Does Size Really Matter?

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dsvochak · #1 Post by **dsvochak** » Tue Feb 14, 2006 9:34 am

I must be missing something.

My first computer had 2 360K 5 1/4" floppy drives. Then a 5mb hard drive. Then a whopping 10mb as a file server in a small business local area network. Today I've got a desktop with an 80gb drive and notebooks all with 40gb drives that I can't come close to filling up. I can understand buying a 7200 rpm vs a 5400 rpm drive. But what kind of software/data are people using/storing that requires a 100 or 100+ gb drive?

Any explanations will be appreciated.

MadMikeSS · #2 Post by **MadMikeSS** » Tue Feb 14, 2006 9:51 am

Depends on what you are doing. If you are a gamer, games today are taking up more and more space easily. 2-3gigs of game are not uncommon anymore. If you download music or movies, 100 gigs fills up fast. I've taken to downloading High Def movies lately and they tend to take up 8-12 gigs a piece. I have 20+ gigs of MP3s. If you wonder how one can fill up 100 gigs, let me put it another way. I have 1x 160GB, 3x 80GB (2 of which are in a RAID0), 1x 40GB and 1x 120GB (external usb2.0). Spanning all these drives I probably have about 50GB of free space. Again, it just depends on what you do with your computer. When I had a 510MB HD back in the day, I wondered if I would ever fill that... Wouldn't get me far nowadays, wouldn't even hold WinXP.

#3 Post by **Kyocera** » Tue Feb 14, 2006 5:33 pm

Most of the people I talk to nowdays are using their computer as a "photo server" (just made that up

). A lot of people I work with fill up their drives with pictures that use a lot of space.

I'm in the same boat as you, don't download music, movies, or store pictures, just install software to test out for my job, then I delete it. I have never come close to maxing out my good ole 40G HD.

turbolium · #4 Post by **turbolium** » Tue Feb 14, 2006 8:37 pm

i got around 360GBs and running out of space
it makes me think i should go shop for new HD (((

#5 Post by **jdhurst** » Tue Feb 14, 2006 8:58 pm

My 60Gb drive has 5 complete functioning machines including the XP host machine. Further I keep about 5 Gb of Machine and Software install and update files plus all my documents. I have the HPA still available. After all that, I still have over 22 Gb free.

A 40 Gb would still worked if I archived a bit of stuff. On the other hand, when Vista comes along, I will probably want an XP machine on board as well which means more space. So 60Gb is fine for now, but I think my next laptop will be 7200 rpm and 100 Gb or more.
... JD Hurst

DataAve · #6 Post by **DataAve** » Tue Feb 14, 2006 9:40 pm

...besides, when you have a 100GB drive, you can clean less often. I keep my main machines clean with the everyday schtuff, all the other junk, I put on externals.

pianowizard · #7 Post by **pianowizard** » Tue Feb 14, 2006 11:58 pm

I am backing up my entire collection of music CDs, a total of 5,850 of them, by ripping them into 192 kbps MP3 files. It looks like I will need about 600 GB of hard drive space.

christopher_wolf · #8 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 12:49 am

pianowizard wrote:I am backing up my entire collection of music CDs, a total of 5,850 of them, by ripping them into 192 kbps MP3 files. It looks like I will need about 600 GB of hard drive space.

Holllyyy Molllyyyy

You might eventually need a 2.5TB setup for that...Wow

#9 Post by **schen** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 1:03 am

Wow, that's a lot of media to store! I keep a lot of media too, but my library is pretty modest compared to you guys. I have some big pieces of baggage though since I also use my main laptop in my classroom; complete load of Encarta Library Edition so I don't have to fool with the disk and I use my laptop traveling with a DeLorme Street Atlas with GPS complete load for the same reasons. You add that with the media, puts me over halfway on my 60Gb pretty quickly. So I've recently bought an outboard USB drive to off-load some of the media and do backup.

leoblob · #10 Post by **leoblob** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 11:29 am

I use my machine for "office" type stuff... I have every file I've ever created for my job since I got my first Windows machine in 1993... includes quite a few medium-rez images (10 - 50MB each)... and the total amount of hard drive space I am using is just under 9GB.

It's the "entertainment" applications (video/music/gaming) which use so much hard drive space.

bral · #11 Post by **bral** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 12:12 pm

dsvochak wrote:But what kind of software/data are people using/storing that requires a 100 or 100+ gb drive?

Development copies of production databases, reams of source code, Microsoft & other vendor development tools, etc. MP3s I burn to DVDs so that I can have a large portable collection w/o taking up drive space. As flash drives get ever bigger, they may end up on flash.

dsvochak · #12 Post by **dsvochak** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 2:59 pm

From the responses so far, it seems there are two groups of TP users: those of us who use a TP primarily for "business" with some incidental "entertainment" and those whose "entertainment" uses are higher. (Which could explain the posts regarding the "poor" quality of speakers in ThinkPads.) And apparently there are at least 2 classes of "business" users: standard office business users (eg, leoblob and myself, perhaps even schen) and technical users (eg, bral, jdhurst).

Now, a couple of follow up questions:

1) Kyocera--do you have any idea what sort of "photos" are on those "photo servers"?

2) For the more gaming or entertainment oriented, a clarification. My original post wasn't well phrased. What I was really trying to ask is "... what kind of software/data are people using/storing that requires a 100 or 100+ gb drive in a thinkpad?" I infer from some of the answers (eg MadMikeSS's response) that a lot of the stuff mentioned isn't being stored on the internal drive in a thinkpad. So, what are you storing on your thinkpad that requires a 100gb drive?

Navck · #13 Post by **Navck** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 12:01 pm

Me?
120GB Maxtor (8MB cache, IDE)
120GB Maxtor (2MB cache, IDE)
36.7GB Raptor (8MB cache, SATA, fast)
60GB Thinkpad
120GB Maxtor Alt Computer (8MB Cache, IDE)
Lots and lots of DVD RAM for the Thinkpad

I've filled the 120GB maxtors to 20/19GB (Respectively from above) remaining with files that I don't want to delete because they're my internet life in a sense
The 36.7GB raptor and 60GB thinkpad drives are filled with my games/personal info/whatever I need it for
120GB on the alt computer is used to make some data reduntant

Rose · #14 Post by **Rose** » Sun Feb 19, 2006 8:43 pm

I have:

My long term storage server:
4 x 120Gb Seagate SATA 7200.8 in raid 5
4 x 18Gb SCSI UltraWide2 in raid 10

My desktop
2 x 160 Seagate SATA 7200.9 in raid 0
250 Seagate + 250 Maxtor + 200 Seagate + 200 Maxtor in JBOD

A couple of work PCs with 160 Gb each.

And my Thinkpads of course.

Don’t ask me what I keep on them, but theyre pretty filled up.

#15 Post by **Kyocera** » Sun Feb 19, 2006 9:29 pm

dsvochak
1) Kyocera--do you have any idea what sort of "photos" are on those "photo servers"?

Family type, seems like a lot of people are into digital cameras. Not sure what the file type is if that is what you mean.

Aroc · #16 Post by **Aroc** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 2:04 am

About 50GB of VMWare images and 20GB of software installs on one 100GB drive. Once you account for some expantion and retaining some free space for defragmentation, that drive is essentially full. I spec'ed a 100GB there since I knew I would need it. I bought the 7200 for speed.

8GB of O/S CD .iso files and ca 12GB of My XP installation and personal data on the other primary 100GB drive. 100GB is overkill here. I only bought the 100GB since it was faster than the 80 GB (density is higher than 80 or 60GB 7k100).

Truth be told, if I wasn't running VMware, I'd have bought that X41 with the 60GB 4200 rpm 1.8 inch drive off of brainpicker and enjoyed the extra money in my wallet. Though I still love this T43 and wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

davidspalding · #17 Post by **davidspalding** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 11:57 am

dsvochak wrote:I must be missing something.

My first computer had 2 360K 5 1/4" floppy drives. Then a 5mb hard drive. Then a whopping 10mb as a file server in a small business local area network. Today I've got a desktop with an 80gb drive and notebooks all with 40gb drives that I can't come close to filling up. I can understand buying a 7200 rpm vs a 5400 rpm drive. But what kind of software/data are people using/storing that requires a 100 or 100+ gb drive?...

Two words, amigo: video editing.

Frankly ANY kind of multimedia editing or production requires scads and scads of storage space. Add to that Windows really needs some breathing room, at least on the system drive, to run well, and be defragged regularly. I use multiple partitions to alleviate grind and gouge on the system partition. But until I get a Firewire 800 external drive, I'm dependent on my internal for immediate video captures.

BTW, not all business users are doing video capture, managing 20+ GB of stock photos for presentations, but if you're one of the "lucky few" who do, or travel a lot and want to carry personal music or video on the road...

You may not need more than a 60 GB drive (trust me, the IBM pre-load has a LOT of extras ... I daresay my new TP had about 6-10 GB just for the system drive), but that doesn't mean that those needing 100+ GB are doing anything out of the realm of the ordinary. If you still doubt, go to a large, chain bookstore and peruse the bookshelf related to home digital video/audio/photography use. Must be 50 or more titles out there. What ARE those people DOING? A: using their computers.

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