The Important Thing U Must B Aware Of Iz That All This HD Capacity And/or Size Has 2 Do With The Quality Of The COMPRESSUON Technology Involved. As It Has Evolved & Gotten More Reliable/Stable. It & The OS Do a Better Job Communicating It's Capacity. So Basically U R Dealin' With An EMPTY IMAGE Space 2 Install 2, Or Backup Filez 2.

Of Course You Never Get The ABSOLUTE AMOUNT That A Manufacturer Advertises A HD 2 B. And Interestingly Enough, Petabyte Hard Drivez R Now Being Discussed.

Thank U So Much 4 Your Input. *yes*

 

We Hear Ya Loud & Clear, & Feel Your Pain. And Will B Doin' The Same Here On Out. *yes*

And It's Gonna B Fun Tryin' 2 Find Those Loopz Again. We Used Wincatalog To Catalog The Drive We Were Transferrin' From. So We Have Somethin' 2 Refer 2 When We Try & Find Them Again.

Thankz 4 The Input.

 

Well actually, it's not really the size that matters, but the number of platters that is usually hard to find out about as the manufacturers try to hide that spec for "some" reason. The best way is to download the PDF manual of a HD you're interested in. So you can have a 1TB drive with 2-3-4 platters, or a 2TB drive with only 2 platters nowadays. It depends mostly on the year of production and the level of tech used. Since a few years ago, 500GB platters [since 2010 I think] and 1TB [since the 2014] platters are the most common. This year [2015] it will be 1.3TB platters and 1TB platters since they use a new tech of storing data, newer than perpendicular which is 2010 tech, if I remember correctly.

I only have one drive with 2 platters and it's the Seagate 1TB, about 3 years old and luckily still holding well. I'm using it for holding samples exclusively. All other drives I bought have only one platter and I have never had even one faulty drive since 1997 when I bought my first PC. Lucky? Could be... But I've learned about the number of platters and their connection to faulty drives early on... and I've been servicing and maintaining PCs since then. Mostly PCs aimed at audio and/or video production and we tend to use HDs heavily. I've always been recommending 1 platter drives and they can also "nicely" die off under such strain, let alone those with 2 and up number of platters. 4 platters, god forbid. I wouldn't recommend them to a client or a friend. Rather buy more 1 platter drives than 1 with more than 1 or 2 platters. 1 platter HDs seem to be so much safer solution, really. Similar to RAID 0, yes.

 

There is a variable which I didn't mention because it isn't a factor to the original point, but is a factor regarding your interpretation of the data:

The 4TB Seagate drives in use and displayed in that graph are newer and have fewer hours of use on them than the lower-capacity drives in the graph. That fact itself doesn't substantiate the 'lower-capacity = more reliable' claim, but it removes the counter-interpretation.