Need a large storage drive (8tb?)

[Ken g6]

I need a single large drive to store lots of recorded video from TV. Large files, 7gb on average, would get written to the drive. I already have a 4tb drive but it's full. I'd like to use this in a mini-ITX case with only room for two big hard drives so I'm thinking big. I saw a Seagate 8tb drive with SMR - do you think this is a good use case for that? Should I maybe settle for 6gb instead? Or are none of the large tb drives reliable and I should just use more drives in a larger case?

Thanks!

 

[frowertr]

I'd go with a HGST before Seagate or WD. They are plenty reliable enough but backups are always important no matter what. Your risk of drive failure is always less with fewer spindles not more so I'd use the single largest drive you can afford if you aren't needing any kind of RAID setup.

You are gonna have to drop some coin though for these bad boys.

 

[Ken g6]

A couple of things I forgot to mention:

1. I have a 5TB Seagate external backup drive. I haven't found external drives very reliable, but I only turn this one on at most an hour or two at a time, and not every day. And not everything needs to be backed up.

2. I don't want any helium in my drive. There's precious little enough on the planet as it is. And I don't trust that it won't leak out and ruin the drive.

 

[frowertr]

Well if youre against He drives than HGST is out for this size (8TB) automatically. Don't agree with your reasoning but that's your choice to make...

 

[Ken g6]

Well, I'll take the idea to get this 6TB HGST ($260, 3-year warranty) under advisement. :hmm:

The 8TB Seagate I was looking at is here: $220, 3-year warranty.

 

[Charmonium]

WD Red is a little cheaper and I think it has a 5 yr warranty.

 

[bigboxes]

There is no Helium shortage. I'd go with HGST. Also, you need to purchase the same amount of storage for your backup. Don't like the cheap-o AIO backup drives then just buy your preferred external enclosure and buy the drive separately for it. That's what I do. It is more expensive, but you get what you pay for. FWIW, I used to be a Seagate fanboy. So many failures. I'm not against them. Just want my data to be reliable.

 

[Ken g6]

WD Red is what my current 4TB drive is. But this only has a 3 year warranty again: http://m.newegg.com/Product/index?itemnumber=N82E16822236737

I guess what I'm really wondering about is how reliable and performant Seagate shingled drives are?

 

[Anteaus]

There is no Helium shortage. I

This is off topic but since you mentioned it;

There is not a shortage at the moment but there may possibly be in 20-30 years. Helium prices are set right now which is why scarcity isn't affecting the price. Fortunately, a by-product of fusion is helium. We should all hope Fusion becomes commercially viable and solves this problem the easy way. If not, the next best source is the moon. Without helium, modern day technology will be crippled.

http://phys.org/news/2010-08-world-helium-nobel-prize-winner.html
http://www.livescience.com/38990-looming-helium-shortage.html

To be fair, around that time the world will also see crude oil become rapidly less economic to extract and access to fresh water will be bitterly contested. Lack of helium may not be the worst thing we will see.

 

[frowertr]

The performance of any single 3.5" 7200k will all be about the same. You won't be able to tell much a difference if at all no matter who makes it or what air they pump inside it.

Quality wise there are some differences. The build of the Ultrastars He drives (8TB) will be much better than that Seagate you linked. Higher load cycles, lower URE rates, higher workloads, longer warranty, etc., than the Seagate. The He drives from HGST are Enterprise grade.

But the price of the HGST is a hell of a lot higher too so you do pay for the extras.

Bottom line: If this isn't a heavily used system in production there probably isn't a reason to spend the extra dough. Go with the Seagate and use the saved cash towards a backup drive.

 

[Charmonium]

WD Red is what my current 4TB drive is. But this only has a 3 year warranty again: http://m.newegg.com/Product/index?itemnumber=N82E16822236737

I guess what I'm really wondering about is how reliable and performant Seagate shingled drives are?

Yeah you're right, sorry. It's Red Pro that 5 yeras. Normal Red drive is only 3.

 

[nerp]

HGST first. Then WD Red. Don't consider anything else, IMHO.

Don't worry about helium shortages. There might be a shortage decades from now for industrial purposes but realize that helium is abundant in the air. And we all know that predictions down the road are typically a waste of time. Remember "peak oil?"

Plus, the days of hard drives are almost over. When we have 10TB solid state drives, we won't be needing helium for storage. 20 years from now, it will be a non issue.

And one HD can't possibly use as much helium as I will in a few weeks for my kid's sixth birthday.

 

[Mike64]

realize that helium is abundant in the air. [emphasis supplied]

There's roughly 5 ppm helium in the earth's atmosphere. What, dare I ask, is your idea of "scarce"?

 

[Charmonium]

There's roughly 5 ppm helium in the earth's atmosphere. What, dare I ask, is your idea of "scarce"?

It's really a cost issue. To extract it from air you have to liquefy it. Except helium isn't a liquid until about 4 degrees above absolute zero. So you're talking about a very costly and pretty sophisticated operation.

 

[LTC8K6]

IIRC most He comes as a byproduct of natural gas?

Wiki:

Most terrestrial helium present today is created by the natural radioactive decay of heavy radioactive elements (thorium and uranium, although there are other examples), as the alpha particles emitted by such decays consist of helium-4 nuclei. This radiogenic helium is trapped with natural gas in concentrations up to 7% by volume, from which it is extracted commercially by a low-temperature separation process called fractional distillation. Previously, terrestrial helium was thought to be a non-renewable resource because once released into the atmosphere, it readily escapes into space.[5][6][7] However, recent studies suggest that helium is produced deep in the earth by radioactive decay, and that large untapped reserves may exist under the Rocky Mountains in North America and in natural gas reserves.

 

[LTC8K6]

WD Black 6tb drive WD6001FZWX has a 5 year warranty if you can find one.

 

[Charmonium]

WD Black 6tb drive WD6001FZWX has a 5 year warranty if you can find one.

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Performance-Desktop-Hard-Drive/dp/B011LVAVEQ

Wasn't sure it was worth the extra 30 bucks for home use. It would be ok if I were just buying one but I'm going to need a few and 30 bucks a pop adds up fast. I just need to make sure that my existing hdd docks can handle that capacity.

 

[Anteaus]

There's roughly 5 ppm helium in the earth's atmosphere. What, dare I ask, is your idea of "scarce"?

You are confusing scarcity with rarity. Rarity describes natural availability. When it comes to natural resources, scarcity is almost always due to economics. According to my sources, it costs almost 1000 times to extract helium from the atmosphere as it does to get it from the crust. The premise is that although we can never actually recover 100% of any resource, at some point it will become so expensive that there is simply no point. Rare earth elements are another point of concern for the future.

 

[LTC8K6]

There can only be a tiny amount of space left over inside the hard drive case, so the amount of helium in a hard drive must be minute.

 

[Mike64]

You are confusing scarcity with rarity. Rarity describes natural availability.

I wasn't suggesting it's "rare" or that it is even currently "scarce" (though the latter is most likely only due to what basically amounts to "voodoo economics" legislation dating back to the mid 90s.) But once the existing reserves have been sold off and we have to start finding new "current" sources for it, it appears that it will indeed become rather "scarcer", in the available-on-the-open-market sense, than otherwise...

 

[stlc8tr]

Well, I'll take the idea to get this 6TB HGST ($260, 3-year warranty) under advisement. :hmm:

The 8TB Seagate I was looking at is here: $220, 3-year warranty.

Just grab a 8TB WD and shuck it.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2468222

SMR write performance is terrible. Only good for cold storage, IMO.

 

[rchunter]

Took delivery of my first 8TB reds about a week ago. I'm running 3 of them so far. Plan on getting more soon also. They are good and fast even though they're only 5400rpm. Way faster than my 4TB reds.

 

[Elixer]

I have stopped buying 3TB reds, I just am having lots of bad luck with them.
All of them failing with NO SMART errors, just dropping out of arrays and or BIOS.

At this point, I am trying Seagate 4TBs, and getting a HGST (that isn't from Toshiba).

 

[ronbo613]

I have three 4TB HGST drives, they've been pretty good. One just died a slow death, didn't fail completely, but was so slow it might has well been dead. The RMA process is going to take about seven business days.

I need all the storage I can get, but large hard drives are a double edged sword. The hold a lot, but you lose a lot when they fail. As with all hard drives, I double the cost of one drive because I need a second to back up the first.

 

[bigboxes]

As with all hard drives, I double the cost of one drive because I need a second to back up the first.

It's an expensive hobby for sure. :wub: