A Hard Drive is, as we all know, one of the most important and utile mechanical components that we used to read, write and store data. When thinking of purchasing new hard drives, Most of the users become confused by the questions that come to their mind that are which is better, three 4 TB hard drives or one 12 TB? Should you buy high capacity one hard drive or multiple low capacity hard drives are better choices? What are the differences and advantages of both low and high capacity hard drives? Let’s clear all your confusions regarding this so that you can purchase what’s ideal for you.
Money is Quite Important!
If you are talking about prices then it’s simple. Three 4 TB Hard drives are about 25-30℅ cheaper than a 12 hard drive depending on the quality of the product. So, if you purchase a 12 TB hard drive, it will cost more money though the space capacity is the same. You can say, here is the “money-advantage” that you can get from purchasing multiple low capacity hard drives in comparison to a single high capacity hard drive.
Fear The Data Corruption!
A hard drive possesses a lifespan of about 5 to hardly 6 years. When a hard drive fails, the data inside it becomes corrupted though the hard drive shows some signs that indicates its death. Now, using some common sense, you will come to know that if a 12 TB hard drive fails to work, and your drive is full of data, you will then face a huge data corruption but if you are using three 4 TB hard drives and one of them becomes failed, you still have 8 TB data to use. Here is also the advantage goes for the low capacity hard drives because you can have a chance to secure your data with multiple low capacity hard drives in comparison to high capacity hard drive.
N.B. – Talking about data corruption, if you want to secure your data, don’t use RAID as it is not fully secured rather you should not only back up your important files but also make a clone of the full hard drive of which you have to secure mostly, in another hard drive that is basically empty.
Noise, Vibration, Heat, Power Consumption Are Other Symptoms!
Here the advantage goes for the high capacity hard drive. Do you know, why? Because a hard drive is a mechanical device and the platter inside it always moving and creating sound in collaboration with the head that obviously creates vibration. if you use multiple low capacity hard drives, guess what, the sound and vibration that all of them produce will be multiple times louder than that of a single high capacity hard drive. That means, if you use three 4 TB hard drives, the sound and vibration that they produce will be three times louder than a single one which may not be that much of problematic for you but the real problem that you have to face are three times more heat production and power consumption will also occur in that situation. That means, your “money-advantage” is in real trouble!
Air Flow & Cable Hazards Too!
If you connect multiple internal hard drives in your computer, you will face more cable hazards because of the heat that these hard drives produce and for these cable hazards, the airflow will also be hampered. The reason behind this is very simple. In consumer-grade, 4 hard drive slots are available in the cabinets and in case of motherboards, maximum of 6 slots or you can say, 6 SATA ports are available for hard drives. Now, if you engage all 4 slots with hard drives, airflow will definitely be hampered because the more hard drives will be connected, the more SATA cables and power connectors will also be added. It will hamper the airflow badly. And if the airflow becomes hampered, the system of your PC will produce more heat and that heat may slow down your computer and reduce its lifetime. In that case, you have to take care of it. On the other hand, a single high capacity hard drive can do no harm like this.
Future is not far
If you fill all of the 4 slots with low capacity hard drives, you will not be able to add another one in the future to store your data but if you use one high capacity hard drive, you can add another one in future. This is also a great advantage that you can get by using a single high capacity hard drive.
Now, you may be deciding to purchase one high capacity hard drive, don’t you? Not so early. These are the disadvantages that you can get if you use multiple low capacity internal hard drives! But if you use multiple low capacity external hard drives, it will be awesomely beneficial for you!
You can obviously connect numerous external hard drives with your system and in that case, low capacity hard drives will be a better option so that you don’t have to face huge data loss. Yeah, it’s true that there will be much noise or vibration but besides that, there will be no problem because for external hard drives, problems like heating, low space or slots and decreased airflow are not applicable so that they cannot affect the system of your PC and you can securely store your important data in your external low capacity hard drives. Lastly, if you are talking about money, as I have previously mentioned, three 4 TB Hard Drives are much cheaper than one 12 TB Hard drive. So, here is also the advantage goes to the low capacity hard drives.
Final Words…
My recommendation is that if you want to use multiple internal low capacity hard drives instead of one high capacity hard drive, you should better eliminate the plan because of the consequences that you have to suffer later and I have described in this article though it is really up to you about what you want to use or what you do not but if you want to use external multiple low capacities hard drives instead of a single high capacity drive, you have got a great idea, my friend. You should use multiple low capacity external hard drives so that you, as a user, can get many advantages that I have mentioned.
I hope you guys have enjoyed “Do You Need a BIGGER Hard Drive Or Multiple Smaller One? “. If so then don’t forget to comment down below to appreciate my work. Thanks for visiting.