Storage Solutions Storage Upgrade: Budget 2013-2014 considerations

[axis.meister]

I just had a major scare yesterday, when my windows XP crashed. While attempting to recover it, something went wrong and one of my partitions (390GB) went missing. This partition contained a lot of my work reference data, and to say that I was scared would be a colossal understatement.

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After stopping myself from kicking myself for not backing up critical data, I managed to recover the partition(thanks to Hiren Boot CD) and started copying out the data when I realized that I don't have enough space in my current ~4TB setup(INT 1TB+500GB + EXT 2TB+500GB all WD) to back up the whole partition. So I am looking to urgently add HDDs.

My main question is whether it makes sense to buy HDDs (or computer components in general) when the Budget 2013-2014 is just 10 days away. Are the duties/taxes and therefore prices likely to reduce or are they expected to go further north?

Options:

Seagate ST3000DM001 Barracuda 3 TB
or
WD Green 3TB
or
2-3 TB external 3.5" (WD probably or suggest brand)
or
1-2 TB external 2.5" (WD probably or suggest brand)

If I go for a large internal HDD, I will likely sell of the 2 internal HDDs I have or use them as backup. I intent to upgrade my PC in the near future, and will add an SSD then for performance. I currently don't have a portable USB HDD(2.5"), and would prefer one, but the prices for the higher capacity portable HDDs are horrendous.

Please help, I intend to make the purchase asap, (today if possible).

:1ign13:​

 

[6pack]

so did you buy any of the 3TB hdd you mentioned?
was looking around at prices of 1TB & 2TB internal drives. 1TB ~ 4100 and 2TB ~ 5500 rupees whereas the 3TB ones are at ~ 8100 rupees each. Just buying 2 x 1TB would be equal to price of a 3TB hdd now.
Was thinking of getting a 3TB drive. Are these drives good enough for just storing data? I mean wrt failure rate of 3TB hdd.
I just wanted to dump data from 2-3 disks on one drive temporarily till I can set up a meaningful folder backup system in place. Right now, all folders are duplicated in one or two disks and i end up triplicating data sometimes. i will probably save GB's of space once i take care of that mess.

 

[axis.meister]

so did you buy any of the 3TB hdd you mentioned?
was looking around at prices of 1TB & 2TB internal drives. 1TB ~ 4100 and 2TB ~ 5500 rupees whereas the 3TB ones are at ~ 8100 rupees each. Just buying 2 x 1TB would be equal to price of a 3TB hdd now.
Was thinking of getting a 3TB drive. Are these drives good enough for just storing data? I mean wrt failure rate of 3TB hdd.
I just wanted to dump data from 2-3 disks on one drive temporarily till I can set up a meaningful folder backup system in place. Right now, all folders are duplicated in one or two disks and i end up triplicating data sometimes. i will probably save GB's of space once i take care of that mess.

Yes, I did get a Seagate Barracuda 2TB @5.5K (Lamington road) before the budget, don't know if the prices have been revised since. I had the same issue as you, since I had to store data on multiple disks/partitions, I ended up duplicating/triplicating the same data across disks (my laziness didn't help in that either). Now that most of my data is in the new 2TB disk and my 2TB WD ext HDD, I am trying to sort it better and have already saved a load of space.

As for the pricing of 1-2-3TB disks, I think the 2TB disks fall in the sweet spot where the cost/GB is good(~2.75 Rs/GB) and you are not risking everything on one large 3TB disk(they are around 8.4~8.5K on Flipkart). 2TB is also large, but as a compromise between cost/GB and risk, I think it is better.

Another option, which I am still considering is a 2TB/3TB external 3.5" USB3.0 HDD if you are using it basically as a data dump drive with occasional usage. At about 1-1.5K extra you get 1 year added warranty+limited portability(as compared to the 2.5" USB disks).I saw the 2TB external retailing somewhere at 6.3K, now that is sweeeeet!!!