I got a 320GB external drive. It lasted me a while but not that long. last week i got a 500GB drive. but doing graphics, and downloading videos ...500GB is not that much. wonder how long to fil it up

Never mind how long it will take to fill up.   Your real problem is that any hard drive may die at any moment.    You need a back-up and a back-up of the back-up and...

Many Many DVD Backups! And more back ups for the backups!

L  You must download a lot!!

I have over a terabyte total storage, but one of my drives serves as back up for the other two.  I have yet to come anywhere near to filling any of them to capacity.  (I do know that collecting videos kills storage space quickly.  Learned that because my kids tended to kill their storage real fast with them!)  Mine is mostly content and graphics (both 2D and 3D), so it's going to take me a little longer to get to capacity.

And as Morgano said, BACK UP!!  That is one issue that can never be stressed enough.

I have 2 drives mirrored in Raid 1 array, I also back up to an XHD!!!
Loss of data isn't an option!!

I have two terrabytes in my PC. The main drive and a slave drive. They are formatted into 500GB partitions. I have had drives last for years, and then some that died in 6 months. Back up to DVD and an external drive. All my Poser runtimes are on a 500 GB external so I can change from my desktop to my laptop with ease. External drives have saved me many times. Graphics, music and movies take up a LOT of space. I bought the Western Digital green SATA drives that run really cool as I had a heat problem intially as my CPU throws a lot of heat. 6400+ AMD dual processor and so does my graphics card. The drives really lowered the temperatures. High temperatures can really wreck your hard drives.

Shortly after my last post, I found Windows offering to format my most recent external hard-drive, because it had stopped recognising it.   I suppose I should be grateful that it gave me the option to decline...

There is only one safe way to store digital media and that is to copy the binary by hand on to vellum and then to store it in an old monastery.

I have a 250 gig drive in my machine that is still 80% unused and then all content is backed up by either DVD or by a 500gig external hard drive. I keep nothing on my machine I don't use regularly  and I keep my external runtimes with a very small footprint.  I can't stand clutter....LOL!

"There is only one safe way to store digital media and that is to copy the binary by hand on to vellum and then to store it in an old monastery.", Morgano. ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!

* I got a 320GB external drive. It lasted me a while but not that long. last week i got a 500GB drive. but doing graphics, and downloading videos ...500GB is not that much. wonder how long to fil it up

Count the minutes! ;-D*

I wish gas prices followed hard drive prices....:cursing: 

If they did we would be paying about a nickel a gallon! :thumbupboth:

I think Bill Gates used to compare the automobile industry unfavourably with Microsoft.   It was something to the effect that, if the development of cars had kept pace with that of computers, cars would travel at umpteen thousand miles an hour and would go a zillion times around the globe on a single gallon.    Somebody added, "Yep - and they'd crash five times a day, too."

I was talking to one of the comcast techs and he said that p2p users can download
10 - 20 GB per day, hence it would only take a month or two to fill a big drive with
ripped DVDs.  this is one of the reasons they were blocking or delaying heavy
p2p users, but they were told to stop by some govt. agency or something.
net neutrality and all that.

Attached Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_monasteries

Not even that is safe. Look what happened to Glastonbury Abbey, among others. (Photo: public domain, from Wikipedia)

 If you ask me, i'm starting to think 1TB hardrive is like the modern day floppy disk

if you're doing graphics and animation, 1TB is more like a 'starter pack' disk space.

after working in networking for nearly a decade i simply have no faith in hard drives. anyone who works a lot with computers will regard hard drives as temporary storage at best. theyre the most primitive, mechanical component in your computer and are just a ticking time bomb. you can extend their lifespan a bit by ensuring they have proper cooling, but it is just a matter of time until they fail.

i actually have a friend who backs up and stores everything on cheap huge hard drives, and nothing i say to him gets through. its just a disaster waiting to happen.

i find i actually need about 80 gigs of space for my OS, programs, work in progress, any games i am currently playing, etc. anything OVER that is stuff slated for backing up anyway, and gets burned to DVDs which are stored in a cool, dark place.
so whether i have a 100 gig HDD, or a 500 gig HDD, the only difference it makes is in how often i have to stop and burn DVDs to clear it off. since this is done more frequently with a smaller HDD, IMO it is 'safer' than waiting months to fill up a 500 gig HDD before you back up.

currently on my work machine i have two 320GB SATA Seagate Barracudas in RAID-1 (mirrored). i keep all of my work in progress in a WIP folder that is also mirrored onto a USB flash drive (so i can take my work with me), and gets burned onto a DVD when it reaches ~4 gigs. yes, i am a bit paranoid :)