Hitachi 1TB x2 External Backup System & Home Media Server

This is what has replaced my "Cheap Home Backup Server" That you can see in the video response.

These keep a double redundant backup of everything that was on my pc's hard drive while freeing up a lot of hard disk space on my pc. These currently have all of my files backed up as well as 15 HD movies, 253 standard definition movies as well as over 500 CD Albums & 8 Seasons of various Tv shows like NCIS,Shark,House,Family Guy,Roswell which I can stream anywhere in the house & to my hacked xbox running XBMC "Xbox Media Center" in the living room. This is a very nice & cheap solution for lots of space for a cheap price & being connected to my pc they serve as a very low cost NAS "Network Attached Storage" solution. I eventually plan on getting four more & putting my entire dvd collection on the drives. No discs to scratch or mess with & it will be double redundant so no worry about data loss.

Right now since these are usb drives I can not mirror them to each other so I have them set to automatically copy each other, Though since the enclosures have sata II hard drives I can easily put them into a esata enclosure & set them to raid 1 in the future if I decide to.

Purchased from eBay
Cost:
$179 each
$15 Each Shipping


My current movie collection only takes up about half of the drives space, About 500GB. Here are the current movies on the server.

SD

http://tinyurl.com/5nwwjb


HD

http://tinyurl.com/62clls


FOR ANYONE THAT HAS DISCONNECT PROBLEMS WITH THESE DRIVES!

Some people have reported that they have trouble with these drives disconnecting every 20 minutes or so, One of the two I had purchased had this problem. It appears to be a problem with the older model. I sent it off to Hitachi & from the date of shipping had an 8 day turn around, Not bad & well worth it seeing that these are only $200 each if you get them on eBay, About $380 in Best Buy.

Taking Them Apart !

Alternatively you can take the drive apart & put the SATA II drive in your pc which by passes the faulty USB to SATA adapter found in the older models.


How To Tell:

If it's the newer model if you look through the holes in the top of the drive you will see metal shielding covering the circuit board. The old model does not have shielding. Also there is a slight difference in the way "HITACHI" is printed on the front If it is the slim letters It's the older model & if the letters are Fat then It's the newer model, You would need to see them side by side to tell though & have to look closely.

Amazing Technology Achievement !

These drivers are really an amazing achievement in storage technology, I was really fascinated with the use of heating elements to control a constant flight height of the heads.

The data sheet is here & a very interesting read.

http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/67A68C59B27368FC862572570...$file/Deskstar7K1000_010307_final.pdf

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Hitachi
• server
• cheap
• home
• backup
• media
• disconnecting
• streaming
• xbmc
• 1tb
• external
• usb
• nas
• Deskstar
• 7K1000

[betterthanux5]

Do these Run on Mac or should i look into a firewire connection 1tb external. I would just love to have that much extra space.

[catnip20]

They actually sell these in White & formatted for use with Mac, You can do a search on Newegg "Hitachi 1tb external" Last I checked I think they were $105 & they may have a rebate too. Newegg had the black ones as well but they were out of stock last I checked, I actually just ordered 2 more of these so I have 4 externals now, I do tons of video & 1080p HD for the media server so I use a lot of space & I keep a double backup as well.

[betterthanux5]

cool thanks man. i am definetly thinkin bout it. but how much ram does your comp. have cause i have 1 gig of ram in my 20'' imac and i was wondering if you need more than that to search through 1 TB of memory.

[catnip20]

One more thing, Google "Tomshardware hitachi 1tb 7k1000 review" for a great review on the drives inside of these. You want the review for the 5 platter drives not the 7k1000.B series which has the 3 platter design, Though I'm sure those will show up in these at some point, As of now all externals are 5 platter.

[CAJUNNSC]

I have a similar setup, using several (6) externals giving about 3.5 TB external and another 2TB onboard storage. I also stream through my home as well as acces from any PC, Cell phone, PSP, PS3,XBox... I also use Sony-LF if I want to turn on or off any systems remotey as well as start a recording, stream in R out and watch TV from any of the above systems anywhere anytime. Yepp you might say I too am a gadget greak just a tad. All wireless other then router and power cords.

[catnip20]

Ram really dosen't make much difference when it comes to hard drive size. 1GB Ram should be plenty.

[catnip20]

Awesome, I'm running these 2 external drives & they backup each other. The Gaming rig/server has 4x 300gb drives in RAID0 1.2TB (Makes editing HD a breeze) & I have an old 333Mhz Dell Optiplex as network storage with 2x 500GB drives. I plan on running about 6 1TB or 1.5TB externals off the server & using it as the primary storage & dropping the Dell & using those drives for something else.I use my core 2 duo laptop with XBMC & show the HD content over my DLP projector,Networked video is awesome!

[catnip20]

FOR ANYONE THAT HAS DISCONNECT PROBLEMS WITH THESE DRIVES!

Yes, The video pretty much sucks !

Please read the info I added in the description, It's more interesting than watching the drives.

Also checkout the data sheet link in the description, Very Interesting!

[catnip20]

My camera has a high gain mic & auto level control, It really is no where near as loud as it comes across in the video, I also had a fan running in my room & I think most of the noise is from it because it's much louder than the computer.

[craigsharp]

That sounds like a jet!