in my free slot and another where my disk drive is)

Again - thanks so much.

I ended up pulling the trigger on HGST 4TB Deskstar 7200 rpm 128MB Cache SATA III 3.5" Internal (https://www.amazon.com/HGST-Deskstar-128MB-Cache-Internal/dp/B01N7YOH4P/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505570865&sr=8-1&keywords=HGST+4TB+Deskstar+7200+rpm+128MB+Cache+SATA+III+3.5%22+Internal+NAS) for $137.44.

I did find something interesting and hoping someone can explain it to me (or perhaps its just an amazon price mistake).

The HGST Deskstar NAS 3.5-Inch 4TB 7200RPM SATA III 64MB Cache Internal (https://www.amazon.com/HGST-Deskstar-3-5-Inch-Internal-0S03664/dp/B00HHAJRU0/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1505570974&sr=1-3&keywords=HGST+4TB+Deskstar+7200+rpm) is 148.95.


Why would a 64MB cache drive of the same size and model (as far as I can tell) cost ~$10.00 more?

P.S. I'll try and remember to come back to this thread once I get the drives to update you how it went.

FYI, I just bought one a month ago for black friday and put it in two days ago. this drive has been out for two years now, so they have newer models of it. if you look at older videos or articles, you might notice that they say inside the case is a Samsung Spinpoint M9T. Mine was not, it was a Seagate Mobile ST2000LM007. Luckily, that one is still common/recommended for ps4, and worked fine as of now. :)

Wow, this is the first bot I've seen on reddit which is truly useful.

Ignore this, I just want to play with it (hope it does UK too)..

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008JJLZ7G/

I just went with this :

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00C9TECFO/ref=od_aui_detailpages00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It had great reviews on it , seems promising. hopefully it'll work

I didn't even specify which ones. But ok, you mean like these WD Reds that are specifically made for NAS use and continuous r/w ?? $85

Wouldn't say much cheaper, WD BLUE Desktop 3.5 inch Internal Hard Drive (SATA, 6Gb/SEC, 4 TB, 64MB) is £110. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B013HNYV8I/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_IsinxbJQK0MSQ

But buying hard drives is pretty much playing a lottery, there is no way to know how long it will last. So just go for whatever is cheapest. The prices fluctuate pretty much daily by the way so if it's not urgent then have a look around for a few days and maybe you can nab yourself a deal.

Yep he is correct, I think Sony even has a video on how to do it, only thing you can get wrong is that it needs to be a laptop sized drive (2.5").

This is a good example of a drive you could use: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145875

Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Travelstar-2-5-Inch-7200RPM-Mobile/dp/B0097LG9U8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395119138&sr=8-1&keywords=hgst+1tb

1.5TB if you want it bigger: http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Travelstar-2-5-Inch-Internal-0J28001/dp/B00EDIU5IW/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1395119155&sr=8-9&keywords=hgst+2tb

Western Digital/HGST is my brand I trust, I have always had a better experience with them and I use a lot of hard drives.

This was a simple cluster, not really designed for running a lot of VMs. We run 3 AD servers, a File Server, and one server for a special piece of software. That's a total of only 5 Windows 2008 R2 VMs, but you can see that it can handle much more.

>SAN $230: http://www.ebay.com/itm/RACKABLE-2U-SERVER-S5000PSL-2-x-INTEL-QUAD-CORE-L5420-2-5GHz-16GB-1TB-SATA-/121402377113?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item1c44254399
x2 VM Server $1200: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-C1100-CS24-TY-1U-2x-XEON-QC-L5520-2-26GHz-4xTRAYS-72GB-DDR3-/261355969100?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item3cda079a4c
SSD $75: http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX100-adapter-Internal-CT128MX100SSD1/dp/B00KFAGD88/
x2 Boot Drives $206: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Desktop-3-5-Inch-Internal-ST3000DM001/dp/B005T3GRLY/
x2 Storage Drives $280: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Desktop-ST4000DM000-3-5-Inch-Internal/dp/B00B99JU4S/
x3 Batteries $300: http://www.amazon.com/CyberPower-CP1000AVRLCD-Intelligent-1000VA-Mini-Tower/dp/B000QZ3UG0/
Shelf $31: http://www.amazon.com/Odyssey-ARS2-Space-Shelf-Accessory/dp/B0002DV0GI/
Server Rack $281: http://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-SR4POST25-Cabinet-Capacity/dp/B004OB8T72/
Microsoft Server 2008 R2 $695: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Server-Standard-Packaging/dp/B00H09CF70/
x2 Microsoft Server CALs $298: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Server-2012-OEM/dp/B0093CBTOM/
Switch $66: http://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-POWERCONNECT-2716-USED-/251627465136?pt=US_Network_Switches&hash=item3a962a69b0
Firewall $90: http://www.amazon.com/EdgeRouter-ERLite-3-512MB-Ethernet-Router/dp/B00CPRVF5K/
Rack Screws $27: http://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-SRCAGENUTS-Enclosure-Hardware/dp/B001DW8J5C/
Drive Converter $15: http://www.amazon.com/Icy-Dock-EZConvert-2-5-Inch-Converter/dp/B002Z2QDNE/

That is the full setup from the rack down to the software licenses that runs 144GB RAM and 4TB usable drive space on ZFS with a 128GB SSD Read cache. It falls short of $4k. We use XenServer and OpenIndiana.

That's only two VM servers, but every VM the client needs can easily run on one in case of a failure. Just thought I would share this setup to show that it is feasible to price a VM cluster out at under 6k. This is not the cheapest build I've done, but definitely near it and much smaller than I would recommend for most people. It is actually smaller than I recommended for this client, but it is what it is.

> They aren't "total rip off", these are the "normal" prices except for the nonsense image created by providers that say "unlimited" and mean 1TB.

This.

Some people are completely deluded and still expecting 'unlimited' storage for $60 per year...

Prices are very reasonable.

See Google Drive pricing:

• 100 GB: $1.99 monthly / $19.99 annually
  
• 1 TB: $9.99 / $99.99
  
• 10 TB: $99 monthly
  
  If you would like o arrange that yourself - WD RED 6TB costs $206 and to have a reasonable redundancy you'll need at least three of them for every 6TB of data, that is $618 for 6TB, so $103 per 1TB annually for storage alone. Not mentioning infrastructure, electricity, know how and maintenance. Being fully aware that big guys are not buying drives this way - I still don't think they're making big bucks on cloud offers.
  
  Speculation mode ON
  
  I think that videos and images got a lot of added value to both Google and Amazon. Large data sets are key factors to success in that field. That is why Amazon will still let you keep unlimited images and Google still can handle loosing money on YT.
  
  Speculation mode OFF

Pair of 10TB Seagate IronWolf drives as a mirror will do the trick for WAY less than $2,000.

Note that you said ARCHIVE, and I am responding as such. These are not super high performance drives. This is also live storage only, and does not include backup. But hey, good news - since you're only spending $800 on the pair, you can afford to buy two pairs of them instead, and back up from one mirror to the other, preferably in separate machines! Problem solved!

I strongly recommend building a proper NAS (well, two, really). This doesn't have to be hard - standard PC parts will do the trick, including "the older machine I have lying around". You said "safest", so I'm recommending ZFS. If you don't know what the hell that is - that's ok, google NAS4Free. (FreeNAS is also an option, but in my opinion is a lot more fiddly to deal with. NAS4Free is very, very straight forward.)

If you build two of them and back up from one to the other, you'll want ZFS replication to handle it. This will want a little command line help. I built a tool called syncoid that can do the trick pretty easily, if you aren't allergic to the command line. If you are allergic to the command line: I recommend investing a couple hundred bucks in getting somebody more technical to assist you with this part of it.

I ABSOLUTELY ONE HUNDRED PERCENT DO NOT recommend RAID5 as a "safe" way to store your data. No way, no how, don't do it.

Seagate seems to have made an effort since their 2015 debacle and their hard drives are allegedly now a little bit more reliable than WD. Their Ironwolf series isn't bad and the prices are higher but not too high compared to the desktop series. However, the best are still WD's HGST drives (3TB, 4TB) if you can pay a little more.

Have you considered a commercial NAS product, like Synology? With your light needs, you would probably be safe with a 2-bay and a couple of 2-4TB hard drives.

However, remember that the online systems handle a lot of things for you, such as disks dying, that you will need to handle yourself if you go local. With only two disks I would enable a feature called "RAID 1" that will help protect your data if one of the drives dies. However, the redundancy means that if you (for example) have two 2TB disks inside the NAS your available space will only be 2TB - the second disk will always be a "backup."

Also, considering this is for a business you should also think about backing up the data somewhere off-site for emergencies (such as your office burns down, or gets robbed). This could even be OneDrive - you wouldn't need to use it except if something happens to your data, and every week you could add any new/changed files to OneDrive from the NAS.

Synology supports Dynamic DNS. I assume your firm has a website; the person who manages that may be able to help you get the NAS set up on a domain like cloudfiles.website.com that would let all employees connect and download files from anywhere.

This is, of course, assuming you only need the server for data storage - that is what a NAS is good at. It can do other kinds of calculations and processing too, but it would not be as good as a typical server for that purpose.

I bought 3 on Amazon for about $350/ea a month ago - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01IA9GU0Q/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Running great so far in my Synology NAS, runs as cool as Red drives while being 7200RPM, so not bad. - Registered for 3 year warranty as well on Seagate's site.

>and hard disk drives that are faster than the internal one will result in better loading performance despite their external nature

Because they are using a hard drive that is faster. Hard drive speed is 100% determined by their rotational velocity/seek time. A 7200 RPM drive is faster than a 5400 RPM drive, for example.

The Seagate 4TB that was used for the 'test' is a 5900 RPM drive.

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-SATA-3-5-Inch-Desktop-ST4000DM000/dp/B00B99JU4S

5900 RPM is faster than 5400 RPM so the load times will be faster. If they could put it inside the console the same load times would be seen.

I really encourage you to understand how hard drives and their interfaces work. It's interesting stuff and you'll be better positioned to make correct and factual arguments.

I just upgraded my hard drive to a 2TB - bought this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Spinpoint-2-5-Inch-Internal-ST2000LM003/dp/B00MPWYLHO?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s02

Worked flawlessly - only thing was that I wasn't connected to the internet when I did the file backup and it caused some files not to work correctly. I hooked it all back up, transferred the files while it was connected to the internet and it worked great. 20 minutes tops!

I run my plex server on a dedicated laptop without any major issues. As already mentioned by others, occasionally updates are installed that reboot the machine and my external drives do not re-mount. This is pretty rare and not a big deal for me to go remount the drives. Make sure to store it in a well ventilated area, as laptops tend to get hot.

As far as external storage goes, I would recommend investing in a DAS, I use this one. This gives you external storage, but also allows you to buy a bare hard drive like WD Red's.

The Mass Effect trilogy as a digital download is only 33 gigabytes, for 3 entire games. You'd be completely set with 500GB.

P.S. I would get the series if I were you, LOVED the games.

This is the hard drive I got for my ps4, been working perfect for 1.5 years

If you're gonna buy a ps3 without a HD, I bought mine from Gamestop, had a controller and all the cable's it needed

Also, if you're getting the ps3 without a hard drive, your gonna need a hard drive tray, it doesn't come with one. This is the one I got.

If ya need anything else I got ya covered.

Punch most of the model numbers into Amazon and you'll see people in the reviews and Q&A often talking about using it in a PS4 and how it turned out for them. Not sure how many of those ultimately come down to having the same drive inside. The model numbers just mean different Seagate product lines but they're probably all M9T drives inside.

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Laptop-2-5-Inch-Internal-ST2000LM007/dp/B01C4W2P18

Scroll down to the reviews there, you'll see comments and images of them installed in PS4s, as well as at least one person saying it failed in 6 months and they weren't allowed to return it.

But among the ones you listed, if that one is available locally and the rest you'd have to track down somewhere, you might as well just get the one you can get your hands on.

Make sure to Google the phrases "PS4 2TB beeping" and "PS4 2TB slow" to see some of the results people get using these Seagate drives.

If it were me I'd get a 1TB drive of some other brand and be happy to have doubled my storage (which is exactly what I did).

So you wouldn't recommend this one?

Samsung Seagate Spinpoint M9T 2TB 2.5-Inch SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache Internal Hard Drive(ST2000LM003) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MPWYLHO/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_f.Vpxb1J24092

I'm hoping to upgrade within the next week or two and I've heard reports of beeping seagate drives. I'm leaning towards 2tb though. Any other drives you might recommend if you don't recommend that one? I'm hoping to find one for under $100.

Edit: You mentioned Toshiba. How can I tell the specs of the hard drive in here? I've been searching the internet with little success.
Maybe I could pop the hard drive out and use it. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N2S6W86/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_PgWpxbZDZF35A

My setup is a little more permanent/expensive than just a portable HDD, but I really like it, and love that it adds several 3.0 USB plugins to my xbox as I find the ones on the Xbox rather odd.

http://www.amazon.com/Collective-Minds-Drive-Enclosure-Front-Ports/dp/B00T76ZGDO?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Spinpoint-2-5-Inch-Internal-ST2000LM003/dp/B00MPWYLHO?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00

Really any 2.5" HDD will do, but that is my current setup.

I went with a USB wifi adapter so as not to interrupt the black-red colour scheme

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

Type|Item|Price

----|:----|:----
CPU | Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor | $199.99 @ Microcenter
CPU Cooler | Phanteks PH-TC14PE_BK 78.1 CFM CPU Cooler | $79.99 @ Newegg
Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD4H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard | $114.99 @ Microcenter
Memory | Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory | $69.98 @ Outlet PC
Storage | Sandisk Ultra Plus 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk | $169.99 @ Amazon
Storage | Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | $59.98 @ Outlet PC
Video Card | MSI GeForce GTX 780 3GB Video Card | $669.99 @ Amazon
Wireless Network Adapter | Asus USB-N53 802.11a/b/g/n USB 2.0 Wi-Fi Adapter | $33.99 @ Newegg
Case | Corsair 650D ATX Mid Tower Case | $159.99 @ Microcenter
Power Supply | Corsair 760W 80 PLUS Platinum Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply | $159.99 @ Amazon
Optical Drive | Asus BC-12B1ST/BLK/B/AS Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer | $56.23 @ Amazon
Monitor | Asus PB278Q 27.0" Monitor | $554.10 @ Amazon
Other| Mounting bracket| $3.50
| | Total
| Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available. | $2367.71
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-08-02 07:03 EDT-0400 |

Added a mounting bracket to mount the hdd in the spare DVD bay and keep it clean.

Hi yes, but if you from UK, than this one below is much faster, has more cache and its 2016 model, the one on your image is very old model they been doing 128MB cache for last 2-3 years
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-ST2000LM015-Barracuda-2-5-Inch-Internal-Drive/dp/B01LXRWWB6


P.S. If you want really fast drive that will be just like 90% like SSD than get hybrid drive its a regular HDD with 32GB of SSD build in, it was tested and it has about 95% load time of SSD, MUCH faster than regular drives..

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-ST2000LX001-Firecuda-Internal-Hybrid-2-5-Inch/dp/B01M1UQQT5/ref=sr_1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1482194103&sr=1-2&keywords=firecuda

What 2TB hard drive should I get that isn't too expensive?

Since you didnt mention any specs for the drive (2.5" or 3.5"), or price range, you can get http://www.amazon.com/Black-Performance-Desktop-Hard-Drive/dp/B00FJRS628/ or http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Desktop-3-5-Inch-Internal-ST2000DX001/dp/B00EIQTKAS/ provided this is a desktop. If not, let me know and I can recommend a 2TB 2.5" drive.

How should I go about installing it? It's been a while since I've replace a hard drive.

Each desktop and laptop will be different, so providing a model number would be helpful. However, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orAPCdr88hY shows how to do it on a desktop.

I didn't make a recovery drive. Can I just download the recovery file from Microsoft using my spouse's computer to reinstall windows?

Yes, just download the right ISO image from Microsoft. It should match up to the activation key you have on your computer (look for a sticker on the body of the computer). Go to https://www.reddit.com/r/microsoftsoftwareswap/#icon-eye-blue and look at the side bar for your operating system.

Ordered two of this drive on amazon. Came floating freely in the box. Could hear them banging into each other.

On the bright side, Amazon's return process is easy.

Yes.

Currently, the lowest priced 2TB HDD is 60$ at Canada Computers, being the Seagate Barracuda 2TB.

However, if you are mainly using it for data, perhaps a 4TB WD Blue would do for you:
https://www.amazon.ca/Blue-Desktop-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B013HNYV8I/

Very good price per TB at this point.

A great friend of mine did, from Ultimate Personal Computers. /u/u_p_c -

I also have a Synology Diskstation under the tower https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Station-Network-Attached-DS1815/dp/B00P3RPMEO/ref=sr_1_6?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1468523698&sr=1-6&keywords=synology

Filled with 8 of these. https://www.amazon.com/HGST-Deskstar-3-5-Inch-Internal-0S03664/dp/B00HHAJRU0/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1468523724&sr=1-1&keywords=HGST+4tb

I have a 7 year old Acer Aspire 5745G laptop. The hard drive catastrophically crashed 2 weeks and data is unrecoverable. I need to get a replacement drive. The official channel I went through quoted me $119 price for a 500 GB HDD. Lol. Can I just get any 2.5 SATA HDD (for example, this WD blue) from Amazon and that'll work on the laptop OR are there compatibility checks required?

For a few bucks more you can get a SSD Hybrid - I have one and just built a PC for my friend with one...you will definitely notice a difference in speed over your standard 7200 rpm HDD.

Also, I agree with sifsilver1 - if you're not gaming you dont really need the 2500k. Scale down on the CPU and scale up on the HDD.

Seagate Momentus XT SSD Hybrid

One other thing, if you need a 2tb hdd, you can buy a western digital blue drive for $95:
https://www.amazon.com/WD-Blue-2TB-Hard-Drive/dp/B013HNYV8I/

WD has a better reputation for reliability than Seagate, and it's a lot cheaper.

you would have to do a fresh install of windows. when you do the install perform a full format. that will take some time. it will scan the disk for bad sectors and mark them as not to be used. that has the possibility of working and get you going for a while, but to be honest i would buy a new hard drive.

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Drives-Notebook-WD5000LPVX/dp/B00C9TECFO/

if yo dont need alot of GBs i would recommend a solid state drive:

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX100-adapter-Internal-CT512MX100SSD1/dp/B00KFAGCUM/

they are faster and not susceptible to bumps and shocks like normal drives.

So something like this would be fine and compatable?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0097LG9U8/ref=mp_s_a_1_14?qid=1422505998&sr=8-14&pi=AC_SX110_SY165_QL70

Thanks a lot for your response!

The Source 210/Source 220 (Elite) series from NZXT are cheap, solid, and fit 8 internal 3.5" drives. You can mod the 3 external 5.25" bays to fit 3.5" drives with something like this. Brings you up to 11 drives.

That should be fine. There's a similarly priced 1Tb WD drive, which seems to include 2 year warranty. It's really up to you, as they both should work fine.

http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Mobile-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B00C9TEBJQ/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1463951685&sr=8-11&keywords=ps3+hard+drive

Sorry to keep bugging you, the link you have sends me to newegg frontpage...

so the new 5400 is faster than the old's 7200?

I have two option I'm looking at...

First

Second

I'm leaning towards the second... do you think there's a big different between the two? One website ranks the second over first but I don't know why... first is 7200 where second is 5400....

Thank you a lot for your help.

only other idea would be to use a NAS built harddrive, like WD RED:

http://smile.amazon.com/dp/B008JJLZ7G/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2XRB0ZYHURTIU&coliid=I1DT646M6VK46G&psc=1

Hot swap bays.

You can get an internal one like this, that goes in to your PC like an optical drive

Or an external one like this, where you just keep it on your desk, pop in a drive, take it out and stick the next one in

Good thing I'm not in the service business - sorry for the slow response:

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Mobile-2-5-Inch-Internal-ST2000LM003/dp/B00MPWYLHO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1459176471&sr=8-2&keywords=2TB+seagate+laptop+drive

http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Unibody-MacBook-SuperDrive-Replacement/dp/B0058AH2US/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459176429&sr=8-1&keywords=macbook+pro+drive+caddy

It probably takes 10 minutes (and you need a Torx screwdriver on top of the one needed to get the bottom case off) - but it's totally worth it.

I use a 256GB SSD (bought when it was like $300, sadly - now you could get a 1TB for the same or less) and the above linked 2TB drive for media.

If you were really crazy though, you could get 2 x 1TB SSDs and RAID them together for super performance. Not really necessary...

I'm looking to upgrade my space, I currently have a 500 gb SSD (which is nearly already used due to the OS, OW, CS, and Dark Souls 3) and a 1 TB HDD. I found this on Amazon (it's a 4 TB WD for $115). Is this a good deal? Should I be looking for other sizes/cheaper prices? Anything around ~$100 is my limit, but savings while keeping quality is always nice

I have 1tb WD blue 2.5' almost like new. Pulled from a new laptop shortly after. Retails $60+ tax+shipping. I will do $45 shipped.

• https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Mobile-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B00C9TEBJQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1484558525&sr=1-1&keywords=wd+blue+1tb+2.5

Depends, most seem to be 5400rpm.

This drive can have the internal removed and you'll end up with this.

Of course this is done by me looking real quick and finding a $70 one. I can guarantee if you search enough you can find external 7200rpm drives on sale and get a bunch of them. Removing the shell is very easy and you can resell them for like $5.

I'd go for this + 2 of these. Do not have this set myself, I have an older Synology, but they are great.

There is a lot of great info in this ThinkPad Product Specifications Reference PDF, specifically starting on page 45.

1. You don't need a caddy for the main drive bay, but the bumpers and the tray help with drop protection and ease of removal and instillation. I would recommend getting one. For the second hard drive bay, you need a caddy.
   
   
2. The main hard drive caddy is for the main hard drive, which will hold 7mm drives. The second hard drive caddy is for the 12.7mm Ultrabay, which for your computer, probably currently holds the DVD drive. This caddy will fit 9mm hard drives. Both hard drive caddies hold 2.5 inch wide drives. 9mm and 7mm refers to the height of the drive. 7mm drives can fit in 9mm caddies, but not vice versa. If you install a hard drive in the Ultrabay with the aid of the second hard drive caddy, you could install the operating system on this drive. That is up to you.
   
   
3. 7mm for the main hard drive bay, 9mm for the second hard drive bay caddy. 12.7 is the size of the Ultrabay, but the caddy for this bay only holds a 9mm hard drive.
   
   
4. 7mm for the main hard drive bay, 9mm for the second hard drive bay caddy.
   
   
5. You will need a 2.5 inch SATA hard drive. It does not need to be formatted specifically for the T430. As long as you get a SATA hard drive, the ports will be in the right place. When you install the hard drive, if you have trouble putting it in, try turning it upside down.
   
   Did the listing specify if the computer has included the main hard drive tray, bumpers, and cover? You will need a cover for the main drive bay if the computer is missing it.
   
   If I where you, I would get a solid state drive for the main hard drive bay. They are 2.5 inch, 7mm SATA. Any drive will do, but I recommend the Crucial M500 or the SanDisk Extreme. You could also get a 7mm standard, spinning hard drive, like this Western Digital Blue
   
   I would also get a second hard drive caddy and install it in the Ultrabay slot. This Seagate Hybrid Drive or this Western Digital Black would do nicely.
   
   If you have any more questions, just let me know!

http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Travelstar-2-5-Inch-Internal-0J28001/dp/B00EDIU5IW/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1406994937&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=hgst+1.5+tb+sshd

I suggest that one, I have it in mine, best value of speed vs space

So for all of those arguing about storage capacity, what would be the benefit (if any) of using one of those hybrid drives like this? It's 4GB of flash storage + 500GB of spinning platter.

I'm curious because I'm thinking of getting one to put in my netbook, but don't know if it's worth it over just going straight up SSD + external storage.

Hey, I am looking for a big internal HDD for video files to be streamed to my xbox/laptop. Is this a good purchase?

https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Cache-Desktop-Drive-WD10EZEX/dp/B013HNYV8I/ref=sr_1_2?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1496071497&sr=1-2&keywords=3.5%22%2Bsata%2B3%2Bdrive&th=1

I am also pretty clueless and wondering where I can find out what cables/brackets I will need and hopefully an instructional video. Hopefully I can answer any other questions you might have.

1.5TB HGST 5,400 is my recommendation.

Don't know where you are from so:

UK - with delivery to Europe

US

This is the one I went with, pretty good price for size and a very reliable make. Works just perfectly.

I'd stay away from 7,200rpms, the gain in speed you get is utterly minimal (seconds) and could risk overheat and SSD's may give you an advantage, but they are not worth the extra mortgage to purchase.

I upgraded my PS3 HDD a few months ago from a 160 GB to a 750 Western Digital 7200 RPM HDD. The space that I currently have left on my HDD is only 360 GB. With PlayStation Plus becoming better and better every month I would suggest using a bigger HDD than a 500 GB.

Here is a link to a 1TB 5400 RPM 2.5inch Hard Drive from Western Digital Total cost is only $78.05 with Prime, if you don't have prime I suggest signing up for a free month or use a school email to make an account, this way you can get Amazon Prime for 6 months for free and half off for up to 4 years after that.

I might be the exception on filling my HDD up because I do own quite a few games myself, I own around 60+ games that are all disk based. Some will argue that they are on disk and will not take up much space on your HDD, but a lot of games in this generation are going to a manual install on your HDD. I can name a few, GTA4, Ni No Kuni, and MGS4. Also Rock Star just announced that GTA5 will have a mandatory 8 GB install on your HDD before you can play the game.

What I am trying to say in short is, if you can spare the extra cash go ahead and purchase a 1TB because with PlayStation Plus you are going to need all the HDD space you can muster up.

Trying to choose between this drive, and the Backup Plus, and this WD Blue. All are 4 TB, and will be used in my desktop (I'll remove the enclosure if I get the Backup Plus).


What do you guys suggest?

I am absolutely certain that a 15mm drive isn't going to fit, just by looking at the photos of the chassis and drive area. The 9.5mm drives are on the large end of laptop disks now, with the 7.5mm being the more common, smaller standard. WD even says that the WD15NPVT is not for laptops.

For 9.5mm drives I've been able to find:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178627

http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Travelstar-2-5-Inch-Internal-0J28001/dp/B00EDIU5IW/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

As we know the transfer of data from hard drive to the RAM to the CPU is Is only as fast as it's slowest piece. SSDs are much faster than they hybrid counterparts because there is no disk but pure flash storage. The hybrid uses the SSD as another intermittent between itself and the RAM. Using it for caching the common parts of information exchanged. The price is a lot less than for an SSD, and is significant enough to see a difference.

But if you have the cash, SSD is the most monumental difference I have ever seen in an upgrade EVER. I can not stress this enough. But if you want more storage AND speed on a budget hybrids work well. Especially when you can't RAID.

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Momentus-Solid-Hybrid-ST95005620AS/dp/B003NSBF32/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1325267196&sr=1-1 Here is one on amazon.

Amazon has the 6TB drives as well (Gotta love Prime) for $299.

Actually, the product listing in the chart doesn't bother mentioning it, but that 2.5" drive is actually what they call a "Solid State Hybrid Drive."

It is part 7200rpm, part solid state. Supposedly the data transfer is like a 2.5" regular drive, but with boot times closer to SSD. Link

The size is basically the height of the drive. Just find one of the caddies that is for a Dell laptop, like this one, and find a drive like this one and you'll be fine. These are just examples of the route I would go.

The one you posted on your link is a conventional hdd. However there is a hybrid SSHD with a few bucks more that performs better. I went for that one: firecuda 2tb

Now I can't really see the benefits of getting an ssd; yes they are definitely faster but the cost for a 2tb is insanely high (more than the whole console it self) and for what? Faster loading times? Firecuda is already quite fast imo

FYI the ones you linked are for a PC, you might need to search for something like this https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-ST2000LX001-FireCuda-Internal-Drive/dp/B01M1UQQT5/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1542579229&sr=8-3&keywords=2tb+internal+hard+drive+ps4

Personally i have a 2tb internal hard drive and its so much better having that extra storage but if you want, PS4 does support external hard drives

Going by amazon prices,
I'm looking at them now seems like 100-140ish for 250 gig. 1 TB look like 350-600, and I've never tried a hybrid drive. Those are very cheap. Wonder if they're more reliable?

I use a couple Backblaze Pods stocked with 3 TB drives, though I'm trying to consolidate and I'm moving towards SuperMicro's Super Storage Server 6047R-E1R72L (72 Bay) stocked with 6 TB drives.

I used to use Windows Server OS, but then switched to FreeBSD (though I'm also considering FreeNAS).

As for management, proper naming conventions and metadata works wonders. Toss in a script for both of those, and management is trivial.

Honestly though, I'm planning to leave my main setup at home, and start anew at Purdue.

2007 Q1 - $400 1TB HDD (7K1000)

2014 Q1 - $150 4TB HDD (Seagate)

Price per GB:

.40 cents per GB to .0375 cents per GB, in 7 years.

7 years, or 84 months resulted in a 10.66fold decrease in cost per GB.

Moore's law actually holds pretty true between the time period of 2007 and 2014.

The same hard drive is 5 dollars more on Amazon. That may be better for some people.

http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Deskstar-3-5-Inch-Internal-0S03664/dp/B00HHAJRU0/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1418068220&sr=1-1&keywords=hgst+4tb

The hard drive is good. Here is data comparing it to other brands (Seagate, and the other part of WD).

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-update-september-2014/

Amazon now has the same price.
Also, I was able to do a price match at Best Buy, for those who are concerned about the way amazon packs drives for shipping.

I got a Samsung 2TB Spinpoint M9T. I would provide a link, but it looks like they're sold out EVERYWHERE. Currently the thinnest 2TB hard drive available on the market.

Had to order mine through Samsung directly.

This looks like the closest you can get to what I have.

Between the one you posted, and this one, which do you think is better? Doesn't the one you linked have a lower RPM? I want to know more about it so i'm kinda depending on you to decide which one i should get, if you have the time to respond that is. It would be much appreciated if you could give me a bit of insight on this.

It probably depends on the model. Seems this one gets quite good reviews.

I think something like [this one] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-WD10JPVX-Laptop-Drive/dp/B00C9TEBJQ/) should work, but i would maybe check with Acer to make sure it is compatible.

Would storage like [this] (http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Momentus-7200RPM-Hybrid-ST750LX003/dp/B00691WMJG/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1374779686&sr=8-10&keywords=ssd) be good? I'm just trying to find a cheaper alternative.

I'm not Canadian but I went on Amazon to take a look for you and ppl said this works is this ok? http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00MPWYLHO

Edit also some ppl may say save 20 bucks and get the external hard drive. I would just like to warm you that some ppl have problems with it and as I'm sure you know you have to break the hard drive open and that means no warranty on the hard drive.

Yes. I backed up everything onto a separate external HD.

Link:

I'm on mobile so I hope the formatting works. The price seems to have gone up but there are other models available now too which look better than this one. Again I'm in Canada so the prices on Amazon.com might be different than .ca.

i would recommend giving her a large internal desktop hard drive and a desktop hard drive dock, and then just teacher her how to run backups on her own. mac computers have a built in function for backups called time machine, which looks like it can save any files, as well as manage multiple backups, and can probably even do some sort of timed back up, all your daughter would have to remember is to hook the laptop up to the hardrive dock. This has an added bonus of if her laptop's hard drive ever fails she could probably spend $100 (total) or so to have it fairly quickly repaired if she has the backups on the external hard drive, she would just bring her macbook and the desktop hard drive into a computer repair shop and probably pick it up same day, working just as it was before the hard drive failure.

If you have the money this is great! But for everyone else buy an SSHD it's better than the normal hard drive (not as good as a SSD) and it's so much cheaper.

I bought this 2.0TB SSHD:
https://www.amazon.de/gp/aw/d/B01M1UQQT5/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?__mk_de_DE=ÅMÅZÕÑ&qid=1478888609&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=firecuda+2+5&dpPl=1&dpID=51RZn4VASKL&ref=plSrch

I was probably one of the first people to reply on the 1.5 TB HDD. lol. I ordered one right before PS4 launch and left a comment when I put it in.

Basically, the 1.5TB HDD is amazing in the PS4. Load times will be marginally better on a Hybrid, but considering the partition that is Solid state (Hybrid is a mix of Solid State and Disc) isn't big enough to put games on, you will barely see any difference. You also have no control over what goes on that SSD portion of the drive.

Go with the 1.5TB, 500gb more space and you won't notice a loss in comparison.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EDIU5IW/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This is the drive I bought and have used since day 1.

$1299 USD

12-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit Retina display
Up to 1.3GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor
Up to 512GB flash storage
2.03 pounds

Those specs are decent, but definitely not worth $1300.

I posted this in response to another person:

> This Acer Aspire V 13 V3-331-P11X 13.3-Inch Laptop has quite similar specs and is $450 less.
> The ACER has a larger harddrive (500gb vs 128gb, but the Macbook seems to have a slightly better processor.)
>
> Apple MacBook Air MD760LL/B 13.3-Inch Laptop for comparison

Now the acer mentioned only costs $450 USD. That's less then half of the new Macbook you mentioned and it has a bigger screen. The new Macbook has a SSD, while the Acer doesnt. A 750gb SSHD will run you $80 for the Acer. If you must have MAC OS you can get Snow Leopard for $19.99..

At the end of the day, you can get a similar computer running Mac OS for half the price if you don't buy an Apple branded machine. Or you could spend the same amount as on the Apple Machine and get a wicked badass PC and put Mac OS on it or just keep it with windows.

Shops near Al Ghubaiba Bus station are the cheapest, most parts is cheaper than Amazon and Newegg.

My cousin used to own computer shop in Abu Dhabi, and he bought most of his items and parts from there, some shops there have better prices than the official distributor because they get much lower price when buying big quantities.

Two days ago, I bought one 6TB WD RED drive for 1000 AED, which is lower than Amazon, Newegg and Gear-up.

My Dell Inspiron 7577 is finally starting to run out of space so I have been looking for a a good 2.5" HDD not SSD because I dont wanna spend a lot of money. I came up with these 2 HDD but im not to sure which is better/get. Can someone help me out in choosing which one?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LWRTRZU/ref=twister_B01M1OGKBK?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Mobile-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B071F9MLJJ/ref=pd_sim_147_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B071F9MLJJ&pd_rd_r=NXZGE3CMQ649R4QAA2CB&pd_rd_w=TdJMM&pd_rd_wg=vkgaE&psc=1&refRID=NXZGE3CMQ649R4QAA2CB&dpID=419d7g139OL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=detail

The 4tb Seagate is $99 on Amazon, and a 4tb WD Blue is $117. These are US prices - I can't speak for other countries.