Seagate 8TB Review (SMR)

[BFG10K]

This is the first official review I've seen: http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_archive_hdd_review_8tb

As expected, write performance can be terrible, even with the 20GB "SSD cache" on it. I personally wouldn't use SMR drives because I regularly perform a lot of writes.

They also recommend against using it in RAID.

 

[Tsavo]

Interesting tech, but I'd run away screaming from it in a Seagate product.

Perhaps HGST will offer up a more compelling product.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I could see them being useful for backup drives, but I don't imagine them being good for live data especially since even in raid the performance would probably be bad. Can't imagine running that much data without raid.

 

[BFG10K]

I could see them being useful for backup drives, but I don't imagine them being good for live data especially since even in raid the performance would probably be bad.

Even for backups, it'd take an eternity to write out 8TB @ 30 MB/sec.

This only makes sense for cloud providers where a user's uploads are much slower anyway.

Or for "write-once-read-many" situations like Bluray rips, where the ripping speed would be the limitation, not the HDD.

 

[rsutoratosu]

I think seagate rushed this.. they had issue 2-3 years ago and admit smr was a huge challenge

Also being that it's being sold as archive drive and not a desktop performer. Not really a market for the general user.

Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF, hours): 800K - wow pretty low

 

[Elixer]

I don't see a very good use case, even for the cloud, since most places that have cloud storage RAID them up for obvious reasons.
In this case, since these things are so slow, and, as the review mentions trying to do RAID with these suckers would be downright horrible.

So, in the case of a home user, these things are too slow, and no good way to back them up.
For the business user, there are much better alternatives that have proven reliability, so, why would any business use these slow beasts with all those disadvantages this product has?
SMR is dead. HAMR is where everyone is heading.

 

[Red Squirrel]

What I see is they'll slap these in an enclosure and sell them as external drives. People will buy them because "wow 8TB!". The general user wont care about SMR or how Seagate did it, they'll just care about "wow 8TB!" and buy it. These are also the people that typically don't use raid or backups. The data recovery companies are probably salivating at this. On the other hand, wonder how much harder it is to recover a SMR drive.

 

[Cerb]

The results are better than I was expecting, TBH. Even so, 8TB in a 4x1x6 space appears to be the only compelling factor. The mixed load and small IOP performance just ruins it, for any practical use cases, IMO, even backups.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Well for backups speed does not really matter. The initial backup may take long but after that you're just copying changes anyway. I typically just let my backups run over night.

 

[Cerb]

Also verifying current and recent data, and taking data from multiple sources. Small IOs, and going out of the cache, are just so slow compared to big IOs and cache hits, that I'd take the 25%/33% hit any day of the week for a 6TB.

 

[imported_ats]

I don't see a very good use case, even for the cloud, since most places that have cloud storage RAID them up for obvious reasons.
In this case, since these things are so slow, and, as the review mentions trying to do RAID with these suckers would be downright horrible.

Most cloud storage is not RAID based. The vast majority is replication and/or erasure coding based. For cloud, SMR is primarily intended as archival storage, AKA not hot data. There is a rather significant market in this area related to both backups and records. For an example, you can look up AWS Glacier. Facebook has a similar system in the works as well. HGST is also using SMR+Helio for their Active Archive system.

The emerging cloud based storage infrastructure is increasingly looking towards Tier 0/1 SSD technologies, Tier 2 Open Ethernet based high capacity drives (aka, each individual drive has a single 1 Gb/s Ethernet port built in and runs processing on drive), and Tier 3 Archival/Active Archive storage where SMR type technologies will be used.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Well for backups speed does not really matter. The initial backup may take long but after that you're just copying changes anyway. I typically just let my backups run over night.

I was thinking the same thing

a single 8TB drive is enticing as a complete backup to a RAID-5/6 or RAID-Z/Z2 of a bunch of 2 or 3TB drives, and even the slow performance would be ok if you have it ready to go from day one of building the array

the major problem being Seagate still suffering from their current reliability rep (although they might be getting better, but is one willing to risk it here?) and the idea of the drive failing and needing to be replaced and the backup rebuilt, as BFG said, that would take an eternity...

all things considered it really does seem like the product is meant to live up to its name; that is, archival purposes where frequent activity isn't expected and thus performance isn't needed

 

[Red Squirrel]

Wow did not realize these were actually on sale already.

http://www.ncix.com/detail/seagate-st8000as0002-8tb-5900rpm-128mb-ac-106578.htm

$332, not bad. It's almost tempting, just to add one to my backup pool and see how it does. I can probably backup my entire environment on this + keep my other small drives as part of the routine too. Keep in mind that 8TB is probably going to actually be 7.4TB. (8000000000/1024/1024/1024)

 

[beginner99]

What I see is they'll slap these in an enclosure and sell them as external drives. People will buy them because "wow 8TB!". The general user wont care about SMR or how Seagate did it, they'll just care about "wow 8TB!" and buy it. These are also the people that typically don't use raid or backups. The data recovery companies are probably salivating at this. On the other hand, wonder how much harder it is to recover a SMR drive.

Well this would be a good backup drive for bluray rips...if the price is right. And for such a backup you are only gonna copy the new stuff so it being slow will only really matter the first time you copy everything.

 

[cbrunny]

Wow did not realize these were actually on sale already.

http://www.ncix.com/detail/seagate-st8000as0002-8tb-5900rpm-128mb-ac-106578.htm

$332, not bad. It's almost tempting, just to add one to my backup pool and see how it does. I can probably backup my entire environment on this + keep my other small drives as part of the routine too. Keep in mind that 8TB is probably going to actually be 7.4TB. (8000000000/1024/1024/1024)

So... I'm hoping there's a typo on that page. specifically this one:

Weight (Approximate) 48.75 lb

 

[exar333]

Even for backups, it'd take an eternity to write out 8TB @ 30 MB/sec.

This only makes sense for cloud providers where a user's uploads are much slower anyway.

Or for "write-once-read-many" situations like Bluray rips, where the ripping speed would be the limitation, not the HDD.

Good point.

I see some edge-cases where this drive makes sense, but there are a lot of trade-offs. Personally, I would rather spend around the same $$$ for a full-featured 6TB drive and have more options.

It is not a 'bad' product, but I believe it needs to be even more aggressively-priced to really make sense IMHO.

 

[Red Squirrel]

So... I'm hoping there's a typo on that page. specifically this one:

Maybe that's without the helium in it?

 

[CakeMonster]

So.. for a regular hardware geek / gamer .. how does this one hold up compared to for example the WD Green/Red drives? No interest in RAID.. I just want as few disks as possible in addition to my main SSD (1TB). So usage would basically be games i play rarely, 2nd pagefile, google earth cache, spotify cache, downloads (some files shared with some disk activity), backup files, documents, movies, music.

 

[Emulex]

This is for write-few-times read-many cold storage, it sucks balls for throughput on writing. So probably not very good for average geek/gamer!

 

[Essence_of_War]

So.. for a regular hardware geek / gamer .. how does this one hold up compared to for example the WD Green/Red drives? No interest in RAID.. I just want as few disks as possible in addition to my main SSD (1TB). So usage would basically be games i play rarely, 2nd pagefile, google earth cache, spotify cache, downloads (some files shared with some disk activity), backup files, documents, movies, music.

Unless you currently have 5-6+ TB of stuff and you absolutely, positively, cannot have it on multiple disks, there is no reason to get one of these for the use cases you describe.

 

[razel]

Even Seagate's got the words 'Archive HDD' written right on it. So I wouldn't expect more of it beyond what even Seagate has admitted by printing it on the label. Knowing what it's designed for and knowing that 8TB is a lot of data to store on one disk, the obvious thing to do if you care about 8TB of p0rn is backing it up.

 

[Jeff7181]

The results are better than I was expecting, TBH. Even so, 8TB in a 4x1x6 space appears to be the only compelling factor. The mixed load and small IOP performance just ruins it, for any practical use cases, IMO, even backups.

Not really when you consider HGST already has an 8TB drive in the same form factor without the complications of SMR.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Wow did not realize these were actually on sale already.

http://www.ncix.com/detail/seagate-st8000as0002-8tb-5900rpm-128mb-ac-106578.htm

$332, not bad. It's almost tempting, just to add one to my backup pool and see how it does. I can probably backup my entire environment on this + keep my other small drives as part of the routine too. Keep in mind that 8TB is probably going to actually be 7.4TB. (8000000000/1024/1024/1024)

Meh, I'd call that price bad considering the 4TB 7200RPM HGST Deskstar NAS drives regularly go for $165. Heck, given Seagate's current suffering rep you could probably run them in RAID0 and still have a better chance of not losing everything, or just as JBOD and still have better performance

 

[Red Squirrel]

Meh, I'd call that price bad considering the 4TB 7200RPM HGST Deskstar NAS drives regularly go for $165. Heck, given Seagate's current suffering rep you could probably run them in RAID0 and still have a better chance of not losing everything, or just as JBOD and still have better performance

I'm in Canada, we get screwed here. The 4TB HGST here is $286.

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8858534&CatId=4357

NCIX did not have it, only the ultrastar for about $100 more.

Though TBH if I was in the market for more active storage I would be more likely to buy multiple of the 4TB drives at this point as I do not do anything without raid. For backups, I'd probably buy cheaper drives like WD greens. I'm hoping these 8TB ones go down though as they are very attractive for backups simply because I can backup entire raid arrays in one shot without having to pick and choose folders and backup across multiple drives.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

I'm in Canada, we get screwed here. The 4TB HGST here is $286.

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8858534&CatId=4357

NCIX did not have it, only the ultrastar for about $100 more.

Though TBH if I was in the market for more active storage I would be more likely to buy multiple of the 4TB drives at this point as I do not do anything without raid. For backups, I'd probably buy cheaper drives like WD greens. I'm hoping these 8TB ones go down though as they are very attractive for backups simply because I can backup entire raid arrays in one shot without having to pick and choose folders and backup across multiple drives.

ouch that sucks

but I know what you mean about the backups. I'm at a point where I'm wanting to build arrays (even if its just JBOD) just to back up my arrays rather than continue to be picky with individual drives.