We get questions every week from hard drive users wondering why they should spend extra on an A/V hard drive. For those outside of the pro A/V industries the term "professional Audio/Video hard drive" might seem a little odd. A drive is a drive, right? Not exactly...
Why spend extra when I can get a great deal on a brand X hard drive at my local chain electronics store? That depends on what you are using the drive for. If you are simply backing up your latest digital camera pics or your new MP3 purchases then a cheap USB drive will likely be fine. Always have at least one copy of everything...drives can crash.
If you are using the drive for large data transfer applications like music, TV and film production don't use your budget cuts on storage. Ask anyone who has worked on a few projects and odds are you'll hear horror stories of lost data, defective drives etc.
Since Glyph Technologies is one of our top pro A/V drive lines I pulled some useful information from the Glyph site:
Internal power supplies and fans.
Glyph uses pro-quality internal power supplies in the GT Series, and sturdy IEC type connectors like those used on server-grade computer gear. To keep the drive mechanism cool, we use whisper-quiet fans that produce no more than 20 dBa noise. Some companies offer "fanless" drives. We believe "fanless" is not something to brag about. Without a fan, and in heavy-duty cycles like audio and video production, your drive has a higher likelihood of failing. There's just no other way to put it.
Warranty & Replacement
We offer what we call an Overnight Advance Replacement Policy, which basically states that if your GT Series hard drive fails within the first year of it's warranty, we will send you a replacement drive overnight. Now, who else can make that claim?
Unbeatable Support
We have the industry knowledge to keep up with today's computers and systems, and if you need to call Glyph Support, you get directly through to a tech who is prepared to help you. If your drive does need to be repaired, we have a 48-Hour in-house turnaround time on most repairs, which means that you'll be up and running again in no time.
No wall-warts in the GT Series.
Don'tcha just hate them? You can't just use any adapter with any drive -- you have to use the one that it came with. And if you lose it, you're out of luck. Big, bulky wall adapters take up more than their share of the power strip, not to mention that the fragile connector from the wart to the drive is anything but professional.
Quietmetal
Glyph's Quietmetal is our time-tested solution to quieting noisy hard drives. It's a tri-laminate material (two layers of metal separated by a polymer core) which mounts the disk mechanism to the chassis, and dampens disk vibration before it reaches the chassis, thereby reducing the overall noise of the hard drive system. And it's dead quiet. Really. Glyph is pleased to offer Seagate hard drive mechanisms in our hard drive products. Seagate has the best reputation and the lowest failure rates that we've seen from any disk manufacturer.
I hope this helps. Definitely do not buy more storage than you need but be sure NOT to buy less.