This is a sponsored article in association with Dabs.com.
Storage demands on your desktop PC have never been higher.
While Word documents might not be getting any bigger, high-definition video is the de facto for both films and home videos nowadays. It consumes multiple gigabytes per file, while modern game installs often reach the 10GB+ level and digital music collections can happily eat up 100GB of space.
So if you're building a new PC from scratch or want to add a bit of breathing space to your existing system the Samsung 2TB SpinPoint F4EG hard drive available from Dabs for less than £80should grab your attention. Not only is there a huge amount of storage, there's technology inside too!
Using the latest 667GB platters means that fewer are required - the number of platters has been reduced from four to three and as a result the drive uses 24 percent less power.
This also makes it quieter on top of Samsung's NoiseGuard and SilentSeek technologies, - this drive would be perfect for a media centre PC. Don't worry about performance; this drive uses the latest SATA 3.0Gbps interface and has a big 32MB cache to squeeze maximum performance out of it. Its usual price is £80.99, so don't miss this chance to snap it up at under the £80 mark, which is less than 4p per GB!
Talking of system building, if you're putting together your own, don't miss the Intel R.U.S.E. offer at Dabs.You'll get a free download copy of the rather excellent R.U.S.E. when buying selected processors, plus there's a Limited Edition Kit that includes a water bottle & mouse mat when bundled with selected Intel motherboards.
The external advantage
Not everyone has the luxury of a bargain internal upgrade, but that doesn't mean you have to be hard done by. External options come with a heap of advantages of their own.
Take the Buffalo 1TB (2x500GB) DriveStation Duo for £89.99, with dual USB 2.0 and Firewire ports it offers great transfer speeds with the added bonus of RAID 1 security. Any data stored is mirrored between the two 500GB hard drives. Alternatively it'll happily run as a JBOD array to deliver its full 1TB of storage. There's also a 2TB option available, too.
For anyone looking for something similar but with the friendly sharing abilities of NAS (Network Attached Storage) - so everyone on the network can access the same files - take a look at the Buffalo 1TB (2x500GB) LinkStation NAS. At £124.98 it adds in Gigabit networking, a full UPnP/DNLA/iTunes streaming media server and secure internet sharing. This is one powerful box.
Buffalo has never been renowned for its design but if that's your want, check out the LaCie 1TB Wireless Spaceexternal NAS drive.
It looks utterly slick and offers some impressive features, including a solution to complete Gigabit networking; if your main router isn't Gigabit you'll lose the speed advantage of any connected Gigabit devices, the LaCie box circumvents this by having a built-in 4-port Gigabit switch so devices can be directly connected to it. It'll even double as a broadband Cable router.
This is besides its Wireless-N router, UPnP/DLNA/iTunes server and near-silent design so it could happily sit in your living room or office without disturbing you.
