Hard Drive Size


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Disks up to 9 million terabytes are supported.

 

:)

 

Actually it depends on the file system you've selected.

 

With Reiser the limit is 16TB

 

With XFS it's actually 18 ExaBytes (18 million TB) ... although the files can't be larger than 9 ExaBytes  :) :)

 

Not a limit we'll be worrying about anytime soon I suspect.

 

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Disks up to 9 million terabytes are supported.

 

Yes please, put me down for one, estimated delivery?

 

Hmmm. If you could preclear 1T a minute, one of these puppies would be precleared in 35 years. At 8 hours per T, closer to 700 years. And at a penny per T, it would cost $180,000.

 

I'll stick with 5-10T drives, thank you very much!

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... at a penny per T, it would cost $180,000.

 

Hard to say what the actual cost might be if drives actually reached that size.

 

The 8GB drive I bought a couple months ago (for $230) would have cost $1,384,615,385  at the cost/MB of the first hard drive I bought (~ 1980) ... a 26MB Seagate for $4500  (a 10% discount from the $4999 list price).    That 26MB drive cost $173.08/MB !!    In those days a statement similar to yours regarding a potential 8TB drive might been "... at a penny/MB, it would cost $80,000 => yet an 8TB drive today cost less than $250.

 

Granted, the evolution in size from 8TB to 9,000,000TB is about 3 times as much as the evolution from 26MB to 8TB was ... but who knows what might happen in the next 35 years !!  :)

 

 

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they say the samsung ssd 16tb drive is around $10000.

then you do the math, sell your house for a drive now then.

 

That's today ... just wait and see what the price is in a year or so.    My first SSD was an 80GB Intel X-25 that I bought about 6 years ago for $600.    You can now get 1TB SSDs for less than that ... and the prices continue to decline at a rather steep rate.

 

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That's today ... just wait and see what the price is in a year or so.    My first SSD was an 80GB Intel X-25 that I bought about 6 years ago for $600.    You can now get 1TB SSDs for less than that ... and the prices continue to decline at a rather steep rate.

I tend to agree with Gary on this one. If fact, I think that 16T could become a very popular size if the prices come down. At $50/T (current pricing is about $300/T, but the price has been falling like a rock for the past year and I see $50/T or even less being as a possibility in the not too distant future), that would be $800 each. Steep, but if they last a lot longer than hard drives (no mechanical wear and tear, and very limited writes on a media server), and are hugely faster, I could see that being doable for some unRAID users. 1 parity and 3-4 16 T SSDs would make a pretty sweet setup. Expandable to 384T. Not to mention virtually silent.

 

SSD is the future IMO. The days of the large spinners are coming to an end.

 

... at a penny per T, it would cost $180,000.

 

Hard to say what the actual cost might be if drives actually reached that size.

 

The 8GB drive I bought a couple months ago (for $230) would have cost $1,384,615,385  at the cost/MB of the first hard drive I bought (~ 1980) ... a 26MB Seagate for $4500  (a 10% discount from the $4999 list price).    That 26MB drive cost $173.08/MB !!    In those days a statement similar to yours regarding a potential 8TB drive might been "... at a penny/MB, it would cost $80,000 => yet an 8TB drive today cost less than $250.

 

Granted, the evolution in size from 8TB to 9,000,000TB is about 3 times as much as the evolution from 26MB to 8TB was ... but who knows what might happen in the next 35 years !!  :)

 

I quoted $180K price "at a penny per T". That is 3000x cheaper/T than current pricing. At $30/T (today's bargain price), one of these would cost $540 million. That price would have to be cut in half 26 times to get the price down into the $10,000 price category. Price per G has been declining dramatically since 1980, when 1 G would have cost about $200,000. See HERE (remember, this is a logarithmic scale, so the slope is actually MUCH steeper).

 

But if you look closely, over the past 5-6 years, the curve has somewhat flattened and prices have only dropped by about 1/2. To drop in half 26 times, if this trend holds, would take 130 years.

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  • 2 months later...

Sorry to break away from funny, but besides the largest practical size, what is the best deal today in terms of size vs cost of disks?

 

I have only 5 1TB discs, and not only s it little by today's standards but also close to filling it...

 

Trying to see how to star adding/replacing disks, if 2TB ones, 3TB, ones etc?

 

Thanks!

 

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Sorry to break away from funny, but besides the largest practical size, what is the best deal today in terms of size vs cost of disks?

 

I have only 5 1TB discs, and not only s it little by today's standards but also close to filling it...

 

Trying to see how to star adding/replacing disks, if 2TB ones, 3TB, ones etc?

 

Thanks!

See here for some additional thoughts about drive cost.
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On a cost/TB basis, the "sweet spots" are probably 3TB traditional drives and 8TB Seagate SMR drives.

 

Remember that to start using larger drives, you'll need to upgrade your parity drive -- be sure you make it large enough that you won't need to do that again to move to even larger drives the next time.  I'd use at least a 4TB drive for that.

 

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Sorry to break away from funny, but besides the largest practical size, what is the best deal today in terms of size vs cost of disks?

 

I have only 5 1TB discs, and not only s it little by today's standards but also close to filling it...

 

Trying to see how to star adding/replacing disks, if 2TB ones, 3TB, ones etc?

 

Thanks!

See here for some additional thoughts about drive cost.

 

Thanks, I'll take a look.

 

 

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On a cost/TB basis, the "sweet spots" are probably 3TB traditional drives and 8TB Seagate SMR drives.

 

Remember that to start using larger drives, you'll need to upgrade your parity drive -- be sure you make it large enough that you won't need to do that again to move to even larger drives the next time.  I'd use at least a 4TB drive for that.

 

Yeah good point. I did know that parity has to be the largest, and leaning towards getting 2 3TB drives to start... My case holds 12 drives total, so shouldn-t be that bad

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On the above, what is the procedure for replacing the parity drive? Because first I have to connect the new drive and do a pre-clear? And then take out parity and select the new disk as the parity one?

 

And for the original question, torn between:

 

Seagate 7200 3TB - $89

WD green 3TB - $92

WD Red 3TB - 110

 

What would you say is the best option in my case to start replacing my small array of 5 1TB WD green drives? I got those because at the time I eaither read or concluded that they were the best option, less power consumption, lower peak power draw from psu, etc but now I'm not that sure...

 

In my case I mostylly write occasionaly and then get or stream files from it like movies or musics, etc. and not running a system that goes on 24x7 with disk activity (even if it turned on all day). do I really care about power to choose the greens being they will be idle/spun down most of the time? Do I care about the faster speed of the seagate being that the network bottlenecks even 5400rpm drives? Do I care ablut the (theoretical) reliability of the red being my sistem does not run24x7 with some days not even accessing it at all..?

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3T are pretty small in today's world. Of course it depends on your target array size. Remember, to be economic, you would expect drives you buy today to work for the next 4-5 years. The most expensive drive is the drive you have to replace long before its useful life is reached, due to insufficient drive slots! You also have to realize that a larger array costs more to operate, and has a higher likelihood of a drive failure. You want to use fewer disks, and have adequate room for adding new drives.

 

I'd suggest looking at THESE 5T Toshiba drives. I have several and are working well. at $140 (at time I wrote this), that is $28/T and is cheaper per T than any of those you mention. Also, these are 7200 RPM and high density giving you a speed advantage over those you are considering. I think this is the sweet spot today.

 

In terms of longevity, I've had amazing results from my Hitachi and now HGST drives. They are my first choice. But the secret of their reliability is out, and now they are at a considerable premium even for 3T and 4T. Too bad.

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3T are pretty small in today's world. Of course it depends on your target array size. Remember, to be economic, you would expect drives you buy today to work for the next 4-5 years. The most expensive drive is the drive you have to replace long before its useful life is reached, due to insufficient drive slots! You also have to realize that a larger array costs more to operate, and has a higher likelihood of a drive failure. You want to use fewer disks, and have adequate room for adding new drives.

 

I'd suggest looking at THESE 5T Toshiba drives. I have several and are working well. at $140 (at time I wrote this), that is $28/T and is cheaper per T than any of those you mention. Also, these are 7200 RPM and high density giving you a speed advantage over those you are considering. I think this is the sweet spot today.

 

In terms of longevity, I've had amazing results from my Hitachi and now HGST drives. They are my first choice. But the secret of their reliability is out, and now they are at a considerable premium even for 3T and 4T. Too bad.

 

3T are pretty small in today's world. Of course it depends on your target array size. Remember, to be economic, you would expect drives you buy today to work for the next 4-5 years. The most expensive drive is the drive you have to replace long before its useful life is reached, due to insufficient drive slots! You also have to realize that a larger array costs more to operate, and has a higher likelihood of a drive failure. You want to use fewer disks, and have adequate room for adding new drives.

 

I'd suggest looking at THESE 5T Toshiba drives. I have several and are working well. at $140 (at time I wrote this), that is $28/T and is cheaper per T than any of those you mention. Also, these are 7200 RPM and high density giving you a speed advantage over those you are considering. I think this is the sweet spot today.

 

In terms of longevity, I've had amazing results from my Hitachi and now HGST drives. They are my first choice. But the secret of their reliability is out, and now they are at a considerable premium even for 3T and 4T. Too bad.

 

Hmmmthat's an interesting find the only thing that throws me off is that it states there's a newer model, the x300?

 

Regarding $/TB yes it's cheaper but not that far off from the seagate which is 30/TB and is also a 7200 rpm.

 

Of course it also saddens me that the bigger drive the more you lose replacing the parity one :) but I guess that's just par for the course..

 

I think I will decide between the 3TB and the 5TB you showed me. One other factor is that While I like having all my stuff there to access and stream, I don fill it up that fast, imagine my little 4TB total space has grown to almost full but in a couple of years which makes me think maybe 3 is ok for my case. But your 5 one seems a good option too.

 

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Also remember to buy 2 drives and preclear both if your up sizing parity and keep the second one as a spare.. You never know when you may need it. Then when you buy an other for data, preclear that and keep as your new spare and use the use the original spare for Data. So you will rotate your spare and always have a spare ready to use.

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Also remember to buy 2 drives and preclear both if your up sizing parity and keep the second one as a spare.. You never know when you may need it. Then when you buy an other for data, preclear that and keep as your new spare and use the use the original spare for Data. So you will rotate your spare and always have a spare ready to use.

 

Thanks, but the main goal of buying now os because I'm running out of space, and I can only swing for 2 atm. So while I will get 2, it will be 1 for parity and 1 for data... Spare will have to wait. :(

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Also remember to buy 2 drives and preclear both if your up sizing parity and keep the second one as a spare.. You never know when you may need it. Then when you buy an other for data, preclear that and keep as your new spare and use the use the original spare for Data. So you will rotate your spare and always have a spare ready to use.

 

Thanks, but the main goal of buying now os because I'm running out of space, and I can only swing for 2 atm. So while I will get 2, it will be 1 for parity and 1 for data... Spare will have to wait. :(

My philosophy on spares is expedited delivery (and I have Amazon Prime). But I can afford to keep my array down for a few days if necessary. Others may have other needs.

 

Also, drive prices tend to decrease, so if you buy before you need then you may pay a premium that would exceed the price of expedited shipping anyway.

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Also remember to buy 2 drives and preclear both if your up sizing parity and keep the second one as a spare.. You never know when you may need it. Then when you buy an other for data, preclear that and keep as your new spare and use the use the original spare for Data. So you will rotate your spare and always have a spare ready to use.

 

Thanks, but the main goal of buying now os because I'm running out of space, and I can only swing for 2 atm. So while I will get 2, it will be 1 for parity and 1 for data... Spare will have to wait. :(

My philosophy on spares is expedited delivery (and I have Amazon Prime). But I can afford to keep my array down for a few days if necessary. Others may have other needs.

 

Also, drive prices tend to decrease, so if you buy before you need then you may pay a premium that would exceed the price of expedited shipping anyway.

 

Yes that's a good point. My case the same. I mean, If one fails I can easily just shut down the system until I get a replacement, I don't need to have it constantly on.

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