Sucks Seagate's sells the only inexpensive large capacity drives; they're like the Chrysler of data storage. Meanwhile I just keep buying up those $100 Hitachi 4TB Coolspins while I can...before WD changes the "formula." Between me, my friends, and my clients, probably 20 of those drives, haven't had a single one fail since we started using the 3TB models in 2011.
The only high capacity Seagate drive that is SMR is the Archive HDD. The rest of them (Enterprise Capacity, Guardian Series, Desktop HDD, NAS HDD, Surveillance HDD, etc.) are not SMR.
Disclaimer: I'm a Seagate employee. Any opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Seagate.
Picked up 3 for $95 two weeks ago after the $5 off email promo code. They had a bunch, weren't even close to being sold out in their Bolingbrook IL store.
"WD see's the 10TB as it's Flagship Drive for Enterpise" Then goes on to say "it lacks SAS Support" lol.. I'm pretty sure SAS support is kind of a big deal in Enterpise wd....
Not really, especially for nearline drives. Regardless of the interface it's the same physical drive, and array logic plus ample spares means that even if there is a reliability difference between SATA and SAS, it doesn't matter.
On an enterprise scale, HDDs are cattle, not pets.
This new WD 10TB HDD has a data transfer rate of 249MB/s. The new Seagate Nytro XF1230 SSDs also reviewed on August 4 2016 have seq read of 560MB/s and seq write of 290MB/s to 500MB/s which is only twice as fast.
Aren't SSDs 100s of times faster than HDDs? Am I missing something here?
SSD's are faster in several ways. Hundreds of times faster? No, hardly, but significantly faster in many regards.
1) Outright transfer speeds. HDDs can transfer (ideally as shown by the drives above) at up to 250MB/sec in ideal situations. Your average consumer SATA based SSD can hit 500MB/sec under ideal circumstances. This however is the limit of the SATA 3 interface. Switching to a PCIe based NVMe protocol SSD raises that to upwards of 3GB/sec. The interface is the limit on the SSD at this point.
2) Random read/write speeds. The above limits are of sequential reads/writes. Random read/write is when the drive has to go all over the place to get a bunch of little files. This is where the HDD tanks in comparison with SSDs as the write head has to move from one location to a different location, and then wait for the platter to get to the correct rotational point to read the data. Yes, it's fast - 7200rpm is pretty quick, but compared to a SSD which has NO physical positioning to do it takes a finite amount of time. So - the SSD absolutely beats the drive in your typical tasks such as... loading your OS (lots of little reads), reading a video file (2-8 times as fast), loading programs. You get the idea.
3) Longevity. Because it has no moving parts, assuming it doesn't have any electrical damage it will also outlast the typical HDD. Assuming you write 20GB of files per day under what would be 'normal' usage (which is actually a bit on the high side), the typical SSD with a 300TBW (300 terabytes written) capacity means the drive would last (300TB / 20GB = 15,000 days/365 days = 41 years. I think we all know that finding a HDD which is still functional after 41 years is a lost cause.
I'd really like to see some higher capacity 2.5" drives become available for laptops and SFF solutions. The 2TB cap has been in place for years now, and the only larger drives are 15mm thick 3TB SMR drives (write performance issues).
All hard drives have low write per day numbers relative to their capacity. I found out why the hard way when I purchased a 6TB Seagate and immediately filled it with 6TB of stuff. It killed it after 5 hours of continuous writing...didn't even make it to 4TB.
A friend told me he has about 100 of the 4T drives deployed with 0 failures. The reason he hasn't upgraded to any of the larger drives - they are post WD.
I just installed two of these WD Gold 10TB drives in RAID 1 (mirror) in my PC. It's an Asus Z97-Deluxe with Intel Z97 Express Chipset RST RAID. These drives are blazing fast. Here are my performance specs:
- Sequential Read: 239 (MB/s) - Sequential Write: 266 (MB/s) - Random Read: 1989 (IOPS) - Random Wriite: 1550 (IOPS)
Amazing performance. It's twice as fast as an AHCI WD Black drive, and not that much less than the performance of my 512GB Samsung 850 Pro drives, which gets 399 (MB/s) read and 377 (MB/s) write. They are also surprisingly quiet. That 256MB cache really gives them kick.
They run quite cool too. They are just in my CoolerMaster CMStorm case and have been running at full speed for the last two hours at only 90°F, as opposed to my WD Black drive, which has been sitting idle for the past hour running at 95°F and is installed in an iStarUSA 3-bay Removable SATA Storage Device BPN-DE230SS-BLACK, which has a fan sucking air through it a little more intensely than the gentle case fans cooling the WD Gold drives.
Yes, they were expensive at $580 each, but I say they are worth every penny. I run a three drive RAID 0 in another PC using 10,000rpm 300GB WD Velociraptors, which have been running 24/7/365 for more than 10 years as my system drive in my video security PC without a hiccup. When you buy these high end drives from WD the premium is in my experience always paid back in reliability and longevity. That setup yields a sweet 300+ MB/s read/write too. They are rated at 1.5 million hours MTBF. These WD Gold drives are rated at 2..5 million hours MTBF. I think they will outlast me, my son, and my grandson, at least!
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32 Comments
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Samus - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link
10TB, 250MB/sec, 5 Yr warranty, drool.$850, ouch.
Sucks Seagate's sells the only inexpensive large capacity drives; they're like the Chrysler of data storage. Meanwhile I just keep buying up those $100 Hitachi 4TB Coolspins while I can...before WD changes the "formula." Between me, my friends, and my clients, probably 20 of those drives, haven't had a single one fail since we started using the 3TB models in 2011.
Zap - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link
The cheap Seagate drives are likely SMR, meaning write performance will suffer greatly.takeshi7 - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
The only high capacity Seagate drive that is SMR is the Archive HDD. The rest of them (Enterprise Capacity, Guardian Series, Desktop HDD, NAS HDD, Surveillance HDD, etc.) are not SMR.Disclaimer: I'm a Seagate employee. Any opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Seagate.
Sivar - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
Thank you for sharing your expertise. Always appreciated.Morawka - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link
where can you find them for $100? best i can find is $130dakishimesan - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
I picked up a few in store and online at Fry's for $120 recently, but I'm also curious where you found them for $100 -- they're awesome drives. http://www.frys.com/product/6943757?source=google&...Samus - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Fry's has them for $100 all the time.Picked up 3 for $95 two weeks ago after the $5 off email promo code. They had a bunch, weren't even close to being sold out in their Bolingbrook IL store.
Agent Smith - Sunday, August 7, 2016 - link
Why would anybody risk buying electrical products from a company that uses the name 'Fry' on the door!Mutha ha ha
Morawka - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link
"WD see's the 10TB as it's Flagship Drive for Enterpise" Then goes on to say "it lacks SAS Support" lol.. I'm pretty sure SAS support is kind of a big deal in Enterpise wd....Black Obsidian - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link
Not really, especially for nearline drives. Regardless of the interface it's the same physical drive, and array logic plus ample spares means that even if there is a reliability difference between SATA and SAS, it doesn't matter.On an enterprise scale, HDDs are cattle, not pets.
diehardmacfan - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link
Proper support for HA controllers absolutely matters.mbarr - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link
This new WD 10TB HDD has a data transfer rate of 249MB/s. The new Seagate Nytro XF1230 SSDs also reviewed on August 4 2016 have seq read of 560MB/s and seq write of 290MB/s to 500MB/s which is only twice as fast.Aren't SSDs 100s of times faster than HDDs? Am I missing something here?
pedjache - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link
You're missing the fact that seq r/w is just one of the ways of defining drive speed.Gigaplex - Thursday, August 4, 2016 - link
SSDs are 100s of times faster at seek/latency.flyingpants1 - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Actually, SSD could easily do 2000MB/s or way more (and some do). The industry just agreed to stop at SATA3 for some strange reason.damianrobertjones - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
People are buying so why update. When the sales start to fall they'll start to improve things. Max $$$$$bill.rookard - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
SSD's are faster in several ways. Hundreds of times faster? No, hardly, but significantly faster in many regards.1) Outright transfer speeds. HDDs can transfer (ideally as shown by the drives above) at up to 250MB/sec in ideal situations. Your average consumer SATA based SSD can hit 500MB/sec under ideal circumstances. This however is the limit of the SATA 3 interface. Switching to a PCIe based NVMe protocol SSD raises that to upwards of 3GB/sec. The interface is the limit on the SSD at this point.
2) Random read/write speeds. The above limits are of sequential reads/writes. Random read/write is when the drive has to go all over the place to get a bunch of little files. This is where the HDD tanks in comparison with SSDs as the write head has to move from one location to a different location, and then wait for the platter to get to the correct rotational point to read the data. Yes, it's fast - 7200rpm is pretty quick, but compared to a SSD which has NO physical positioning to do it takes a finite amount of time. So - the SSD absolutely beats the drive in your typical tasks such as... loading your OS (lots of little reads), reading a video file (2-8 times as fast), loading programs. You get the idea.
3) Longevity. Because it has no moving parts, assuming it doesn't have any electrical damage it will also outlast the typical HDD. Assuming you write 20GB of files per day under what would be 'normal' usage (which is actually a bit on the high side), the typical SSD with a 300TBW (300 terabytes written) capacity means the drive would last (300TB / 20GB = 15,000 days/365 days = 41 years. I think we all know that finding a HDD which is still functional after 41 years is a lost cause.
bigboxes - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
You know that SSDs will fail way before that. Hope you have your data backed up.WackyWRZ - Friday, August 12, 2016 - link
You're missing a Nytro drive that holds 10TB and missing the price for the Nytro drives.People don't buy drives that hold 10TB because they need SSD speeds...
flyingpants1 - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Consumers just don't give a fuck about these things anymore.edzieba - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
I'd really like to see some higher capacity 2.5" drives become available for laptops and SFF solutions. The 2TB cap has been in place for years now, and the only larger drives are 15mm thick 3TB SMR drives (write performance issues).ACE76 - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Seagate has a 4tb 15mm drive...4tb is nice but it's still too thick.nagi603 - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Rated at 1.51 TB/day only? Ouch. So building a RAID is not supported... so much for a "flagship" "enterprise" product, lol.Samus - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
All hard drives have low write per day numbers relative to their capacity. I found out why the hard way when I purchased a 6TB Seagate and immediately filled it with 6TB of stuff. It killed it after 5 hours of continuous writing...didn't even make it to 4TB.JoeyJoJo123 - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
NOW!WITH 100%* MORE GOLD!
*no gold was used in the making of this product.
extide - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Actually I would be surprised if there ISNT a fair amount of gold in there. It's very common in electronics.jabber - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Wake me up when they get that on a single platter.DanNeely - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Do you want your wakeup delivered by a unicorn behind the wheel of a flying car while you're at it?jabber - Saturday, August 6, 2016 - link
Now that would be nice!fic2 - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
A friend told me he has about 100 of the 4T drives deployed with 0 failures. The reason he hasn't upgraded to any of the larger drives - they are post WD.fic2 - Friday, August 5, 2016 - link
Hard to tell but this was in response to the HGST 4T comment on the 1st page.ArJunaZ - Tuesday, February 7, 2017 - link
I just installed two of these WD Gold 10TB drives in RAID 1 (mirror) in my PC. It's an Asus Z97-Deluxe with Intel Z97 Express Chipset RST RAID. These drives are blazing fast. Here are my performance specs:- Sequential Read: 239 (MB/s)
- Sequential Write: 266 (MB/s)
- Random Read: 1989 (IOPS)
- Random Wriite: 1550 (IOPS)
Amazing performance. It's twice as fast as an AHCI WD Black drive, and not that much less than the performance of my 512GB Samsung 850 Pro drives, which gets 399 (MB/s) read and 377 (MB/s) write. They are also surprisingly quiet. That 256MB cache really gives them kick.
They run quite cool too. They are just in my CoolerMaster CMStorm case and have been running at full speed for the last two hours at only 90°F, as opposed to my WD Black drive, which has been sitting idle for the past hour running at 95°F and is installed in an iStarUSA 3-bay Removable SATA Storage Device BPN-DE230SS-BLACK, which has a fan sucking air through it a little more intensely than the gentle case fans cooling the WD Gold drives.
Yes, they were expensive at $580 each, but I say they are worth every penny. I run a three drive RAID 0 in another PC using 10,000rpm 300GB WD Velociraptors, which have been running 24/7/365 for more than 10 years as my system drive in my video security PC without a hiccup. When you buy these high end drives from WD the premium is in my experience always paid back in reliability and longevity. That setup yields a sweet 300+ MB/s read/write too. They are rated at 1.5 million hours MTBF. These WD Gold drives are rated at 2..5 million hours MTBF. I think they will outlast me, my son, and my grandson, at least!