Cheap home mass storage?? (was - RE: [wplug] OT - word of warning on Maxtor 250GB drives)

[Vanco, Don]

So I should ask - does anyone have any ideas for cheap home mass storage
(above 2TB)?

I've seen the Linux Disk stuff, and I've seen lots of SATA shelves - but
the issue is that the cost of admission (the shelf before even adding
drives) has just been too high.

I'm all for "El Cheapo" drives - but the issue is that when they are
crazy cheap (like the Tiger sale) you can only get one at a time and
there is a large rebate to wait on....

Any comments?  I'd love to find 3 to 5 TB (JBOD even) at under 5
grand.....

Don

wplug-bounces+don.vanco=agilysys.com at wplug.org <theoretically > put
forth the following electrons on :

> > Quite a few places are now blowing out these drives crazy-cheap (the
> > ATA-100 and ATA-133 versions, both 8MB cache).  I have quite a few
> > of these (like 2TB), and in the last month I have lost 3 of them. 
> > All under similar circumstances - when they near 75-80% full they
> > start to flake, shortly thereafter your data is toast.  On one RMA
> > the replacement drive I got went bad the day after I sent the
> > failed drive it was intended to replace back to Maxtor - I am in
> > the process of recalling that shipment and getting a replacement
> > for the replacement to attempt to recover the 180GB of data that
> > drive holds. 
> > 
> > 3 year warranties be damned - warranties do nothing for your lost
> > data, just get you brand-new (or worse - refurbed) junk drives.  I
> > am officially off Maxtor/Seagate.  I'll stick with Hitachi - least
> > error-prone of the drives I have currently.
> 
>  	This is way late, but I had a crash myself this week,
> and have to comment.
> 
>  	I usually do a RAID-1 with two identical disks on my
> hosts. I am so affraid of losing data, that I just get into
> the habit of setting up my machines this way.
> 
>  	For a while now, I've had a host at home which shares
> /home and another couple of folders. Well, she's been running
> for years like that until hda died. It is still dead, but my data is
> STILL THERE! 
> 
>  	If you're going to buy El Cheapo drives (like I do),
> get two of 'em. You'll be glad you did when the first one fails!