Shingled out: 14TB helium-filled Toshiba drive floats to market

Toshiba has joined the ranks of helium-filled disk drive makers with a 14TB drive that is not shingled. WDC's 14TB UltraStar Hs is helium-filled and uses shingled magnetic recording (SMR), with blocks of partially overlapping write tracks. These increase capacity over conventional PMR recording by 2TB but rewriting data to the …

[Anonymous Coward]

you'll float too

[charlieboywoof]

What could p......................................"§%&$/)/=(/&=%)$§"§%&"!"

[Anonymous Coward]

a good way to get data to the cloud

[Montreal Sean]

Good way to get it to the cloud, maybe...

Getting it back down is a little trickier.

[Korev]

RAID rebuild times?

Anyone any idea how long a RAID rebuild would take on one of these?

[Ian Michael Gumby]

Re: RAID rebuild times?

That's why you go jbod and use a DFS.

Scary thought. 2U box 12x14TB = 168TB. (I think its a 2U box)

Either way. 10 of these guys (servers) will give you 1 1/2 PB of storage in less than a rack.

Can you imagine all of the 8K porn you could stash on these things?

And yes, the internet was made by guys to share their porn collections.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: RAID rebuild times?

Irrelevant question.

You don't use SMR drives in RAID setups (hardware, software, ZFS or WhatTheFS)

Mr Google is your friend for the "why".

There is for example, a presentation that discusses ZFS RAID on SMR and effectively reaches a conclusion worthy of Donald Rumsfeld's famous speech about unknowns (i.e. it "might" work but ZFS "may" do this or that or the other).

[Montreal Sean]

Re: RAID rebuild times?

This isn't an SMR drive though.

Unless I misread the article, I'm pretty sure it said this was the largest non-shingled drive on the market.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: RAID rebuild times?

Dear Sir,

Paragraph two of aforementioned article :

"WDC's 14TB UltraStar Hs is helium-filled and uses shingled magnetic recording (SMR)"

Yours Faithfully

An English Reader

[Montreal Sean]

Re: RAID rebuild times?

True that the WDC drive is SMR, but the Toshiba drive is not SMR.

I guess it would depend on which drive the first post was asking about for rebuild times then.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Re: RAID rebuild times?

Sometimes a redundant disk array is just to delay a full replacement/fail-over until it's more convenient. I'm not an Ops expert, but I've only seen rebuilds used on mostly idle systems. Even at home I've given up on waiting for rebuilds to finish.

[Dimmer]

Re: RAID rebuild times?

And how many of you guys had consecutive serial numbered drives fail BEFORE the rebuild is finished creating a resume event?

[Anonymous Coward]

anecdotal evidence

through negative amazon reviews (ok, it was about WD, but still, helium) - the WD helium-based drives are shite, i.e. fail very quickly. It would be interesting to see if there's any proof of this malicious, and entirely untrue (? / fake) news...

[Naselus]

Re: anecdotal evidence

There is. Statistically, WD drives are extremely unreliable compared to the competition, and it's not even close.

Backblaze, a storage company in the US who custom-build JBODs with dozens of drives, have a fairly comprehensive production study, and their WD drives fail at nearly twice the rate of other vendors.

[Charles 9]

Re: anecdotal evidence

Including Seagate? I've had more problems with Seagate drives myself (clicks of death and the like) while most of my WDs have kept chugging for the better part of five years plus. Just the same, I do keep mirrors.

[JJKing]

How long....................................................................

Anyone any idea how long a RAID rebuild would take on one of these?

A helium of a long time?

_{Mine's the one floating around the ceiling.}

[handleoclast]

I don't like them

I stored my mp3 collection on one but when I played them back everyone was singing in weird, high voices.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I don't like them

...says at least one post about every article on helium filled drives ever.

1/10. (Low hanging fruit)

[handleoclast]

Re: I don't like them

1/10. (Low hanging fruit)

Nah, the low hanging fruit is saying that I put one down on the bench and it floated to the ceiling.

[stucs201]

Re: I don't like them

The low hanging fruit is getting higher since it got filled with helium.

[Anonymous Coward]

You say "Helium" but what makes you think you can assume its gender? Last I've heard "Otherkinlium" is the preferred PC moniker. One thing's for sure however - it's a gas.

[Adam 1]

> it's a gas

You temperaturist.

[Charles 9]

Helium is a noble gas, one of the most stable of elements. It not only normally exists as a gas (you can't liquefy it until you're near 0K), it does so monatomically whereas most gases exist as molecules. IOW, calling it a gas is a compliment.