4TB - prices are holding

[opentoe]

I really figured 4TB drives would have dropped much more. I looked up one I bought half a year ago and it was only $5 less. My unraid system is tinkering on %75, so I want to expand it some more. My largest drive is a 4TB. Not sure if I want to even upgrade to 8TB because I'm concerned on the Seagate's Archival performance. There has to be a reason why the Seagate Archive drive is only $222 or lower and the HGST 8TB with same cache is $579. I know the Seagate only has a 3 year warranty and a MTBF of 800k compared to the HGST of a 5 year warranty and an MTBF of 2 million. Anyone running an all Seagate Archive system without a cache drive? What is your performance?

 

 

[Squid]

MTBF is nothing more than a statistic and like all statistics are very easily manipulated to achieve a marketing goal. 

 

After all, the mtbf of the average human being is around 800 years.

 

http://www.qualityandproducts.com/2010/07/06/the-real-meaning-of-mtbf/

 

[opentoe]

MTBF is nothing more than a statistic and like all statistics are very easily manipulated to achieve a marketing goal. 

 

After all, the mtbf of the average human being is around 800 years.

 

http://www.qualityandproducts.com/2010/07/06/the-real-meaning-of-mtbf/

 

Wonder why they even use it then since most people don't look at those specs most of the time. I always assumed there was some accuracy to it. Guess not.

 

I learned something new today. Then why wouldn't Seagate use the standard 1 million or 2 million? Did they randomly drop in 800k? I've worked in a related IT position for a while. Large call centers, hundreds and hundreds of desktops. And all I remember are piles of Seagate drives laying around failing prematurely. We would just call up Seagate and tell them to ship us another case of drives. And the desktops also came with WDC, IBM, Maxtor and others. I think I should have named the subject of this post to "convince me to try Seagate". They do have a 3 year warranty which is the best consumer warranty. I need to replace my slow 2TB drives and using WDC Black drives are nice because of 5 year warranty but when you get a replaced drive its just a refurb anyway and WDC can afford that. Starting to see that paying a premium for a 5 year warranty may not be the best practice.

 

[ashman70]

Seagate used to be a lot worse than they are now, they have certainly gotten better then the .11 fiasco or days past. WD Red Pro's have the best consumer warranty of 5 years, like their Black line, but you pay a premium for that. Its nice to see Seagate leading the pack though with their 8TB archive drives, so far no one has come close to that with consumer drives.

[opentoe]

Seagate used to be a lot worse than they are now, they have certainly gotten better then the .11 fiasco or days past. WD Red Pro's have the best consumer warranty of 5 years, like their Black line, but you pay a premium for that. Its nice to see Seagate leading the pack though with their 8TB archive drives, so far no one has come close to that with consumer drives.

 

Can't beat the price at $220 for 8TB. I know some extensive speed tests were done on them, I have to go find those posts and check them out. I do not use a cache drive, so my write speeds max out at 112MB/sec. I'm sure those Seagate's can handle that since that's what they would mainly be used for.

[Squid]

Its still used because most RFP's and the like still ask for that data to be included.  (And because the average consumer isn't going to question how anyone can rate a drive for 1000000 hours (114 years) when the technology hasn't even existed for that long)

 

And when they quote that figure they aren't lying.  Based upon the sample size and the # of failures (btw neither company tells you what constitutes a failure), the MTBF is indeed 114 years.

 

I'm one of the oddball users here. 

 

With my experiences with WD drives if any one ever gave one to me I would promptly throw it in the garbage.

 

Unfortunately a lot of the issues that people have with Seagate and reliability stems from the 7200.11 series drives which was a disastrous series.

 

But, as the link shows MTBF is by itself meaningless if you don't know the sample sizes involved in the testing (which we don't) and what constitutes a failure (which we also don't)

 

Tons of other people are now quoting the backblaze reports as to such and such drives are better than another.  But in this case backblaze is admittedly using drives not designed for how they are being run.  Kinda similar to comparing a Ferrari and a Pinto and making the determination as to which is better based upon how they perform off-road.

[InlineRanger]

Some food for thought is that 10TB SMR drives might be just around the corner. Seagate recently released 2TB SMR laptop drives using the requisite newer, higher density platter technology.

 

There are a few reasons why it might be worthwhile to wait. The first is the obvious limitation that your parity drive has to be the biggest so go as big as you can. The second is that PMR drive technology is going to hit a wall around 12TB, IIRC. The move to HAMR may take longer than expected, meaning we could be stuck at 10-12TB for longer than usual, and when they are released their reliability will be unknown. Lastly, 10TB is a nice, round landmark number. Take part in history!

[c3]

... Then why wouldn't Seagate use the standard 1 million or 2 million? Did they randomly drop in 800k?

 

The built the drive to meet customer requirements. See the recent Google paper suggestion 6) Data durability is outside the drive, make cheaper, less durable drives. This is seen in the lower MTBF (and $/TB).

[mr-hexen]

I'm in a similar boat. Possibly exaggerated because I live in Canada...our prices suck to start with.

 

3Tb WD RED costs $140. 4TB Seagate is $190. 8TB archive is $289.

 

Besides cost and HDD slot space I'm also concerned with parity and rebuild times. I might bump to 5 or 6 TB but stop there. 

[spencers]

4TB HGST has been holding around $139 since I started moving from 2TB to 4TB drives last year.

[opentoe]

4TB HGST has been holding around $139 since I started moving from 2TB to 4TB drives last year.

 

I've had good luck with any of the HGST drives I've bought. Their speeds have been fairly good too. They do have multiple models though. Their "NAS" line which says right on the box is more for consumers and less expensive. Average 4TB price for those models in the US is $160-$170 and carry a 3 year warranty. They also have an Ultrastar model which is sold as a desktop kit but considered enterprise and sold for $250-$260 for the same 4TB but you get a 5 year warranty. Then there's the eco line. Spinning at 5400 RPM and has a warranty of 3 years also. After doing more reading there's so many Deskstar models out there it is hard to know what drive it really is. I've found 7200 RPM drives in their eco lineup with 64MB of cache with difference SKU's then their NAS drives. Seems their eco line is more quiet, less power hungry and doesn't have that vibration sensor tech onboard like the other models do. If that even helps.

 

https://www.hgst.com/sites/default/files/resources/WP_RVS_25March.pdf

 

 

[TUMS]

I haven't bothered with seagate archive drives.  I've got a 24 bay norco chassis so it's just not necessary.  It's not like i'm running out of bays or anything.  All my drives are 4tb reds, but I did just buy my first 4tb hgst nas drive, I had to try one just to see what all the fuss is about.

[opentoe]

I haven't bothered with seagate archive drives.  I've got a 24 bay norco chassis so it's just not necessary.  It's not like i'm running out of bays or anything.  All my drives are 4tb reds, but I did just buy my first 4tb hgst nas drive, I had to try one just to see what all the fuss is about.

 

I have a 24 bay also. I may continue to use the HGST NAS line and if I'm actually still alive years away 4TB-10TB SSD drives will be common place. Only a matter of time they become affordable.

[ashman70]

I just ordered my first two Seagate 8TB Archive drives, couldn't resist the sale price of $289.99 CAN

[mr-hexen]

I just ordered my first two Seagate 8TB Archive drives, couldn't resist the sale price of $289.99 CAN

 

Right!? Considering a 4TB drive is only $90 under that, it's ridiculous.

[Frank1940]

Be careful with using warranty period as an indicator of drive quality!  The length of the warranty period is really a marketing decision.  What the management is doing is gaining sales (current quarter income) in the short term at the cost of unforecasted future warranty costs.  Plus, with very long warranties, there is a possibility that the user will not even realize that the drive might still be in warranty when it does fail.  (Think of all the people who never submit the paperwork to claim a rebate.

[opentoe]

Be careful with using warranty period as an indicator of drive quality!  The length of the warranty period is really a marketing decision.  What the management is doing is gaining sales (current quarter income) in the short term at the cost of unforecasted future warranty costs.  Plus, with very long warranties, there is a possibility that the user will not even realize that the drive might still be in warranty when it does fail.  (Think of all the people who never submit the paperwork to claim a rebate.

 

This is true. I bet most people have no idea most things that break are in warranty. Like televisions, fridges, etc. When I started all this I started with maybe 8 or 10 WDC 2TB drives. I believe I have actively used the warranty for each of those drives, even more then once. And it once started with when I bought several 4TB drives. I've used the warranty several times already for that batch. The long warranties are good for people that have many ports for drives so they can just keep being added and not removed. Is it all worth the more expensive price? Hard to know. Most of the time I used the warranty service on the 4th year.