"The Deskstar™ 7K3000 is Hitachi’s first hard drive to deliver an enormous three terabytes of storage capacity and 7200 RPM performance in a standard 3.5-inch form factor. The 7K3000 is also the first Hitachi hard drive with a 6Gb/s SATA interface, which along with its 64MB cache buffer..."

 

http://www.hitachigst.com/internal-drives/desktop/deskstar/deskstar-7k3000

 

There is also a 5K3000 "CoolSpin" version described here:

 

http://www.hitachigst.com/internal-drives/desktop/deskstar/deskstar-5k3000

Saw this the other day, but the experts can confirm... at least the sector sizes are 512kb, rather than the 4K Advanced Format ie- no alignment issues.  Still have to deal with the GPT partitions on the 3TB though. 

 

This gives a short term option for 2TB drives I believe.

 

 

This is not really a short term option at all. You still have to deal with the > 2.1TB drive size issues which could require any of the following: new SATA controller,  MB BIOS or MB UEFI.

 

This is not really a short term option at all. You still have to deal with the > 2.1TB drive size issues which could require any/or all of the following: new SATA controller,  MB BIOS or MB UEFI.

 

 

Slight correction of the above.

 

There are so many things that need to be tested, updated, fixed for 2+TB drives to work properly.  I am not even considering it for a year at least.

Agree there is no "short term" solution to >2TB drives, but in the same class of the new drives are 1.5TB and 2TB capacities that do not require alignment, at least from what I see from the specs.

I'll just be happy to see 3TB drives bottom out the price of the 2TB drives

As always it is the chicken and egg problem. Do you

1. Wait until hardware and software supports 3TB drives and then start manufacturing them or

2. Wait for 3TB drives to become available and then update hardware and software to be able to use them.

 

All my post points out is that another drive manufacture is introducing 3TB drives. In the case of unRAID I am guessing that if there were no large capicity drives (> 2.1TB) then there would never be any support for them. On the other hand the more widely available they become the more hardware will support them and the more likely unRAID will add support for them. This is a cycle that repeates itself over and over again in the computer technology world. From my perspective having more manufactures producing large drives is a good thing. Each announcement is just one step closer to when we will be able to use them in unRAID, however far away that time actually is.

 

I am fairly new to unRAID but wonder if it has been arround long enough so that early versions supported IDE drives only and SATA was a fancy new thing people couldn't wait to get support for. The road to where we are today is littered with hard drive barries that have been overcome and left in the dust. Eventually the same will happen for drives > 2.1TB. While we are waiting we can all have fun talking about it.

If you guys want to save me some research:

1. Are these drives configurable for 4K sectors?

2. What are the "barriers"?  I wouldn't expect necessarily bios or controllers to be an issue - does anyone know for a fact this is an issue?  The main barrier I see has to do perhaps with partitioning.

If you guys want to save me some research:

1. Are these drives configurable for 4K sectors?

2. What are the "barriers"?  I wouldn't expect necessarily bios or controllers to be an issue - does anyone know for a fact this is an issue?  The main barrier I see has to do perhaps with partitioning.

 

bubbaQ has a good grasp on this subject so he will hopefully comment after he finds this thread.

 

When i get a chance I will try to find some good info on this stuff for you.

What are the "barriers"?

 

Here is a link to a PDF Hitachi published on the subject. It is 4 pages long. I can't judge which parts are a factor in an unRAID system.

 

http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/D213A024C090CE9F862577D5002600FC/$file/FinalHiCap_2.2TB_TechBrief.pdf

 

1. Are these drives configurable for 4K sectors?

 

The data sheet for these drives claim 512 byte sectors. Doesn't specify if that is at the interface on the platters. Nothing in the spec sheet about advanced format. The ATA/ATAPI-6 specificaiton "defines a method to provide a total capacity for a device of 144 petabytes". Seems to suggest there is less incentive to produce native 4k interface drives. It's only about interface performance, not capacity. 4K physical sectors are about capacity of the drive platters.

1. Are these drives configurable for 4K sectors?

2. What are the "barriers"?  I wouldn't expect necessarily bios or controllers to be an issue - does anyone know for a fact this is an issue?  The main barrier I see has to do perhaps with partitioning.

 

1. No drives have been released yet with 4k sectors available at the interface. If this was done, then the hardware and software would have to support 4k sectors (and who knows what small code bits have 512b sectors hard coded).

 

2. For the present drives, it seems you need to support 48bit or 64bit LBA's, among other things. If I recall correctly, the unRAID ReiserFS or the MBR record used doesn't support this?

 

When WD released their drive they decided to provide a Rocket 2-port card with the retail version, because they found many SATA controllers did not support the drive properly. But, there have been a number of reviews where these drives were connected to different systems and did work so it's not impossible by any means.

But, there have been a number of reviews where these drives were connected to different systems and did work so it's not impossible by any means.

 

Not to my satisfaction.  I have seen many "review" tests that were far from comprehensive, or followed anything close to a proper testing regime.  Unless, and until, the manufacturer certifies them, or an actual testing lab does so, I'm not trusting MY data to it.

Geeze, that's why I posted "not impossible" instead of not "working perfectly". It's not all doom and gloom where these drives don't work at all but there could be issues even in a system that recognizes them and allows the full capacity to be used.

 

Peter

A hard drive subsystem that is 99% perfect, is worthless.

Just like USB 3.0 and all other brand new technologies, I will wait for 3TB to cook for a while before I trust the drives.  Never trust a first gen of any new technology.  You are signing up to be a beta tester.