HGST He8 Ultrastar 8TB HUH728080AL5200 $82

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JediAcolyte

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May 29, 2020
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Isn't SAS3 a bit of a waste on 7200rpm sas drives? I didn't think spinning rust performance got past SAS2. Am I missing some knowledge here?
 
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Spartacus

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Pretty sure this is at least a good deal on the edge of greatness. Just bought 8 an hour ago w/free shipping.
HGST He8 Ultrastar 8TB HUH728080AL5200
How many hours/datawrites does it have on it?
Isn't SAS3 a bit of a waste on 7200rmp sad drives? I didn't think spinning rust performance got past SAS2. Am I missing some knowledge here?
Theoretically its a waste, unless you have onboard flash caches or an insanely large number of drives on an expander.
Why charge less for SAS2 when you can charge more for SAS3 though /s!
 
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Bjorn Smith

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Sep 3, 2019
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It is, but think of the backpane
If you have a SAS3 HBA with 4 ports you have an aggregate bandwith 48Gbit/s - meaning you could run 24 disks without losing performance (assuming 200MB/s).
With SAS2 you could only run half.

But if you have a SAS3 HBA, SAS3 backpane - then SAS2 disks would be just as good - but - SAS2 disks are not being made more as far as I know - at least not in big numbers, since its "old tech".
 

Ray

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Isn't SAS3 a bit of a waste on 7200rmp sad drives? I didn't think spinning rust performance got past SAS2. Am I missing some knowledge here?
And silicon based paperweights don't come in affordable 8TB sizes. Buy what works to fit your needs. I can only go by my system but when I scrub my ZFS pool it took an hour less time with SAS3. Do I notice that in regular use? Sometimes, it depends what I am doing but normally no, I don't.
 
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Scott Laird

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Aug 30, 2014
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I don't think anyone currently makes HDDs that can outrun SAS1 with sustained reads, much less SAS2. Increasing the link speed between the HDD's buffer and the host will shave a handful of usec off of the read/write latency, but that's under 1% in the normal case. Maybe it's a bigger win in some cases, where the HDD has proactively read a bunch of nearby sectors before the host asks for them?

More likely, it was a case of "we have the controller chips, so we might as well use them."
 
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Scott Laird

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FWIW, I reached out to a co-worker who is a former drive firmware engineer, and he agrees. Increasing the connection speed doesn't make much of a difference as long as it's faster than the media speed. There are a few minor wins, but nothing major.
 
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Bert

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SAS3 doesn't make it faster for spindles. I have one 10TB of these drives and speeds do not exist SAS2 limits. On the other hand, manufacturers will not be making SAS2 controllers anymore so they will be slapping on all of them.

This is a good deal, no sales tax so it is extra good for me. Got some Seagate 3TB at close to 5.33$/TB. My previous best was around 6.7$/TB with tax and shipping. Thanks OP. Now I need to hand off those pesky SATA drives.
 
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Fritz

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FlorianZ

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Dec 10, 2019
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I looked at these but this made it a no go for me -

"This SAS has been tested and have been SMART health tested 92% and higher"
Good catch. I am wondering if the drives from the OP‘s deal are from the same batch, though. The eBay seller just had these restocked. Will try to remember to report back once I received them.
 
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Bradford

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I bought this drive a week ago at this price, along with a 6TB and 2x 10TB. I haven't receive them, it doesn't appear as if they've even shipped yet.
 
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