TeraStation question

[PeterAit]

I am considering a TeraStation Pro II as my network storage, but I am puzzled by the pricing. A 1 TB unit costs about $600 but a 6 TB unit costs $1800. Isn't the only difference that one has four 250GB drives and the other has four 1.5 TB drives? Given that a new 1.5TB drive costs about $130, I wonder why there is this $1200 price difference.

Thanks,

Peter

[Jack Flesher]

I am considering a TeraStation Pro II as my network storage, but I am puzzled by the pricing. A 1 TB unit costs about $600 but a 6 TB unit costs $1800. Isn't the only difference that one has four 250GB drives and the other has four 1.5 TB drives? Given that a new 1.5TB drive costs about $130, I wonder why there is this $1200 price difference.

Thanks,

Peter

I suspect -- but don't know for sure -- that the one with the 250's has an IDE drive interface while the one filled with 1.5 TB's is definitely SATA.

[reburns]

I do not know TeraStation but do know that in particular the Seagate 1.5TB HDD has a horrible reputation in some circles.

[Chris Pollock]

Presumably they just charge what they think people will pay. I've noticed that Dell (here in Australia at least) do a similar thing. They have a reasonable price for the base machine, but charge far more for any upgrades (RAM, hard disks, etc.) than the components would cost to buy retail.

If you need a lot of storage you might want to consider building yourself a simple headless (no monitor) Linux box. It would give you the option to add more hard drives as you need them, and as the prices inevitaby come down. It would of course require more work to set up, but once it's set up it should require little or no maintenence.