Is 4TB okay for archiving?

As I have been posting about our plan to purchase a new computer, our research continues. Now we are back to square one - the choice between a laptop or a desktop for reasons of space in our living room. And we also need another external drive for archiving, the 1TB is almost full with the regular new photos and videos.

The question is this - is a 4TB drive slower in access compared to a 1TB drive or is the access of the same speed? We have noticed that our 500GB archive drive was much faster than our 1TB although they are not on equal footing since the 500GB has its own power supply while the 1TB depends on the CPU cable.

 

I have 1 TB and I think it is more than enough for me to backup my computer and other hand held devices. The kind of storage you are talking about is too much. Unless, you are a videographer or a professional photographer, you don't need that kind of storage space. I have 1 TM and I am thinking to get another 1 TB disk so that I can back up my first disk.

 

Depends on what you want to archive. Unless you want to save a lot of videos or something like that I'd settle for a smaller drive. If you need more in the future, you can always buy another or even an external one.

 

While I have never personally used anything more than a 2TB hard drive, I would say the speed should not be affected by the size of the hard drive. Unless we are talking about anti-virus scanning which will take longer if you have more files on a bigger hard drive.

The question is, do you really need a 4TB hard drive now? If the answer is nope, then why not get a smaller one, lets say a 1TB or 2TB? Once they are full, I am sure the price of 4TB will be a lot lower than it is right now, and there will be higher capacity options available by then.

Just get what you need for now, and save the extra money for later when you really need it.

 

It depends on what you are archiving. But for the average home user or small office, I would reckon that is enough for most purposes. Our home network has attached storage smaller than that that is used by the adults in the house, and it is plenty.

 

Well the speed of an HDD is dependant on the RPM that it comes with, not the size. I'd say 4 TB should do just fine as long as you don't have mountains of file to archive, I have a friend who's a professional movie maker and he does just fine with 2 TB although he "cleans" it up on a regular basis.

 

I agree with most of the comments above. When it comes down to it, it's not the size or capacity of the hard drive which determines it's speed. It's more to do with the RPM, the drive type and the drivers/software. I know that on my laptop I have something called Intel Rapid Storage Technology. I'm assuming that's something to do with the read/write speed of the hard drive(s). The only thing that may slow it down is having lots of large files to search through and, of course, the drive becoming fragmented or clogged up with temporary files.

 

I just had a 2TB external hard drive died on me after some unexpected water damage from the air conditioning.
The good thing is I have copies of everything on another external hard drive. And I just quickly made a third copy after the incident.

Having everything on a single 4TB is not secure. I'd rather have multiple smaller hard drives for file security.

RPM does not apply when it is a SSD (Solid State Drive). SSD has no moving parts unlike the traditional spinning hard drives, and it is superior to HDD.

 

Four TB is a lot of space. I have one TB external drive, which as 400 GB free space, I have another 200 GB free space on my laptop, I also have a USB drive with 64 GB storage.I am thinking to get another SSD, probably 2 TB or more. Most of the space on my disks are occupied by media files. I have more than 200 movies and over 1500 songs.

 

Well, of course, I wasn't talking about SSDs because I doubt Corzhens is willing to spend money on a 4TB one (if it even exists) and it would be worthless anyway, since you're just storing data and an HDD is more than enough for that. I can't wait for the day SSDs become really cheap and you can buy a 1TB one for $50 bucks, as is the case with HDDs nowadays.

 

SSD is not that expensive. Compare to 5 years ago at least. I paid around $200 for a 128GB SSD just five years ago. And the same price got me a 512GB SSD last year.

I used to have the need for lots of TB in storage because I used to store a lot of movies and TV series and they take a lot of storage space. Nowadays I have used multiple paid streaming services, and they have all these movies and TV series available. So I no longer store a lot of video files. Without these video files, the need for lots of storage space has come down a lot. I am not sure about you guys, even with SSD as storage, it is enough for me, but I do keep multiple copies so I have both SSD and HDD as external storage. The SSD I use was actually for my last laptop as internal primary hard drive, but since the laptop died, I got an external hard drive enclosure for the SSD and now it acts as an external hard drive.

Once you go SSD (as external storage), you will never go back. The file transfer is so much faster.

 

@Vash is right. The price of an SSD of any size is plummeting and already way cheaper than it was even a few years ago. If you have the money an SSD is the way to go.

 

4TB is huge, it really depends on what you are archiving but you most certainly will notice the difference if you are going to jump from a 500GB drive to a 4TB disk.