power or performance, the green drive debate! (good read)

[mr-hexen]

good read one why Seagate is getting out of the Green (LP line) hard drive movement.

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/us/sponsored/Seagate-HDD-Hard_Disk_Drive-121

 

[neilt0]

Not a good read, certainly for us unRAIDers.

 

It completely disregarded the issues of PSU size when using multiple drives, or even spinup (peak) power use from a single 7200rpm drive.

 

Then there are the heat issues. My 7200rpm Seagate drives (albeit not from the current generation) ALL overheat (exceed 44 deg. C) when transferring data over prolonged periods. None of the Green drives do this.

[mr-hexen]

Not a good read, certainly for us unRAIDers.

 

It completely disregarded the issues of PSU size when using multiple drives, or even spinup (peak) power use from a single 7200rpm drive.

 

Then there are the heat issues. My 7200rpm Seagate drives (albeit not from the current generation) ALL overheat (exceed 44 deg. C) when transferring data over prolonged periods. None of the Green drives do this.

 

the PSU size for <10 drives should not matter at all. If you have >10 drives you likely have a controller which supports staggered spin up.

 

if 7200rpm drives over heat, perhaps there is a cooling issue there? I have four 7200rpm drives (3x WD5000AA## models, 1x Seagate 7200.10), none overheat. All are below 40c except the seagate because it does not have a fan in front or behind it.

 

[neilt0]

the PSU size for <10 drives should not matter at all. If you have >10 drives you likely have a controller which supports staggered spin up.

 

if 7200rpm drives over heat, perhaps there is a cooling issue there? I have four 7200rpm drives (3x WD5000AA## models, 1x Seagate 7200.10), none overheat. All are below 40c except the seagate because it does not have a fan in front or behind it.

Nope, in my 22-drive server, with 4 (yes, 4) HBAs, none of them do staggered spinup.

 

In my HP Proliant Microserver, the PSU will not support more than (about) 4 7200rom drives. Granted, it wasn't designed to, but it will do 7x 5400rpm drives. And, I've had to buy a new large PSU to support my mixed 7200rpm and 5400rpm 22-drive server.

The Microserver, which is designed for 7200rpm drives, and which cannot have fans added, does have Seagate drives overheating, even if only 2 are spun up.

 

The most egregious part of Seagate's stance is that they are shipping these 7200rpm drives in external USB boxes that can't vent all that heat (partly due to shitty design), meaning in sustained use, the drive hits 69 degrees C and no longer functions.

If there's one place Seagate should be using 5400rpm drives, it's USB drives, and they don't.

[dave_m]

That's a bummer for sure as green drives were perfect for most of what unraid does.  The PSU impact is real, as even smaller servers could need a bigger one if green drives were swapped for 7200RPM drives.  They will need more/better cooling, which means either louder or more expensive fans.  The green drives were typically cheaper than 7200RPM drives as well, so I'm not seeing any upside here for unraid.

 

For a home user with a drive or two in a desktop, sure 7200RPM makes sense, although I'd personally recommend a SSD and a green storage drive over 2 7200RPM drives.

[ohlwiler]

good read one why Seagate is getting out of the Green (LP line) hard drive movement.

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/us/sponsored/Seagate-HDD-Hard_Disk_Drive-121

 

That wasn't journalism that was (paid) advertising. The main advantage of lower rpm drives is cheaper drives. The lower power consumption is a secondary benefit.

[mr-hexen]

good read one why Seagate is getting out of the Green (LP line) hard drive movement.

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/us/sponsored/Seagate-HDD-Hard_Disk_Drive-121

 

That wasn't journalism that was (paid) advertising. The main advantage of lower rpm drives is cheaper drives. The lower power consumption is a secondary benefit.

 

i think you have that backwards. a 7200 rpm motor vs a 5400/5900 rpm motor costs pennies more (if at anything at all) to manufacture.

 

so, to adjust your statement, i would say:

 

the main advantage of lower rpm drives is more expensive higher rpm drives. Of course this advantage is to the manufacturers, not us.

 

with lower rpm drives at "$x" they could advertise faster rpm drives as performance drives and charge $x+20, like WD Greens / Blues / Blacks.

[lionelhutz]

I always felt Seagate just did their LP drives to have a comparible product line to the WD and Hitachi 5400rpm drive lines. I never really felt they fully leveraged the technology available to build as green a drive as possible. Now, with less competition they likely feel they don't have to bother even trying anymore.

 

Peter

[S80_UK]

As I see it, Seagate went for 5900 rpm over 5400 rpm to give themselves an edge in the green product space.  However, by doing this, they eroded the difference between those and the 7200 rpm drives, such that it is less economic for them to produce two different variants.  Margins are thin enough in the hdd sector anyway, so I think dropping the slower drives could make some sense from their point of view.

 

As others have commented - the heat issues seem not to be considered.  Since most desktop machines have only one drive perhaps it's less of an issue, though is is for unRAID users.  I agree with the comments that many USB drives are poorly designed from the heat dissipation point of view are are therefore effectively designed to fail if run continually.

 

As for this...

 

Additionally, consider the manufacturing side of computing environmentalism. Seventy percent of the materials used in Seagate drives are recyclable. All Seagate drives are halogen-free, and compliant with the European Union’s 2007 Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical substances (REACH). By continuing to push the boundaries of per-drive capacity, Seagate is also helping to reduce the total amount of manufacturing necessary for a given storage capacity. Why use the resources needed for three 1TB drives when a single 3TB drive will serve just as well?

 

Pure marketing - as said above, paid-for advertising, IMHO.

[c3]

Look at the URL, the article is sponsored. Elsewhere on the board the recent financial stats were posted. Both Seagate and WD need to fix their business, and it appears Seagate is reducing SKUs. Since doing only low speed would cut them out of the pricer enterprise space, high speed stays, and LP goes. All the rest about .43 cents and $60 is just made up fluff. I seriously doubt Seagate is unaware of PUE factors, they just left all that out.

[mr-hexen]

add to this that that flooding in Thailand might have destroyed manufacturing for 7200 and green/LP drives the decision was made to only rebuild the 7200 plant to save on money, and this press release is the marketing fud to make it look like a good thing.

[neilt0]

add to this that that flooding in Thailand might have destroyed manufacturing for 7200 and green/LP drives the decision was made to only rebuild the 7200 plant to save on money, and this press release is the marketing fud to make it look like a good thing.

 

I don't think Seagate was nearly as badly affected by the flooding as WD.

[lionelhutz]

The points about the small energy savings are fairly accurate. There really is very little power savings between green and normal 7200rpm HDD's at the power levels that HDD's run at. A green drive might save you a $1 or $2 a year in an always-spinning server. So, even a 22 drive always-spinning server is only saving between $22 and $44 a year. The savings are even less when the drives are spun-down for a significant portion of that 8760hrs in a year.

 

So, the only really valid reason to complain is because the green drives do run a little cooler and having to use 7200rpm drives means another fan or 2 is required in the server.

 

Peter