Introduction:

Getting a large capacity hard drive in 500Gb, 750Gb or 1000Gb is no longer reserved for those hardcore and professional users. If you have any hobby whether it is golf, RC stuffs, motorcycle, rock climbing, and or any sports, video taping and photos have made it easy to keep the memory fresh and sharing them with friends and enthusiasts via your favorite on-line forum all over the world. Large capacity hard drives not only allows the users to keep the ever increasing MPEG2 and JPEG files but also the capacity for backing up the entire system and data.



The 750GB Seagate 7200.10 would certainly have no problem in meeting all the requirements as far as capacity for photo/video album and all the backup needs at the cost of about $140.



Recertified or Certified Repaired Hard Drives cost less; it has the same warranty service as new hard drive. The draw back is the shortened warranty period. It is a matter of luck of the draw. It would seem to me that the warranty period begins when the recertified hard drive leaves the factory and not the time of purchase.




I checked the remaining warranty period through Seagate website using the Seagate’s Warranty Checker when I received the review sample from Geeks.com. There is another 10 months left for this unit.

System & Data Backup:

As far as Hard Drive failure is concern, there is no definitive answer. Some argue high operation temperature attributes to premature failure; others disagree. Leaving your system running rather than power it on and off would have less wear and tear on the hard drives is often talked about.

Other than the IBM DeskStar episode back in 2001 when I have had two DeskStar hard drives failed back to back within weeks, I started to backup my work no matter how tedious the task might sound. Since, I have another 4 hard drive failures. Frankly, I have not lost any important data other than a few emails since 1992. At work, I backup to the Company server; at home, I normally have a second hard drive to backup my kids’ school work and family document. Of course, in the last 7 years with the advent of inexpensive digital and video cameras, my data file becomes much bigger.

My recommendation is to using an external hard drive enclosure and a hard drive with 500GB or larger for system and data backup; 750GB for cheap is even better. There are several external enclosure reviews at [M], I particularly like this one for the ease of installation.







I also highly recommend Acronis for your backup needs. It is very user friendly; can be applied within Windows or at system boot up. It is the ease of use that won't discourage you from backing up your data and system on a timely basis.

Performance:

To setup the hard drive, I use Acronis hard drive clone which takes about 20 minutes in my case depending on the size of data. Otherwise, it would have been a long process. Normally, for Windows operating system and office software, it would only be 10 minutes or less.

Test Sytem:

• Intel E4500 CPU
  
• Nvidia 7600GT graphic card
  
• ASRock 4Core1600P WiFi+ mainboard
  
• Transcent PC6400 2x1GB memory
  
• Windows XP Pro
  
• OCZ 420Watt Power supply

Once again, let me remind you about hard drive size...

One thing to keep in mind is that hard drive companies advertise their size with the idea of 1Mb = 1000Kb, same as 1Gb = 1000Mb, instead of the technically correct: 1Gb = 1024Mb. Hence a hard drive rated by them at 500Gb can only hold ~488Gb when we convert it to the actual size. When formatting to a file system you’ll see a further size reduction, hence when we formatted the RAID 0 stripe with 2x500Gb the actual size in Windows was not 1000Gb but 931Gb. For more information about actual HD space check this article.



About 715GB net capacity is what we could get from 750GB.







Performance wise, average read speed the 750GB seems to be the best. The burst speed is definitely reserved for marking folks, which does not correlate to daily practical use. I reconfirmed HD Tach average speed using Sandra resulting 64MB versus 65MB, pretty close.

Conclusion:

Bear in mind, it is not how much you get; it is how much you could save. A large capacity hard drive does not necessarily mean you work twice as hard, or having the most software or having the highest oc'ed record, or the coolest rig around town. It is the ability to have enough capacity to backup so that in case we screw up the system, we don't have to lose everything.

Along with a high capacity hard drive, an easy to operate backup software means more than some of us would think. Well, until that day comes when I could hear you scream two city blocks away that your hard drive went "nuts" along with your term papers or annual budget due tomorrow.

Perhaps, a little investment into a high capacity 750GB hard drive, external enclosure and good backup software may be the way to spend your tax return this year. So, drop by Geeks.com, they carry lots of Hard Drives and External Enclosures.



The bottom line:

PRO
Inexpensive insurance
Fast average read speed
Low price

CON
Shortened warranty period