Does anyone uses these new 8TB Seagate drives?

Here on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.it/dp/B00QGFEQXU/ref=w...=I3H5U5YJTG825Q

I am considering to expand my home server storage, and I've been looking at these for quite some time now.... I'd hate if they were unreliable, though, of course...

Thank you!

I have had one in service here, in the main MythTV box, since last winter. Thus far, 100% reliable. Which is more than I can say for some of the Seagate 4TB drives it replaced.

Thinking hard now about getting a second one, seeing as they're still priced at CDN$300 here this week, despite our currency's sharp decline over the past year.

Cheers

Good! Thank you Mark.

I only buy in couples (mirroring in my home server), so that's good to hear. I am hoping in some Amazon Black Friday deal.

I have 4 in a rack mounted Synology Server.

One came DOA and was quickly swapped out.

No problems with them so far, but it's far too early to tell. They seem fast enough for my use, the server isn't used for direct access just a cold archive.

Cheers

Cris

Thank you!

And Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I did pick up a second one this past week, for CAD$280. It's in the mythtv box now, where it will replace two 4TB drives once the data copy finishes.

-ml

.... and one of the two forming my mirror failed.
Not a lucky month for my home IT systems.

It's on its way back to Amazon.

BTW: I bought them in January. Less than a month in operation. Oh well...

Do you guys know what the V2 of that same model actually is? What type of updates were made?

http://www.amazon.it/Seagate-S--Archive-...mp;keywords=8tb

Different sticker on the drive, exact same part numbers, same mass, same feature set, same internal-RAM size..

Probably identical, but with latest firmware (fewer, different bugs presumably).

I replaced the broken unit with a WD 6TB since Amazon did not have a 8TB available AND I do not want to give up the benefit of having Amazon replacing failed units with no question asked, and quickly.

I'll think where to go from there. I may get a second WD 6TB and use this 8TB for something else, or just accept that 2TB are "wasted" in my mirror, until next upgrade. I mean, I always have something to do with HDDs...

I never purchase mechanical drives through parcel-delivery. Just too much banging around in transit.

Cheers

How do you purchase them?

Anything short of driving to the factory yourself would involve the drives being sent in a parcel somewhere in their lifetime.

With heads parked, shouldn't the drives be fine for being shipped? I'd think that temperature variation during transit would be more of an issue than being banged around.

By the way, here is Backblaze's latest reliability report. Seagate is looking better than they used to.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q4-2015/

My next drive purchases look like they will be HGST drives.

Over the counter, from either of two large computer retailers in town. They receive them in larger boxes of 50/100 drives, packed at the drive manufacturing factories. The boxes being larger, they're much harder for the UPS grunt to throw around from truck to truck, and the heavier boxes (heavier packing, heavier payload) have a lot more vibration resistance.

Cheers

In principle I may agree, Mark. But, I've been purchasing HDD on-line for the last 10 years, no exception, and I never had any issue. And, buying anything over the counter here means spending 15% more at least...

My concern is that Mark knows a lot more about hard drives than I do. Maybe he's got a good point.

For instance, I bought two WD reds from Amazon for my NAS, I configured them in a RAID pair, and they both eventually failed within a couple weeks of each other. Luckily I was able to use the RAID features to rebuild the first replacement before the second one failed.

I got the replacements the same way, so now I'm wondering if the reason for the failures was that the drives were shipped individually like Mark said. Maybe shipping them that way shortens their life span? Mark is making me wonder about that.

I would assume that either they get damaged and fail soon, or they don't? Mark, would you agree with this?

If so, this would explain your hdd failures, and mine here. But it would also explain why my other HDD are now in my backup nas after being for years in the server happily (24H in both locations) - so I would guess they were not damaged?

A "bathtub curve", they call it. Lots of infant deaths, and a bunch at very old age, but pretty stable in between.

I just think hard about how delicate the mechanical stuff is inside one of those, particularly when there are 8 platters stuffed inside an 8TB drive. Very very tight tolerances. The parking mechanisms seem to rely mainly on friction to hold the heads in place -- there's no mechanical interlock there.

Then I think about the various parcel delivery experiences I've had and witnessed.. especially the UPS guys that Amazon is so fond of over here.

My own (mechanical) hard drive failures ceased when I stopped receiving drives from remote suppliers. Now I have a glut of drives, as I replace long-lived 3TB/4TB models with new 8TB units. A Good Problem to have, I suppose!

Recently, I suspected one of the Seagate 8TB units was dying, but managed to trace the fault to a cracked SATA connector on the little red cable instead.

Yes, I thought so. Now, I've never deepened the analysis on HDD failure rate that much, but I'd assume the first part of the curve (high failure rate) is contributed ALSO by poor shipping and transportation.

And then there's this:

Google doesn't care if the next generation of hard drives is less reliable

Interesting point. If portable devices are all going to Flash, and the only systems to use Winchester drives are redundant arrays and cloud services, then it does make sense to plow forward with storage and speed, damn the reliability. That's really all that those Backblaze reports were ever saying. It's really interesting.

Local SOHO NAS units are still going to need reliability though, so that market segment will still exist for a while.

Interesting times.

As the mirror rebuilds, so HDDs at full throttle, the new WD RED is 10°C cooler than the 8TB Seagate.
That seems good, per se, so I guess it is true these new "NAS" hdds are also cooler on average. Not that it means they are necessarily more reliable, of course. We'll see.

Yes, really interesting point, there, Tony. I do hope we can soon move to SSDs in SOHO servers/nas as well, actually.

Most likely explanation: the smaller capacity WD drive has fewer platters than the 8TB Seagate.

Heat in drives is mostly a function of the platter count and RPM.

...OK. While rpm seems obvious, I am curious as to why the # of platters from the physics standpoint. I'd guess it is friction added by the extra platters, but I'm surprised by the impact this has!

Also, temp delta decreased to 5 degrees as the mirror rebuilt progressed, and stayed at 5 for hours yesterday until I went to sleep. I just woke up and NOW it is only 1 degree (72% completion).

HDD are in two adjacent trays, 8TV top, 6TB bottom. They are at 54 and 55 degrees respectively (Celsius).

Incidentally, I am thinking to add a fan right on the side of the trays.

87% complete.
WD is 52°C
Seagate is 58°C

58°C is quite high, in general, in my personal experience. What do you guys think?
Also, when it was working alone, with no other HDD near by, it used to run at 48°C circa.

I wonder if it is possible that these 8TB are not good in keeping cool when next to other HDDs... If so, I am afraid this one may fail soon as well .

As soon as the rebuild completes, I'll install an extra fan.

In general, how cool do your drives run?
Mine have always been around 45~50 °C in normal operation (which is pretty low in my home server, of course). So, I am not too worried about the 52°C (125°F) of the WD during a mirror rebuild.
I am a bit more worried of the Seagate 58°C (136°F)...

I try and avoid anything over 49C with my mechanical drives. My Seagates and WDs in the Mythbox and backup array rarely get over about 45C. Normally they are between 34C and 40C.

During a RAID build/rebuild (or an initial mass data copy of any kind), the drive electronics are much busier than in steady state operation, so the drives tend to heat up a lot more.

In the case of the Seagate with shingled magnetic recording (SMR), it will be even busier (and thus generate more heat) than other drives because of the need to rewrite adjacent tracks while writing others.

Once you get to steady state operation, I would expect things to cool down considerably.

EDIT: Meanwhile, if you have a room fan of some kind, direct it at the air intakes NOW, just to keep things happier.

Cheers

Mark, thank you.

My home server is in a Cooler Master HAF XB. I removed the side panel, and that alone caused this temp drop:

WD 49°C
Seagate 54°C

This is good, since I just found out I do not possess any home fan!

I do have possibly 10 PC fans in my PC parts boxes, so I'll see if I can do anything with those.

I am now planning to improve cooling of the hot-swap HDD area of the case. Sadly, the HAF XB has no hole in the bottom part of the side panel, where the hot-swap hdd tray is located. Which is a really silly flaw in what I consider a beautifully designed case otherwise:

http://www.cmstore.eu/parts-replacements/case/haf/haf-xb/haf-xb-side-panels/

So, I may have to use a Dremel there. Even without a hole, though, there seems to be enough space between the hdd tray and the side panel to allow some forced air circulation. I'll try that or keep the case open on one side while I make the hole myself.

I have the adapter to connect a PC fan power plug to a molex connector plug. That is, I have a fan that can be powered via a molex connector.

There's currently no molex connector available in my server, but I have a modular PSU and I could attach one to the PSU easily.

Would it be crazy to do is while the server is up and running? Would the PSU fail somehow?

Rebuild completed successfully.
Temps are now stable:

WD 44 C
Seagate 45 C

Case Side panel is removed, so there's a lot of air flow, but no fan.

I am now installing a temporary additional fan, waiting for the proper, silent Noctua to be delivered and put in place permanently.