so temped to get two for my mirrored setup.

MaXLine Pros were Maxtor's SATA drives for 'nearline' enterprise storage (analogous to Seagate's 'NL' and 'ES' series drives). This means they actually are intended to archive large quantities of semi-current data (like the older pr0n you rarely now look up). Nearline drives aren't supposed to run 24/7, but they are intended to run more reliably than consumer 'desktop' drives.

Why am I still inclined to prefer a Seagate desktop drive? Someone restore my senses...

Winterpool said:... do you really want to risk losing 500 GB of your hard-earned pr0n? ... If you're actually trying to work with the stuff, I shudder to think how much data it would take up.
I don't like the idea of risking 500GB at all no matter who the mfgr is. Considering video, however, it takes up huge swaths of hard drive space. For that kind of data, say capturing uncompressed video (maybe Huffyuv lossless compression), the amount of disk space you need is outrageous. But only temporarily. As long as you have the original and the end result is burned on DVD then even if the drive crashes hard you haven't really lost anything.

I bought an extra 160GB drive a year ago with the idea that I was going to use it for all my video projects. By the time I got around to starting some of them the drive was half full of other stuff, and 80GB is nothing when you're editing video or mixing hours of CD-quality uncompressed audio together. This drive looks great for that purpose.

Naysayers who claim 500 GBs is probably those people who aren't serious about d/l'ing and/or BT'ing. I already have in excess of 1 TB of audio / video that is better off being accessed via a server than thru consumable media - and I am not nearly a hardcore user.

I can't wait for even larger drives to come out - I'm anxious to go ahead and jukebox my 700+ DVDs and put the actual physical copies into storage.

Okay, for those of you actually concerned about the thermal profile of your hard drives: the MaXLine Pro 500 GB was measured dissipating 14.5 watts when seeking, 9 watts when idle. For comparison, a 250 GB Seagate 7200.9 generation desktop drive dissipated 10.6 watts whilst seeking, 6.7 watts idle. If actual thermal radiation correlates with operating power, the Maxtor may put out 1/3 more heat into the atmosphere (or your well-ventilated computer case -- your case is well-ventilated, no?).

Nearline drives are supposed to sit in big storage arrays in a well-cooled server room. As the name suggests, they aren't 'online' 24/7, instead spinning up only when data that happens to be resident on that particular drive is actually queried. So I suppose their heat output isn't as big of a concern in their intended role. The Seagate nearline drives run only about 1 watt cooler than the Maxtors.

Currently not available, D-E-A-D

BubbleSparkxx said:I'm anxious to go ahead and jukebox my 700+ DVDs and put the actual physical copies into storage.

green for that!!

Good deal but OP may want to take his session ID out of the link.

-J

This is a seriously good price.

IMHO it would be far too risky to put 500GB of any data on a single drive.

My plan is to buy five hard drives, five hard drive fans, a RAID 5 card, and a good power supply.

Then I'll put all of that an old computer I have sitting around. Twenty minutes after that with the magic of Ubuntu + Samba and I will have a seriously butt kickin' two terabyte NAS that should last for five years. Cost ~$650

Order canceled... DEAL DEAD.