Don't get ripped off by Dell! Their drives aren't any faster or better quality than the competition (IMHO they're probably slower and/or lower quality). If you're looking for a 2 terabyte drive, I have seven Hitachi 7K2000 2 TB (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145298) drives in a RAID6 array inside a Thecus 7700 NAS ( http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=11&pid=82&set_language=english) for 10 terabytes of storage where 2 of the drives can simultaneously fail and still retain all the data. I have had the drives installed for over a year now and not a single problem.
On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 9:52 PM, Edward A. Berry <ber...@upstate.edu> wrote: > Another question about computer hardware- If I configure a computer at the > Dell site, it costs about $700 to add a 2TB SATA drive. > On amazon.com or Staples or such, a 2TB drive costs ~$110. to $200 > depending on brand. > > Are the Dell-installed drives much faster, or more reliable, or have > a better warranty? After all, RAID is supposed to stand for redundant > array of inexpensive disks, and we could afford a lot more redundancy > at the Amazon.com price. > > And, are there any brands or models that should be avoided due to known > reliability issues? > > Thanks, > eab > -- Jim Fairman, Ph D. Post-Doctoral Fellow National Institutes of Health - NIDDK Lab: 1-301-594-9229 E-mail: fairman....@gmail.com james.fair...@nih.gov