One thing i'd love to see is an updated buying guide for those of us who check out of the news cycle for awhile and may not be up on every new thing, what reasonable expectations are for prices per gig (for a given category - ie shingled vs not shingled) to know the sweet spots for buying, and what new strategies (like what I know of as decasing I guess is called 'drive shucking' here) people are using to get good deals. Along with details like is the hard drive inside that external USB case a good one, great one, or crappy one not worth it even on sale due to bad manufacturing.
Like an awesome 'wishlist' feature would be something readily accessed where I could just see the options, whether it's "need one NOW" or suggestions/predictions "if you can wait until X date you'll probably see offers like X" obviously not having to be perfect, but if say the lowest prices are usually at black friday vs other dates, so you can plan around that... like right now i'm thinking should I wait a month and mail order, or just order what I need tomorrow.
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I should note the above would mostly refer to the physical hard drive or SSD buying for the best value itself, as opposed to strategies. (which could be separate articles - ie when should someone use SSD vs HD?) Like myself I hope maybe i'll be able to write a useful article about tape backup and archival (which are not the same, also even RAIT soon) to share back if my experiments turn out positive, and since i've been watching them i'm pretty familiar with what the markets for tapes and tape drives are doing and probably will do - but i've been so focused on tape I haven't been paying attention to the spinning rust markets for half a year so i'm not sure what's best to buy for the NAS anymore.
Like an awesome 'wishlist' feature would be something readily accessed where I could just see the options, whether it's "need one NOW" or suggestions/predictions "if you can wait until X date you'll probably see offers like X" obviously not having to be perfect, but if say the lowest prices are usually at black friday vs other dates, so you can plan around that... like right now i'm thinking should I wait a month and mail order, or just order what I need tomorrow.
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I should note the above would mostly refer to the physical hard drive or SSD buying for the best value itself, as opposed to strategies. (which could be separate articles - ie when should someone use SSD vs HD?) Like myself I hope maybe i'll be able to write a useful article about tape backup and archival (which are not the same, also even RAIT soon) to share back if my experiments turn out positive, and since i've been watching them i'm pretty familiar with what the markets for tapes and tape drives are doing and probably will do - but i've been so focused on tape I haven't been paying attention to the spinning rust markets for half a year so i'm not sure what's best to buy for the NAS anymore.
