Summary of Reddit Comments on "hard disk drive 2 tb"

Drive Storage Measurements and Standards

• The difference between kilobytes and kibibytes due to HDD manufacturers preferring decimal measurements.
• Manufacturers market hard drives in decimal units but overprovisioning plays a role in advertised capacities.
• The disparity between binary and decimal measurements causing confusion for consumers.
• Windows displaying drive storage in mebibytes to make it easier to process.
• The conversion discrepancy where 1000 Gigabytes reads as 931 Gibibytes.

Available Space on Drives

• It should be noted that filesystems take up some space on drives.
• Manufacturers and Microsoft contributing to the confusion of SI and binary unit systems.
• Users prefer using terms like "gigabyte" over "gibibyte" for simplification.
• Calls for consistency in discussions about storage space and speed.

Handling Hard Drives

• Discussion on wiping drives securely before disposal due to potential data leaks and legal compliance.
• Suggestions to shred drives for secure disposal and avoid potential data breaches.
• A data recovery laboratory offering to zero out drives and provide a certificate of destruction for reuse.
• Recommendations on securely wiping data off drives for compliance with legal and company policies.
• Various methods suggested for securely erasing data on drives before disposal.

External Drives and Backup Strategies

• All external drives eventually fail, and the 3-2-1 backup strategy is recommended.
• Suggestions to consolidate data on a single large drive and maintain backups.
• Backup strategies like RAID 6, NAS, cloud backups, and optical media backups are recommended.
• Suggestions for building a storage array for data protection over time.
• Recommendations for maintaining multiple backups and verifying data integrity with CRC and hash.

Hard Drive Capacity and Efficiency

• Discussion on 18TB hard drives and their efficiency and potential installation challenges.
• Details about the advancement of technology leading to higher storage capacities in the same form factor.
• Interest in advancements like EAMR and MAMR applying to lower capacity drives or different form factors.
• Humorous comments about the need for expert installation for plugging in a USB drive.

Troubleshooting and Formatting

• Recommendations to check file systems, cable connections, and run disk utility on Mac for troubleshooting.
• Saving data and formatting HDDs for backups and off-site storage.
• Information on using disk management to format HDDs and create new partitions.
• Suggestions for choosing the correct install path to utilize available space effectively on drives.
• Humorous comments on missteps in managing available drive space.