Seagate passes gassy 14TB whopper: He He He, one for each of you

Seagate has spread its 14TB, 7,200rpm helium-filled disk drive tech across the PC, NAS, enterprise capacity and surveillance market sectors. A few years ago the idea of having a PC or workstation with a 14TB disk drive was fantasy. Dream no more: the 14TB helium-filled BarraCuda Pro (PDF) does cost about $580, though. The …

[Oh Homer]

Nice, but...

These days I'm more interested in speed than capacity. Ultimately I'd rather have tiny SSDs than massive HDDs. It'd be nice to have something that's both big and fast but, you know: big, fast, cheap - choose two!

[Daniel von Asmuth]

Re: Nice, but...

A real SCSI or SAS disc offers decent speed, reliability and longevity. Desktiop drives are so slow and unreliable they are likely to wear out before the user had a chance to fill them. In the year 2000 we had 15.000 RPM drives, so something spinning at 7200 RPM is consumer grade.

[Oh Homer]

Re: "real SCSI or SAS"

Well, first of all, even finding an SAS drive these days is like trying to buy a floppy drive, unless you happen to work in a data centre (which I don't), and I'd imagine that even they have a hard time finding any. Surely they're all using SSDs by now anyway, if for no better reason than to drastically reduce power consumption and thus costs. I dread to think of the power bill for a data centre filled with 15k drives in 2018.

Second, the few SAS drives I actually managed to find at retail all looked rather elderly, meaning they use older and much slower technology, and were ridiculously expensive. Did I mention that I can't afford expensive storage?

Third, NVMe M.2 utterly destroys SAS in both speed and price, and also unlike SAS is readily available.

As for tech wearing out... welcome to the 21st century. Nobody cares. People now regard tech like polystyrene cups. It has to be as near to free as possible, and just barely good enough to get the job done to the required specifications (i.e. fast), before chucking it in the bin and starting again with a new cup.

It's sad but true, and the rationale should be self-evident: in this era of austerity nobody can afford the luxury of genuinely high grade products, and getting things done quickly and cheaply is simply an unavoidable necessity.

[Anonymous Coward]

'More interested in speed than capacity'

Both are still good imho. 14GB HDD for video / video-game content and SSD as always for OS / Application startup etc.

On the budget retail side it hasn't been easy to find anything larger than 8TB Ext HDD / 256GB USB memory for years now...

Anyone know why?

[illu]

Re: "real SCSI or SAS"

Sadly you imagined wrongly: I work in the industry and everywhere you still see SAS drives. Yes, 15k is dying but there are still many many many 10k drives installed and running, with sizes like 600GB, 900GB, 1.2TB and 1.8TB. Yes, even in big data centers of major enterprises.

Same with SATA (NL-SAS) where it's mostly 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, 6TB and 8TB. Yes, 10TB and 12TB are also available but not yet sold too often.

Regarding power consumption: Replacing SAS-disks with approximately same sized SSDs will by the way not really help you much, for the usual 2U shelf with 24 disks the difference is only about 50-100W. The big factor is consolidating many racks of SAS- and SATA-shelves to only some rack units of SSD-shelves. You can easily consolidate the performance but now you can also consolidate the capacity.

With SSDs we're currently at 30.6TB per SSD. Not really affordable yet but 7.6TB SSDs are used often for this purpose.

And with the performance of SSDs you can activate all the juicy efficiency features, like inline-dedup and compression without noticeable latency hits which means even more usable capacity per rack unit.

[Jayce and the Wheeled Chairs]

Re: Nice, but...

It’s not for that market. It’s an archive/ CCTV drive.

You’d easily record 6 HD camera feeds for 2 months

[eswan]

"IronWolf Pro, supporting up to 24-bay NAS enclosures, capacity ranges from 2TB to 14B, while the ordinary IronWolf, supporting one- to 8-bay enclosures, goes from 1TB to 14TB."

So if you put the regular IronWolf in a 9-bay enclosure, does it spontaneously combust?

[LeahroyNake]

I'm guessing the drive 'certified' for the larger NAS box costs more even if it's the same hardware barring some model number foolery.

The same goes for all manufacturers Red Blue Green branding. Maybe some insignigicant firmware changes but I doubt they are using better bearings, motors or heads etc.

[Wellyboot]

Certified drives

>>>The same goes for all manufacturers Red Blue Green branding. Maybe some insignigicant firmware changes but I doubt they are using better bearings, motors or heads etc.<<<

Cookie cutter driver pops off the line, quick diagnostic test and the results point the blank drive to the correct labelling slot with the ones producing more vibration and/or heat heading for consumer land.

It's more or less the same with modern car engine mapping onto a software defined power band. How many 'different' 2.0 litre petrol motors will any manufacturers beancounters want to make?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Certified drives

More likely just the warranty cost.

Testing drives to detect any differences that mean a 5year life rather than 3year is long and expensive.

Mostly buying the "higher grade" one is just paying an insurance premium for the warranty

[chivo243]

Foot in both worlds

I am looking for bulk storage for most data, and speed is alway nice in other instances. I would love to get 28 TB of storage in my two bay NAS... I also enjoy SSD speeds in my desktop and lappy, too.

[DJO]

Re: Foot in both worlds

I would love to get 28 TB of storage in my two bay NAS

Why?

At an average of 2GB per movie that's about 14,000 films, do you really need to watch 2 films a day for 20 years?

If music is your thing then assuming good quality FLACs at about 500MB per album that's 56,000 CDs worth or roughly 20 years listening for 8 hours a day every day.

Maybe you like reading, epubs average at about 250kb so about 100 million books, you may be a fast reader but not that fast. Mind you buy another one and you could store every book ever published (approx 130 million).

That's of course once you've collected and collated it all which would take a few years.

Alternatively I suppose it's big enough make a local mirror of PornHub.

[AustinTX]

Re: Foot in both worlds

There's always the wag who asks "why on earth do you need that much?". None of your business!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Foot in both worlds

Why?

My Photo and Video library are close to 7Tb[1]. That's Stills going back to 2003 and Video back to 2014. All shot by myself. A quick check showed that I've added 476Gb this year so far and it has been a quiet year.

I'm sure that there are other use cases.

Just thinking of using the storage for your copy of other persons work is IMHO rather shortsighted.

These things are perfect for archival use.

[1] Currently this is held on TWO 4-drive NAS systems in raid-5.

[DJO]

Re: Foot in both worlds

My Photo and Video library are close to 7Tb[1]. That's Stills going back to 2003 and Video back to 2014. All shot by myself. A quick check showed that I've added 476Gb this year so far and it has been a quiet year.

Which kind of makes my point - in 15 years you've generated almost (let's round up) 8TB so a 28 TB system assuming a slight annual growth in your output will last for another 25 to 30 years.

Far longer than the discs themselves will last and depending on your age, possibly longer than you will last.

Also as others have stated, 14TB in a system without redundancy is insane.

I also store various VMs

Ah, a valid use that may well eat a lot of space but how many VMs are needed?

[katrinab]

Re: Foot in both worlds

The very idea of a two bay NAS fills me with horror, especially if you are going to use RAID0 on it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Foot in both worlds

"The very idea of a two bay NAS fills me with horror, especially if you are going to use RAID0 on it."

I assumed he was planning to go with RAID1. Subsequent comment indicates a plan to move from RAID5. I would consider that an upgrade.

[Spazturtle]

Re: Foot in both worlds

Perhaps he doesn't want to watch low bitrate 2GB movies?

[Tezfair]

Re: Foot in both worlds

My home server has 5 x 4Tb drives as R5. It stores all the familys files, kids school / uni work, films, music, downloads from early 2000 onwards (mainly old games that the kids can't get any more). I also store various VMs and backups of old server OSs and at the moment I have 1.51Tb of space left.

I don't need speed, but I need capacity. Saying that, a single 14Tb is a lot of data to lose if it fails.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Foot in both worlds

you'd think 14Tb is excessive and yet... just all the photos and family (i.e. camera-made) videos here take up around 3 - 4 Tb. And then, there's this little-used term "backup"...

sure, some of it is excess (the other day I discovered a 12GB mp4 file on the camera sd card, only to find out it contains a (mandatory) 29 min of footage being all black, with my daughter making some off-stage comments every now and then (she must have forgotten to remove the lens cap).

And then, there are my tif files which take about about... 12 tb, currently, maybe more. Now, for that little-used term "backup".

And I haven't even started about my pron collection, never mind backup, and the backup's backup...

p.s. did I mention my multi-Tb collection of linux distros?

[DJO]

Re: Foot in both worlds

you'd think 14Tb is excessive and yet...

Of course there will be outliers who do need humongous amounts of disc space but they are very much the exception to the rule.

The vast majority of users will never need anywhere like that capacity and if they don't have multiple discs with redundancy then it's a disaster waiting to happen.

Really this kind of capacity is only of use to enterprise systems where they can afford to buy discs by the box full.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Foot in both worlds

I'm afraid your assumption that "vast majority of users will never need anywhere like that capacity" is wrong, as people take picks (never mind that) and video (oh) at an increasing rate (and quality). Yes, arguably, this is just, well, rubbish (then never look at 99.99999% of it, ever in their lives), but this does not counter the fact of such videos growing fast.

Well, I suppose, as most of them have been sold (successfully) the idea of "cloud storage", they'll just happily record away, and the cloud (lol) storage providers will just as happily delete those older videos, as per their t&t, the same way our garbage truck collect the content of our bins and make it disappear (if only!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Foot in both worlds

I have 17TB in my home NAS, of which over 9TB is used.

The problem isn't films, it's TV series, especially when they're HD.

As an example, Halt And Catch Fire ( 4 series, all 1080p ) takes up 130G. That would obviously be considerably more if it was in 4k and if I had a lot more storage, it would be.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Foot in both worlds

Alternatively I suppose it's big enough make a local mirror of PornHub.

Durability of discs becomes much less relevant than wear and tear on the practitioner;s todger, I would guess.

[89724102172714182892114I7551670349743096734346773478647892349863592355648544996312855148587659264921]

Helium leaks will cause cloud servers to lose altitude

[Dazed and Confused]

Re: Helium leaks

> Helium leaks will cause cloud servers to lose altitude

Is that why servers keep going down?

Does Helium leak more through windows?

[Wellyboot]

Re: How do we feel about these "worload ratings"?

>>>Is there a physical reason for them?<<<

Even if there is (or was in the past) a good reason, it's great excuse to deny a replacement.

[The_Idiot]

Every cloud...

... or NAS drive has a re-silver lining.

It's all very well to dream about filling a great big N-bay NAS with 4TB drives. But I'd suggest people also consider time-to-resilver, and the increasing odds of additional drive failures during re-silver operations. Or maybe I'm just being unduly cynical and pessimistic...

[The_Idiot]

Re: Every cloud...

... of course, I meant 14TB drives (blush).

[Piro]

Re: Every cloud...

You mean you don't have backups?

[katrinab]

Re: Every cloud...

Indeed, about 30 hours to resilver a 3TB drive a couple of weeks ago.

[phuzz]

Re: Every cloud...

I've heard many people saying "with drives that big you need at least RAID6 because a drive is bound to fail during rebuilding because it will take so long!", but I'm yet to here anyone who that's actually happened to.

If it's happened to anyone it's probably happened to an elReg reader, so share your stories folks.

In the meantime I'll be over here with a big stick, dealing with our biggest cause of data loss: Users.

[katrinab]

Re: Every cloud...

It happened to me about 5 years ago. RAID Z2 pool, so it was OK.

[Is It Me]

Re: Every cloud...

Seen it happen at a company I used to support, drive failed in a RAID5 NAS, and before it could finish rebuilding another drive failed.

So it does happen, but at the same site I saw several of the same units rebuild happily after a failed drive was replaced, so it doesn't always happen

[Version 1.0]

Re: Every cloud...

"before it could finish rebuilding another drive failed" - which is why you should never buy all your RAID drives from the same vendor on the same day.

[Jakester]

Re: Every cloud...

Years ago I managed a small server I had configured with RAID 5. One night the controller failed and all data was lost. Fortunately, one of two independent nightly backups had completed before the controller went titsup. I was able to restore the data to a temporary server before the company opened the following morning (it was an all-nighter to do it).

[Joe Montana]

"IronWolf Pro, supporting up to 24-bay NAS enclosures, capacity ranges from 2TB to 14B"

I can see a 2 terabyte drive being useful, but the 14 byte version seems pretty useless to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Random

Is there no obvious reason why they don't make He blimps (silver mylar obviously) with SSD/hard drive storage onboard, as drive(s) would then be less vulnerable to corrosion etc as in an inert atmosphere already.

Gives a whole new meaning to "Cloud storage"...

Just navigate the "Navigator" to where its needed, and connect via microwave/etc link.

No need for docking, just use solar and onboard battery for position hold, drives full disk encrypted so if the thing gets lost nothing of value is ever onboard and besides every blimp communicates with every other blimp when in range for mirroring.

[0laf]

The size is great, no one ever wished for less storage, but geez that's a lot of shit to back up.

[Anonymous Coward]

prices of rust

sadly, remain helium-high, over the last 2 years I have only recently noticed a SLIGHT drop of a 4TB external storage, down from about £120 to around £85 - 100. And then, some of us, think of back-up. So I don't expect larger capacities to actually become available at any reasonable prices at all. I mean, at a certain point, flash prices/capacity becomes attractive enough for most punters to make a switch, and then the regular drives become gone overnight, like a floppy. One hopes ;)

[Version 1.0]

Re: prices of rust

Last time I was in the back of my storage cupboard I found a 5Mb drive still in the bag, never opened - it cost about $400 at the time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Secure erase

Do these big drives have hardware assist? Multiple overwrites would get tiresome...

[Tom Samplonius]

Re: Secure erase

"Do these big drives have hardware assist? Multiple overwrites would get tiresome..."

There is still no evidence that a single overwrite with zeros would allow any data to be recovered. The unproven theory of reading data from gaps between tracks has been out there so long, it is an urban myth.

[J. Cook]

Re: Secure erase

The "Secure Erase" leverages the on-controller encryption of drives that are compliant with the ATA6 command set (SATA and (IIRC) Ultra-ATA100/133 IDE drives), which is also why it's a 20 second drive wipe instead of a physical overwrite- the data is stored encrypted, and the secure erase command tells the drive controller to generate a new key which renders the bits on the platters into garbage, because you can't recover the encryption key.

The ATA controller has to support allowing the command (a great many don't!), and older drives don't understand the command anyway, so for wiping drives I usually go with my old standby of a 4 or 5 pass random fill with DBAN and a blanking pass at the end; (although even that's overkill; a single random pass and blanking ought to be fine for 95% of purposes. If you are paranoid, you should probably shred the drive anyway, which I generally prefer a trip to an underpopulated area with a nice backstop, and populate the drive with a series of dents and holes from rifles and other firearms. :) )

[J. Cook]

Was I the only one to get the sub-text?

Although considering my sense of humor is still firmly stuck in the 'toilet joke' era of maturity (I've _heard of it!), all I saw from the head line, byline, and closing comments were flatus jokes. :)

[cloudguy]

Large HDDs are not meant to be backed up

Well, 8TB, 10TB, 12TB and now 14TB HDDs are not meant to be backed up, and they are not appropriate for traditional RAID schemes due to incredibly long rebuild times, although some smarter RAID controllers have learned a few tricks about rebuilding very large HDDs. These HDDs are destined for scale-out, object storage clusters which protect data objects using replication (making multiple copies of data objects) or erasure coding (sharding data objects and calculating parity fragments). In object storage clusters, data protection focuses on the number of cluster nodes and not the HDDs in them. Replication and erasure coding is spread over cluster nodes. No one cares if HDDs here and there fail, which they inevitably will if you have enough of them. Immediately replacing failed HDDs is not a priority. Replicated and erasure coded data objects on failed HDDs will have their "missing" replicas and erasure coded shards/fragments re-created on other HDDs on other cluster nodes by the object storage software running on each cluster node.