Some advice re large capacity hard-drives please

[tiel]

Hello everybody,

I need a hard-drive of about 1 or 1.5 TB, and since I am not really up-to-date with the latest developments, I thought I'd ask people who have a better overall view of these things. My questions are:

(1) Is it worth waiting a bit more until SSD drives become more prevalent, and then grab a cheap 1.5 TB traditional (electromechanical) drive? Although I need storage space quite badly, I'd be willing to wait a bit more if I had reason to believe their prices will drop sharply within a month or so!

and

(2) Is it true that large capacity (>1TB) traditional (electromechanical) hard drives are more prone to data loss and crashes than "normal" capacity ones (say, around 320 GB)? If so, are other technologies (such as SSD hard-drives, or perhaps even large-capacity USB flash drives) a better overall choice (taking both price and reliability into account), for the moment?

Anticipated thanks for any replies, I really appreciate the help!

[VoOdoO]

1) Well, I guess it depends on your definition of 'sharp decrease'. I think here the answer is "if you have to ask ..."
I don't have definitive numbers, but the reason why I think that even if they did fall sharply in price with in the next few months it won't be enough for you is because I've been asking myself the exact same questions for the past 2 months or more. I'm in desperate need of some more HDD space for my Media Center, but god I'd love an SSD. I just don't think prices on SSD's are going to fall enough for me to warrant buying one. They would literally have to drop to almost half, say around two thirds what they cost now before I could genuinely persuade SHMBO* why I NEED one. And she just bought me a Cooler Master Cosmos S (without me asking or even mentioning I'd like one), and paid extra so I could get it from a store that day (rather than cheaper online) as an early Xmas present, so it's not like she's difficult in that respect, quite the opposite infact . Bottom line, I think that like me, you won't see an SSD price attractive enough for you in the next 6 months. Does that help any?

2) Tough question this one. Undoubtedly, there are more horror stories about large capacity drives than there are lower capacity drives, but I think that's more to do with them being newer technology. Older and/or lower capacity drives have been built and refined for a while and there are simply fewer failures. So it would seem that I'm saying that larger drives fail more often, but that's not what I'm trying to say Larger drives very rarely fail, just that lower capacity drives fail even less .... rarely ... is that a word? I'm thinking price point per gigabyte is a larger issue; I'd personally aim for the 1TB drives as they are quite nicely priced for the amount of room you get. 1.5TB and the new 2TB drives just cost too much for my liking. Also, check the manufacturers sites. Off the top of my head, if you buy a retail drive, Seagate offer a 5yr warranty? Might be WD ...

*She Who Must Be Obeyed