Western Digital will ship 3TB drives Mid October

[Simon]

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1740363/western-digital-ship-3tb-drives?WT.rss_f=Home&WT.rss_a=Western+Digital+will+ship+3TB+drives

 

Western Digital is going to upgrade its existing model lines rather than come out with new branding. This will manufacturing easier and keep marketing costs down if it wants to have the hard drives out in the run up to Christmas. The internal hard drive models named Caviar Black, Caviar Blue and Caviar Green will be upgraded to 3TB and the company is expected to roll out 3TB capacity on its external models as well. After that, it wants to add 3TB capacity to its recently announced consumer products like the WD Elements Play media player and WD TV Live Hub.

 

Is a Caviar Blue a good choice for the parity drive?

[bubbaQ]

STAY AWAY

 

I would not touch any 3TB internal drives with a 10-foot pole.  WD is playing with fire.

 

See this post:

 

  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=8137.msg78670#msg78670

[kizer]

I'm guessing with that alone unRAID is not/will not support 3TB drives

[kenoka]

I'm guessing with that alone unRAID is not/will not support 3TB drives

My understanding is that unRAID is a 32bit operating system. It mathematically can't support anything larger than about 2.2 TB. Until and unless we get 64bit unRAID...

[bubbaQ]

My understanding is that unRAID is a 32bit operating system. It mathematically can't support anything larger than about 2.2 TB. Until and unless we get 64bit unRAID...

 

Not true.

 

Sectors on a hard drive are numbered 0 to n.  An unsigend 32-bit int counts to 4,294,967,296, so a hard drive can have that many sectors.

 

The booting process and the partition table also deals with the disk based on the sector number where things are located.

 

With each sector = 512 bytes, you then get a maximum of 2.2x10^12, or 2.2TB (k=1000) or 2TB (k=1024).

 

Using 48 bits (48 bit LBA or LBA48) you can count higher.  But that fubars everything that can't count that high, or that only allows for 32 bits for the sector number.

 

WD is using 4K sectors, instead of 512 byte sectors.... so with the same number of sectors, they can address 8 times as much space.  That will work fine on a 32-bit OS.  You can have up to a 16TB drive, on a 32-bit OS and with 32-bit ints.

 

The number of sectors is still a 32 bit integer.... so the BIOS and partition table, etc., are all OK too.

 

The problem is that under the new WD scheme, sectors are now 8 times as large.  Programs and hardware that deal with individual sectors have to now handle a sector that is not the 512 byte standard-that-has-been-around-for-decades that everyone expects.... and it was such a hard standard, a LOT of programs have it hard coded for 512 bytes, and only allocate or set aside 512 bytes of memory for reading/storing a sector.

 

One advantage is that programmers have been SUPPOSED to be using clusters, and not sectors, for file I/O, and the OS does the cluster to sector mapping.  So if the OS handles it, then all those programs will handle it.

 

But many programs, particularly disk utilities, drivers, and the like, deal with the disk on a sector basis, and not by clusters.  Those have to all be combed through to confirm their proper behavior on 4K sectors.

[WeeboTech]

Maybe I missed something, if the OS can support the newer WD Advanced Format drives, will there be a problem with the 4K size on these new 3TB drives?

[theone]

Maybe I missed something, if the OS can support the newer WD Advanced Format drives, will there be a problem with the 4K size on these new 3TB drives?

 

From what I understood the OS may handle it but not some/most applications/programs.

[BRiT]

I'm one who usually lived on bleeding edge technology, but I'm staying away from the 3TB drives for the next 6 months.

 

To properly support them, unRAID needs to allow for Sector 64 Partition Table. More importantly, ALL the HD makers need to agree on the same standard AND all the software needs to be updated if required. This is no small task.

[bubbaQ]

Maybe I missed something, if the OS can support the newer WD Advanced Format drives, will there be a problem with the 4K size on these new 3TB drives?

 

No, for software that strictly accesses the disk only via the OS, and the OS is fully vetted and compatible.

 

Yes, for software that talks to the drive on an individual sector level that assumes 512 byte sectors.

 

The question is which software is in that category.  

[bubbaQ]

From what I understood the OS may handle it but not some/most applications/programs.

 

I would not say "most" ... indeed, it may very well be only a small number that have issues, but they may be very critical programs or drivers that have those issues.

[bubbaQ]

To properly support them, unRAID needs to allow for Sector 64 Partition Table.

 

I would not say that. Handling larger numbers of sectors is not the answer.  unRAID needs to handle 4K sectors, and 1:1 sector/cluster mapping by aligning the partition on a 4K boundary.

 

It may be that the WD 3TB will work fine in unRAID today.  But I'm letting someone else take point on that testing.

[queeg]

It may be that the WD 3TB will work fine in unRAID today.  But I'm letting someone else take point on that testing.

 

Good warning, thanks bubbaQ.  Any code based on 512 byte sectors that writes will corrupt data.  I'll be waiting at least a year before touching these drives.

Anyone who has been bitten by hard drive gotchas will avoid participating as beta testers.  Years ago I bought IBM DeskStars because they came from a reputable company.  Remember the ceramic platters?  More than 50% of the drives failed within the first year.  IBM never admitted responsibility. 

Think of the number of people who lost data and time.

[lionelhutz]

Is everyone forgetting that the current WD advanced format drives do an internal translation to make the internal 4k sectors appear as 512b sectors to the SATA port? There has lots of write-ups and discussion about OS's and systems that support these drives with their 4k sectors but these drives do not appear as 4k sectors to the system they are connected to. The 4k is only used internally.

 

Unless WD cuts out that translation and expose the 4k sectors to the world then the 3T drives still won't work with most if not all PC's. And if WD does expose the 4k sectors then who knows if the 4k sectors will work or not, due to the "gotchas" already mentioned. I doubt 4k sectors have actually been tested with any BIOS or OS yet. Right now there is nothing but speculation since no-one except WD insiders knows if the WD 3T drive will expose the 4k sectors or not.

 

I also like the comment on a standard. It seems Seagate released their 3T USB drive due to the fact it still uses 512b sectors which they knew would not work with most PC's so they didn't release the internal drive version.

 

Don't be surprized if the 3T drive is SATA3 too.

 

Peter

 

[queeg]

Is everyone forgetting that the current WD advanced format drives do an internal translation to make the internal 4k sectors appear as 512b sectors to the SATA port? There has lots of write-ups and discussion about OS's and systems that support these drives with their 4k sectors but these drives do not appear as 4k sectors to the system they are connected to. The 4k is only used internally.

 

Unless WD cuts out that translation and expose the 4k sectors to the world then the 3T drives still won't work with most if not all PC's. And if WD does expose the 4k sectors then who knows if the 4k sectors will work or not, due to the "gotchas" already mentioned. I doubt 4k sectors have actually been tested with any BIOS or OS yet. Right now there is nothing but speculation since no-one except WD insiders knows if the WD 3T drive will expose the 4k sectors or not.

 

I also like the comment on a standard. It seems Seagate released their 3T USB drive due to the fact it still uses 512b sectors which they knew would not work with most PC's so they didn't release the internal drive version.

 

Don't be surprized if the 3T drive is SATA3 too.

 

Peter

 

 

The WD's with 4k you mentioned require the jumper.  But even if it becomes possible to jumper a 3TB drive to use 512 byte sectors you would only get to use 2TB of it.

 

Remember the compact date problem of the year 2k.  A massive effort for years industry wide was required to fix that problem.  And one of the remedies for some software was just to let it fail because it was deemed not worth the cost to repair.  This time around there won't be the same commitment to fix all the software and most of the non-OS stuff will just be allowed to fail because an alternative will be available.  But if you are unaware of the defect in some software you might occasionally use then it's going to be like accidently walking on a land mine because you didn't get the memo.  There won't be a sign saying don't step here. 

[bubbaQ]

You guys are mixing apples, oranges, and bananas.

 

The jumper on the WD only affects the OFFSET, not the sector size, and not 512b/4k translation.

 

The Seagate 3TB drive is in an EXTERNAL case over USB.... the drive geometry and sector size is completely hidden.

 

WD's translation to make it look like 512 byte sectors can NOT be used above 2TB drives except on systems that support LBA48, have new partition tables, and new BIOS or EFI.  The whole gist of the article is that WD will expose the 4K sectors natively, in order to break the 2TB barrier w/o requiring new partition tables and BIOS/EFI.

[WeeboTech]

The WD's with 4k you mentioned require the jumper.  But even if it becomes possible to jumper a 3TB drive to use 512 byte sectors you would only get to use 2TB of it.

 

I thought the jumper was to align or offset the partition to start on a 4K boundary.

I.E. Sector 64 rather then the default of 63.

[lionelhutz]

You guys are mixing apples, oranges, and bananas.

 

The jumper on the WD only affects the OFFSET, not the sector size, and not 512b/4k translation.

 

The Seagate 3TB drive is in an EXTERNAL case over USB.... the drive geometry and sector size is completely hidden.

 

WD's translation to make it look like 512 byte sectors can NOT be used above 2TB drives except on systems that support LBA48, have new partition tables, and new BIOS or EFI.  The whole gist of the article is that WD will expose the 4K sectors natively, in order to break the 2TB barrier w/o requiring new partition tables and BIOS/EFI.

 

Yup, currently there seems to 2 possible paths for these larger drives. LBA's > 32 bits or 4k sectors exposed to the outside world. It sounds like the Seagate went with LBA's > 32 bits (since they say their 3T is 512b sectors internally) and the speculation is that WD will go with exposed 4k sectors.

 

Right now, despite all the hoopla about 4k sectors, WD (and some others too such as Samgsung I believe) have just used 4k sectors internally as one of their "tricks" to get more capacity per platter since the 4k sectors will allow a little extra data to be stored in the same physical space. The much publicised 4k sectors in the currently available internal drives up to 2T mean nothing more than this. Any articles describing OS and hardware 4k sector support are nothing more than confusion and/or speculation unless (until) a drive with the 4k sectors exposed actually appears on the market.

 

WD has just released their 3T external drive. So, it appears they are following Seagate in that they don't yet want the headaches the internal drives will cause. Once one of these externals gets to the right reviewer I'm sure it'll be cracked open and the actual drive tested to see what it does as an internal.

 

Peter

 

[Joe L.]

The WD's with 4k you mentioned require the jumper.  But even if it becomes possible to jumper a 3TB drive to use 512 byte sectors you would only get to use 2TB of it.

 

I thought the jumper was to align or offset the partition to start on a 4K boundary.

I.E. Sector 64 rather then the default of 63.

basically it adds "1" to whatever sector you request, making requests for sector 63 actually use sector 64, and requests for sector 64 actually use sector 65, etc...  resulting in better alignment.

 

Joe L.

[bubbaQ]

have just used 4k sectors internally as one of their "tricks" to get more capacity per platter

 

Partially.  A very important reason is also to improve the ECC by 2 orders of magnitude.  That is becoming a critical issue as arrays become larger.

 

WD has just released their 3T external drive.

 

Yes, but the article linked in the OP specifically mentioned internal WD 3TB drives in black, blue, and green flavors, which was the basis for the discussion.

 

Note that the TechArp article has been pulled at the request of WD.  Curious.....

 

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=694

 

Anyone got a copy?  I'd like to see exactly what was removed.

 

Update:  here is the part of the original text that is now deleted:

 

Therefore, it was no surprise when Seagate announced that they would ship their 3 TB hard disk drive  by the end of this year. Western Digital has yet to announce anything - they have a policy of not announcing products until the actual launch date. However, we have just confirmed that Western Digital will be launching their 3 TB hard disk drives in mid-October. The exact date has not been determined but it will happen in the next 2-3 weeks.

 

Our source says all three main models (Caviar Black, Caviar Blue and Caviar Green) will be upgraded to 3 TB. In addition, Western Digital will also upgrade their external drives to 3 TB. Eventually, Western Digital will offer 3 TB versions of media players like the newly-launched WD Elements Play and the future WD TV Live Hub.

 

The new Western Digital 3 TB hard disk drives will be available for sale at launch, or very soon thereafter. For certain, they will be available in quantity this Christmas season. Western Digital's timing is impeccable. Unless Seagate beats them to the punch, Western Digital is set to be the first to launch and ship 3 TB hard disk drives.

 

We will update this article with more details, as and when we receive them. So check back often!

 

[bubbaQ]

The WD 3TB external has USB3, and is apparently using 750GB platters!

 

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=884

[SSD]

What I want to know is what knucklehead thought that data sectors should begin at 63 all those years ago.

[lionelhutz]

Partially.  A very important reason is also to improve the ECC by 2 orders of magnitude.  That is becoming a critical issue as arrays become larger.

 

Sure, that is something that is required to keep the drives reliable but the end result still is that 4k sectors allow more data in the same physical space and despite all the articles about how 4k sectors are supported or not in different OS's there is presently no internal drive on the market with exposed 4k sectors.

 

Peter