Hardrive buying recommendation?

[lazer155]

I'm looking to build a storage bank for time machine backups of my macs (imac and 2 macbook pros) and to provide space for all my various other files. They would include music, movies, photos, documents and large project files (ie final cut pro projects that I am currently working on). I would like to setup the hardrives so that they are redundant and there is a backup of each one just I case one fails. They would ideally be connected to my airport extreme to share over my network. I estimate that 2-3 tb would be enough room if the redundant drives are not included. 3tb would be ideal as it would give me about a tb of extra space for my photo, music, fcpx projects, and movie collection to grow.

Just out of curiosity, could I build an array of drives that are redundant and also have varying sized hdds? For example I use 2tb for time machine backups and have 500gb for movies, photos, fcpx projects ect.

With all of that being said, where do you guys recommend that I buy my drives from and which drives exactly? I looked around newegg and tiger direct earlier but wasn't sure exactly which drives to chose. Is it even a good time to be buying hdds? I know earlier in the year there was a storm that damaged a couple major hdd producer factories, making prices go up. Are they still high from that? I'm not in a hurry to get this storage array built and would be willing to wait until later this year if prices will be lower then.

 

[durruti]

You have many questions.

i will answer a few of them.

I recommend a notebook 5400 rpm hard drive if you want to run it from usb bus power.

I like Samsungs, but Seagate has a new one out for $100 on Newegg.

For the most part HD prices have stabilized to pre-flood Thailand prices...not quite but almost.

Also, I advise you look into Carbon Copy Cloner, and research more into why and how of your backup strategy.

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In terms of redundancy, there are a lot of expensive setups out there and dedicated devices for this function...

Basically, from my offhand knowledge, redundancy (i.e mirroring)on the cheap/DIY, requires equivalent and ideally identical hard drives of same capacity.

 

[mrichmon]

Hard drive prices have come down from the peak, but the prices are still 50-70% higher than before the flooding.

However according to several analysts prices are unlikely to fall any further before 2014. (e.g http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9227829/Hard_drive_prices_to_remain_high_until_2014 )