Seagate 3TB drives are here. $250.

[bubbaQ]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/29/seagate-busts-out-3tb-external-hard-drive-for-250/

[BRiT]

I wonder if this external unit is really 2 1.5TB raided. They've done so previously, and it's hard to tell on this one without any size measurements.

[Chris Pollard]

Sure someone will crack one open soon enough to reveal what's inside.

[kizer]

I know Seagate was talking about releasing a 3TB sometime this year. Maybe its that time.

 

Says the unit is 4.88" wide.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/external-hard-drive/desktop-hard-drive/?intcmp=bac-en-us-home-h_hero1-goflexdesk-3tb#tTabContentSpecifications

[kingpin]

i was wondering about this being one single drive inside. i would assume that if it was one drive then there would sell it as an internal drive also. i am sure that there will be more news in the next couple days when someone gets one of these. i was tempted to order one as a desktop drive with USB 3.0 but as of now i can not find a usb 3.0 card for my macpro.

 

 

[BRiT]

The weight might indicate a single drive, kind of hard to tell.

 

The 3TB External:

Height  158mm (6.22 in)

Width 124mm (4.88 in)

Length 44mm (1.73 in)

Weight (typical) 1080g (2.38 lb)

Shipping Weight  1.080kg (2.381 lb)

 

The 1.5TB Internal (reoriented sizes to line up with external):

Length 146.99mm (5.787 in)

Width 101.85mm (4.010 in)

Height  26.1mm (1.028 in)

Shipping Weight 0.92kg (2.028 lb)

[BRiT]

Also, the reason to sell it as external is it usually prevents it as being used for a boot/OS drive, which is a smart move considering none of the PC BIOS seem to be ready for such a large drive.

[bubbaQ]

The weight might indicate a single drive, kind of hard to tell.

 

Weight is a bad guide, as it depends significantly on the number of platters.  I just swapped out a 250GB WD for a 500GB WD on a bench machine, and the 250GB was a LOT heavier than the 500GB, due in no small part to the 500GB being a single platter.

[BRiT]

Very true BubbaQ, but I was careful to compare the 3TB to the 1.5TB drive, so if it was indeed 2 1.5TB drives in 1 enclosure, the weight should likely be more.

[Chris Pollard]

those shipped weights for bare drives are quite a lot heaver than Samsung 1.5tb drives which are ~650g  (includes packaging?)

[poofyhairguy]

Also, the reason to sell it as external is it usually prevents it as being used for a boot/OS drive, which is a smart move considering none of the PC BIOS seem to be ready for such a large drive.

 

Well, many bioses can't BOOT from a larger than 2TB drive, but I figured since we boot from a USB stick that 3TB drives will work great with Unraid.

[tola5]

is a singel 3.5 HDD it because of windows XP it are on a external so it can ben use on xp the intenel 3.5 HDD will come  later http://storageeffect.media.seagate.com/2010/06/storage-effect/seagate-goflex-desk-breaks-the-2-2tb-barrier-for-windows-xp/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed:+stx_storageeffect+(The+Storage+Effect)

[BRiT]

It doesn't seem like the Seagate drives have native 4K sectors quite yet, at least not the hdds used here. The bridge chip is the USB to SATA controller, I assume.

 

Windows XP users would not be able to see anything above 2.2TB because the OS only recognizes 512b block sizes. Well, GoFlex Desk 3.0TB takes care of that by incorporating logic on the bridge chip that enables Windows XP to allow the drive to work in 4K byte chunks instead of the typical 512 bytes.

 

The catch is that this works only within the GoFlex solution since it’s embedded in the bridge chip, so don’t feel compelled to take the drive out of the enclosure and install in your PC or another storage system. If you do, you’ll lose 800GB of available storage.

[tola5]

yes what abut unraid when the desktop drive com out will it work whit the unraid server ?

[bubbaQ]

yes what abut unraid when the desktop drive com out will it work whit the unraid server ?

 

These drives, will not work internally to their full capacity in ANY desktop (unRAID or otherwise) without a BIOS that supports it.  Pretty much everyone will need a new motherboard if they want to used these drives internally.

 

Theoretically, a special controller could be used that might translate it's geometry in such a way to permit them to be used in existing systems, but that would be a kludge.

[Joe L.]

yes what abut unraid when the desktop drive com out will it work whit the unraid server ?

 

These drives, will not work internally to their full capacity in ANY desktop (unRAID or otherwise) without a BIOS that supports it.  Pretty much everyone will need a new motherboard if they want to used these drives internally.

 

Theoretically, a special controller could be used that might translate it's geometry in such a way to permit them to be used in existing systems, but that would be a kludge.

I also seem to remember that the normal MBR partition scheme used in unRAID and 99.99% of all the Window's PCs is unable to define a disk partition of greater than 2.1TB.

 

So, there needs to be a fundamental change to unRAID for it to be able to use one of these drives, even if your motherboard BIOS does.

 

Joe L.

[WeeboTech]

What if they use 4K sectors? and or 64bit LBAs?

 

I seem to remember my areca controller having these options.

In fact when I paired up two 1.5TB drives for Raid 0, it gave me the option of 64bit lba's.

Shoot, I have 1 spare 1.5tb and 1 spare areca controller so I can't test it right now.

I'll have to get another 1.5tb drive and see what the net effect is.

 

I know I carved it up to be 2 arrays.

1 2tb raid0 array

1 400MB raid1 array

 

In my case, I knew I would only use the 2tb spindles, but the raid0 array was slightly larger. It maxed at around 2.1tb.

[Joe L.]

What if they use 4K sectors?

Then they might work...

and or 64bit LBAs?

No room in the MBR partition table for 64 bits...

[poofyhairguy]

I also seem to remember that the normal MBR partition scheme used in unRAID and 99.99% of all the Window's PCs is unable to define a disk partition of greater than 2.1TB.

 

So, there needs to be a fundamental change to unRAID for it to be able to use one of these drives, even if your motherboard BIOS does.

 

Joe L.

 

The motherboard support thing only matters if you plan to boot from a 3TB drive, which we never will.

 

For Unraid to work two things has to happen:

 

1. The 4k sector thing that was being worked out for the Green drives anyway.

 

2. Unraid needs to use GPT partitions not MBR partitions.

 

The second part is INCREDIBLY easy to do if Unraid uses Grub. I use GPT disks (instead of MBR disk) ALL THE TIME in Linux on my Tri-Booting Hackintosh (I have to on that as Snow Leopard won't boot from a MBR partition).

 

All the tools are in place for Unraid to support 3TB+ drives. Tom just has to do it!

[WeeboTech]

The second part is INCREDIBLY easy to do if Unraid uses Grub.

 

Why do we need grub if we are booting from flash and the root fs ram image is read from FAT/FAT32?

I would believe that once the root image is in ram, the rest of the disk/partition table support is by the kernel.

 

Where the issue may be is with adding new disks to unRAID.

emhttp has to handle the partition detection/installation.

[Joe L.]

The second part is INCREDIBLY easy to do if Unraid uses Grub.

 

Why do we need grub if we are booting from flash and the root fs ram image is read from FAT/FAT32?

I would believe that once the root image is in ram, the rest of the disk/partition table support is by the kernel.

 

Where the issue may be is with adding new disks to unRAID.

emhttp has to handle the partition detection/installation.

Exactly, that is the only limitation, but the current MBR scheme is embedded in the "md" driver and in emhttp.  it needs to change, and it will need to change to support other file-systems eventually, including those on 3TB disks.

[poofyhairguy]

Exactly, that is the only limitation, but the current MBR scheme is embedded in the "md" driver and in emhttp.

 

Ouch. Maybe not on the 3TB drives for a while then eh?

 

Good thing is that their existence will drive down the price of 2TB drives.

[bubbaQ]

There is more to it than that.  Several filesystem tools don't work with GPT partitions (I have not checked lately, but one of those was the fs tools for reiser).

 

It is also not just booting.  Several other tools make BIOS calls and it is not necessarily intuitive which ones do so.

 

I for one am definitely not anxious for development of unRAID to go that deep into the bleeding edge.  Let the 3TB drives and support at the OS level mature first.

[Joe L.]

I for one am definitely not anxious for development of unRAID to go that deep into the bleeding edge.  Let the 3TB drives and support at the OS level mature first.

I agree, 1000%, although market pressures will eventually dictate they be supported.  I really expect it to be a year or more before they are supported... too many changes to the "md" driver, emhttp, and support tools for the file-systems to be on the bleeding edge.. and too many other irons in the fire.

 

Today, as external drives connected by USB, those 3TB drives might be PERFECT to use for off-site storage of critical files and documents.  3TB is a LOT of data when you are not talking HD Movies.  I'll bet unRAID would probably handle that even now. 

 

Joe L.

[BRiT]

Anandtech has a review of the Seagate GoFlex Desk 3TB drive: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3858/the-worlds-first-3tb-hdd-seagate-goflex-desk-3tb-review Here's some snippets to get you interested...

 

The FreeAgent GoFlex Desk is a mouthful of branding that refers to Seagate’s line of external 3.5” drives. The drives themselves are standard 3.5” hard drives in a plastic enclosure designed to mate with GoFlex Desk adapters that add USB 2.0, USB 3.0, FireWire 800 or Ethernet connectivity to the drive.

 

The 3TB Barracuda XT is a 7200RPM drive. The drive has a 32MB DRAM cache, which is half of what Seagate ships on its 2TB drive making it clear that the 3TB drive used in the GoFlex Desk isn’t 100% performance optimized. Seagate reaches its 3TB capacity by using five 600GB platters.

 

Internally the drive uses 4K sectors however it translates to 512-byte sectors before it reaches the SATA port. This means to a SATA interface the 3TB drive looks like a drive with 512-byte sectors. The GoFlex Desk docks then map the 512-byte sectors back to the 4K format. There’s obviously overhead associated with these translations but it’s not huge in most cases. The final 4K translation done by the GoFlex Desk dock means that you can partition the drive using MBR which ensures Windows XP compatibility.

 

For those of you looking to buy a 3TB GoFlex Desk, crack the case open and use the drive inside your system there are some challenges that you should be aware of.