Seagate 8TB External (STEB8000100) - $179.99


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8 minutes ago, BRiT said:

I haven't even finished clearing the 3 I picked up when they were $189, but I'm already thinking of picking up a couple more!

I know right. It's tempting for a backup server... I still don't want to run these in a production environment but for backup they are so cheap...

 

Do you prelear them before shucking them or after?

 

Edited by TBSCamCity
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I shuck them first. Preclearing in the enclosure will make the drive overheat. And very likely the usb will alter things so when you pull it out, it won't recognize the preclear signature.

 

If you look at the reviews, you'll see these drives don't last long inside their enclosures. But if you remove them, they do quite well. BackBlaze has like 8000 of them in production, and the failure rate is very low.

 

I am running them in my main array and a happy customer! 

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3 hours ago, bjp999 said:

I shuck them first. Preclearing in the enclosure will make the drive overheat. And very likely the usb will alter things so when you pull it out, it won't recognize the preclear signature.

 

If you look at the reviews, you'll see three drives don't last long inside their enclosures. But if you remove them, they do quite well. BackBlaze has like 8000 of them in production, and the failure rate is very low.

 

I am running them in my main array and a happy customer! 

Yeah I figured that. But does Seagate still honor the warranty if you get DOA or something? Or can you put it back in the case easily enough?

 

Even though people seem to love the drives a lot I don't want to use them in my main array since I do a lot of writing, so they'd still be strictly for backup.

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I'm preclearing them first before shucking them. The drives have remained below 51C which is well within their tollerance for the enclosure usage.

 

Even if the USB vs nonUSB changes the signature of the drive, since they're already been cleared I'd just let unraid do its clear of them.

Edited by BRiT
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These drives ship in factory boxes and factory cartons, unlike most internals with varying degrees of bubble wrap. And they are in external enclosures which add extra protection. The price is so good you could afford to loose a drive. There are options to return if needed as well.

 

You say you do a lot of writing. I think these would be fine for writing. But they would not be fine for doing a lot of deleting. If you are basically filling them up, these are a good option. I could not run a VM from one (I wouldn't run from a HD either, I'd stick with SSD). And for backups that you plan to delete and overwrite, you might "hit the performance wall", as Gary likes to say. But the 200G of non shingled media, you have a sizable buffer. I doubt you'd have much trouble for backups or primary storage.

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5 hours ago, BRiT said:

I'm preclearing them first before shucking them. The drives have remained below 51C which is well within their tollerance for the enclosure usage.

 

Mine preclear in the low 30Cs unshucked. If I were preclearing in the enclosure I'd use a fan, but not sure how much it would help honestly. We'll never really know the effect of heat on drive longevity due to the extremely small sample size any one of us have. 51C is a bit too hot for my preference, but you'll have an easier time if it were to fail getting a replacement. Who know what is best? :S

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30 minutes ago, bjp999 said:

These drives ship in factory boxes and factory cartons, unlike most internals with varying degrees of bubble wrap. And they are in external enclosures which add extra protection. The price is so good you could afford to loose a drive. There are options to return if needed as well.

 

You say you do a lot of writing. I think these would be fine for writing. But they would not be fine for doing a lot of deleting. If you are basically filling them up, these are a good option. I could not run a VM from one (I wouldn't run from a HD either, I'd stick with SSD). And for backups that you plan to delete and overwrite, you might "hit the performance wall", as Gary likes to say. But the 200G of non shingled media, you have a sizable buffer. I doubt you'd have much trouble for backups or primary storage.

Thanks a lot. I'll probably pick a few of these up at this sweet price.

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27 minutes ago, bjp999 said:

 

Mine preclear in the low 30Cs unshucked. If I were preclearing in the enclosure I'd use a fan, but not sure how much it would help honestly. We'll never really know the effect of heat on drive longevity due to the extremely small sample size any one of us have. 51C is a bit too hot for my preference, but you'll have an easier time if it were to fail getting a replacement. Who know what is best? :S

 

Correction: Mine preclear in the low 30Cs shucked (i.e., bare drive).

 

BRiT, once yours precleared in the enclosure, were you able to add to the array (did it maintain its preclear signature once shucked).

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Drive 2 is finishing up its 2nd pass today and then I need to preclear the 3rd drive. So mines still very much a work in process. I didnt get the usb3 card added to the server and kick things off until Tuesday or Wednesday. I'm being overly cautious and not switching drive connections when a drive is preclearing, even though it should be fine with that.

 

I do agree that 51C is a bit too much for my personal tastes, but I figure place it through a bit extra stress for 4 days before putting it in the array. I've had externals running far hotter for longer (years) serving as dedicated DVR drives without issue. These drives should be able to handle their main designed use for less than a week. Actually they'll only be at that higher temp for the 90 some hours to run 2 cycles of preclear. When they're not being tested and sitting idle the temps are far lower.

 

I will definitely post back with news about the preclear signature status going from external USB3 to internal Sata.

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For easier reference for others, here is the post with link to video on how to shuck the drives from their external enclosure. It really is quite easy to do.

 

On ‎2‎/‎6‎/‎2017 at 11:14 PM, bjp999 said:

Unshucking used to be easy but then got impossible. These are not bad at all. Took me < 5 minutes. Fingernail slipped between the plastic pieces, and then credit card replaced it. Rest was very eary. The unshucking video below helps (note 5TB and 8TB use the same shell):

 

Disassembling the Seagate 8T Expansion

 

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There have been many users that use them for both data and parity successfully. I have quite a few of these SMRs and they work great - but I have them just for large media files that are mostly WORM.

 

I would not necessarily recommend them for drives where there is a great deal of data turnover, particularly with lots of small files. But, in truth, even such applications are likely fine if the updates are not huge on a daily basis. I believe the drives have a 200G non-SMR "cache", and until you get over that level of writes on a daily basis, you'd be fine.

 

At this excellent price point, I'd take the perspective that it is worth a try to see if they are appropriate for a slightly challenging role in your array, and let them prove themselves. If you have trouble - reassign them to backup purpose or for future growth.

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47 minutes ago, bjp999 said:

There have been many users that use them for both data and parity successfully. I have quite a few of these SMRs and they work great - but I have them just for last media files that are mostly WORM.

 

I would not necessarily recommend them for drives where there is a great deal of data turnover, particularly with lots of small files. But, in truth, even such applications are likely fine if the updates are not huge on a daily basis. I believe the drives have a 200G non-SMR "cache", and until you get over that level of writes on a daily basis, you'd be fine.

 

At this excellent price point, I'd take the perspective that it is worth a try to see if they are appropriate for a slightly challenging role in your array, and let them prove themselves. If you have trouble - reassign them to backup purpose or for future growth.

 

 

Thanks for the insight! Any idea which model is better for shucking?

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7 hours ago, extrobe said:

Incidentally, for anyone in the UK, Amazon are doing the Hub version of the 8tb Seagate external drive for £205.

Price seems to be as good as it gets at the moment for 8tb

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Backup-Desktop-External-Integrated/dp/B01IAD5ZC6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492777840&sr=8-1&keywords=8tb

 

 

If you buy the from STEB8000100  from Amazon US and pay the shipping it works out at £153.44 wich is a hell of a deal for 8TB

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8 minutes ago, m0t0k0 said:

 

If you buy the from STEB8000100  from Amazon US and pay the shipping it works out at £153.44 wich is a hell of a deal for 8TB

 

It certainly is - though you're of course at risk of being charged duty + vat + handling charge, I presume?

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