1TB of quiet, fast storage for $130? O_O

[Darren Dirt]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136186

Western Digital My Book Essential WDH1U10000N 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive - Retail

Wow, has storage gone down in price THAT much?

Apparently stuff like the above are being more and more used by families with multiple computers (and multiple digital gadgets!) to store the big, voluminous stuff "all in a single place".

Is anyone else leaning towards that, i.e. using their PCs as, essentially, workstations/terminals, attaching to the "MCP" to store/retrieve most of their crucial and/or large data?

[Melbosa]

Is anyone else leaning towards that, i.e. using their PCs as, essentially, workstations/terminals, attaching to the "MCP" to store/retrieve most of their crucial and/or large data?

I've been this way for years - but I'm not your typical implementation of a household computing environment.

But as households start to get more than 1 computer, I can see this as being a choice.  The one I'm seeing, in the IT families at work, are NAS devices (which are becoming pretty available price wise).

[Thorin]

Apparently stuff like the above are being more and more used by families with multiple computers (and multiple digital gadgets!) to store the big, voluminous stuff "all in a single place".

Is anyone else leaning towards that, i.e. using their PCs as, essentially, workstations/terminals, attaching to the "MCP" to store/retrieve most of their crucial and/or large data?

Yes, I've been thinking for a while now about how to set up my PCs as interchangeable so that my kids and wife and I can all get on any computer we want and all our bookmarks and programs and music and videos and documents and everything are available.

$130 is pretty cheap, but yeah, terabyte drives have been dropping in price lately.

But as households start to get more than 1 computer, I can see this as being a choice.  The one I'm seeing, in the IT families at work, are NAS devices (which are becoming pretty available price wise).

For me, the NAS devices just don't do it because they centralize the music/videos/docs, but don't centralize all the other data (shortcuts, browsing history, bookmarks, etc).  I'd really love to be able to add, say, four computers to my network and have everyone be able to do anything from any of the computers.

-----

So are you thinking of buying that drive, DD?

[Tonnica]

Beep beep sheep in a jeep (1TB Seagate SataII Barracuda for $129 at MemEx, this is the one I'm currently running)

At the price it is nowadays, why not slap a big drive in to a shared PC or NAS device? Heck, it doesn't have to be rocket surgery. It can just be a hard drive slid in to a USB capable hard drive enclosure for that plug-and-use smoov-ness. The price is right for not having to worry about storage space.

[Lazybones]

$119 , for 1TB but it is a Deskstar
http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=26180&vpn=0A35155&manufacture=Hitachi

[Lazybones]

$55 makes as any USB drive a NAS
http://gizmodo.com/5108881/addonics-adapter-turns-any-usb-storage-device-into-a-nas-server

[Tom]

Yeah, with those new 2TB drive coming out, the price of the 1TB drives should fall steeply.

I heard some scary news though, if you're a fan of RAID5, it won't be enough to handle a decent number of disks in an array. The combination of the MTBF and the time it takes to rebuild an array made of 2TB or larger physical volumes, you end up needing RAID6 (RAID5+second parity stripe) just to give you the same reliability you got with RAID5. But then, by the time I figure I need to replace my new 4x640G RAID5, these 2TB disks will probably be in the $100 range, and I can afford to build a raid10 (linux md raid 10, its like raid1+raid0 but its built as a single array and manages the stripe and mirror at the same time), and not feel like I'm loosing too much space

p.s. the raid10 driver allows uneven numbers of disks iirc. So its a little more convenient for home users, you don't have to buy disks in pairs, and it'll still make sure to have a mirror of any single sector on some other physical volume. You can even set it to have more than one mirror. And tweak how it does the mirroring.

[Melbosa]

For me, the NAS devices just don't do it because they centralize the music/videos/docs, but don't centralize all the other data (shortcuts, browsing history, bookmarks, etc).  I'd really love to be able to add, say, four computers to my network and have everyone be able to do anything from any of the computers.

There is a solution for this as well, but it evolves a lot more money, or using your MSDN subscription and another computer.  Roaming Profiles in a Domain Environment would provide you with what you are after.  And with your MSDN subscription, you should be able to setup a Domain using a server OS very easily (unless you didn't get that type of MSDN subscription).

Could be an option.  Otherwise there is software out there that does sync profiles in a workgroup environment, but I've never used them before so I don't know how they work.

[Lazybones]

You can't join a domain with the home editions of windows so really, you to it all or not at all.

[Melbosa]

You can't join a domain with the home editions of windows so really, you to it all or not at all.

True.  I always forget this piece when making a suggestion, because I always ask my friends and family to purchase at least business level OSs to make sure they can move forward if they need to.

[Thorin]

I just can't let go of my Fast User Switching...  It gets used a lot on my home machines.  It's nice to be able to leave all my programs running and let my kids on the computer under their own accounts.

Fast User Switching doesn't work with profiles on a Windows domain.

No, what I wanted was the ability to completely redirect the Documents and Settings folder.  I've mostly accomplished that, except some programs aren't able to access network drives for their data (eg the "My Pictures" screensaver).

But basically, one computer in my house is the NAS for the other computer, so in a way I do already have a single location for all the documents and stuff to be stored.

[Melbosa]

I just can't let go of my Fast User Switching...  It gets used a lot on my home machines.  It's nice to be able to leave all my programs running and let my kids on the computer under their own accounts.

Fast User Switching doesn't work with profiles on a Windows domain.

This is incorrect if you have Vista.  Vista allows me to use Fast User switching in a domain environment (have used this for my operator account and my regular user account on the same desktop), including Roaming Profiles (but you can only have one active login at the domain level at a time when using Roaming Profiles - as a best practice anyway).

No, what I wanted was the ability to completely redirect the Documents and Settings folder.  I've mostly accomplished that, except some programs aren't able to access network drives for their data (eg the "My Pictures" screensaver).

Again this is solved with Vista.  I have client's in a Workgroup environment with all their profile files located on a network share, including their My Pictures screen saver data, favorites, etc.  The only settings that don't carry are whether you have the My Pictures screen saver selected under your profile on each computer a login exists for your user (so user settings are by computer, but the data those settings access can be network based).

Microsoft has listened to user requests like this, and put together solutions as you can see.  Unfortunately either the Windows XP OS doesn't support this functionality or Microsoft doesn't want to support these abilities on "Legacy" OSs (I would hope it would be because of the first, rather than the later, but believe it is the later if only to increase the demand for newer operating systems).  For either reason, the fact remains the same; the functionality you wish does exist in a Microsoft Product, but as with most Microsoft "features", there is a $$$ required to gain access.