EXPIRED WD DC HC520 12TB $75

[Whaaat]

drive firmware updates are more for fixing major issues

Yes, and we apply updates exactly to avoid major issues. Even routine firmware updates usually have rather scary description of fixes, just for instance:

Fixes:
- Fix for misreported internal time out caused by interaction between internal cache command and read stream, causing self initiated resets
- Fix for EPO data not saved correctly when Write Same was active
- Fix for SMART self test issue when self test is aborted due to POR
- Fix for self-initiated reset in suspended IDLE state
- Fix for SATA drive (Address Mark Not Found) reporting error

 

[Samir]

Yes, and we apply updates exactly to avoid major issues. Even routine firmware updates usually have rather scary description of fixes, just for instance:

I've found most release notes to not be worth their salt in the last 10 years or so, but the ones you posted pretty legit. Still, I can't help to think that these issues only appear in very limited cases because drives would be recalled if it hit more than a small percentage of the total made.

 

[Filez]

if I need 12 TB storage space with redundancy, what is a good price/performance setup- 2x12 TB or 6x4TB? 4TB drives will be 6-8years old vs this 12TB drive is one year old.

 

[Samir]

if I need 12 TB storage space with redundancy, what is a good price/performance setup- 2x12 TB or 6x4TB? 4TB drives will be 6-8years old vs this 12TB drive is one year old.

If you want performance, I would say 2x12 because the 12's of today are much faster than the 4TB from 6yrs ago. For redundancy I would say the same as with older drives and more of them just leans too hard on the controller and other drives for redundancy.

 

[Whaaat]

2x12 TB or 6x4TB?

Performance -> Go SSD, Power saving -> 2*12TB
Sequential speed: 230MB/s for 4TB vs 260MB/s for 12TB, so the difference is negligible. For randoms 6*4TB would be better, but you could buy SSD quarter of the capacity for the same price and orders of magnitude faster in random operations.

 

[Filez]

thank you both, I gave in, ordered 2x12TB.

 

[Samir]

Sequential speed: 230MB/s for 4TB vs 260MB/s for 12TB, so the difference is negligible.

Where did you find that 6yr old 4TB drives were transferring over 200MB/s? Even the easystores couldn't do this when they came out.

 

[Whaaat]

Where did you find that 6yr old 4TB drives were transferring over 200MB/s?

Just personal experience with a lot of drives, here is the first available at hand:

Spoiler: HGST

 

[Samir]

Just personal experience with a lot of drives, here is the first available at hand:

Spoiler: HGST

View attachment 31712

But that's a modern drive. The older drives didn't transfer this fast. I know my 2TB HGSTs from a few years ago will barely break 150MB/s.

 

[Whaaat]

But that's a modern drive.

That particular one was produced in 2018, so it's 5yr old. Not sure that in 2017 drives were that slower than in 2018 ))
And the drive from the first post was introduced in 2016, what an ancient piece of technology

 

[Samir]

That particular one was produced in 2018, so it's 5yr old. Not sure that in 2017 drives were that slower than in 2018 ))
And the drive from the first post was introduced in 2016, what an ancient piece of technology

I didn't realize all the modern drives are still using designs from years ago. So then I agree with you that the performance aspect of the 4TB drives will pretty much be the same and that the spindle count would help for io but would be overshadowed by an ssd.

 

[Samir]

Just personal experience with a lot of drives, here is the first available at hand:

Spoiler: HGST

View attachment 31712

Since you've seen a lot of drives, how does the OP one measure up to other 12TB drives that you've tested?

 

[Whaaat]

how does the OP one measure up to other 12TB drives that you've tested?

Much stronger recoil from head stack assembly movement than in He10 and Seagate X14. Not suitable for bedroom PC))

 

[Fritz]

Ordered one. It arrived today. Ordered 3 more.

 

[T_Minus]

Ordered one. It arrived today. Ordered 3 more.

Stats on your drive?

 

[Fritz]

Roughly 24TB written, the rest "Unknown" 100/100.

 

[EasyRhino]

Much stronger recoil from head stack assembly movement than in He10 and Seagate X14. Not suitable for bedroom PC))

interesting because from the part number this seems to be basically the same as a He12, and I wonder what changed since the He10.

I look forward with some trepidation to when I receive my drive.

 

[Serhan]

Roughly 24TB written, the rest "Unknown" 100/100.

What is the manufacturing date? Is it 2022 as shown on the photos in the listing?

 

[ShadesBot]

I picked up six (two additional yesterday, still shipping). Drives all look good, only issue I see is they were all manufactured very close to each other (within a day or two) and all are from the same factory. Haven't run any badblocks tests on them yet. Stats from smartctl for four drives (not sure what the power on hours were when I got them but I believe they were under 24 hours for all drives. I think the seller or whomever they got them from turned them on, wrote some data to verify the disks, and then turned them off):

smartctl 7.2 2021-09-14 r5236 [FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p7 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor: HGST
Product: HUH721212AL4205
Revision: D630
Compliance: SPC-4
User Capacity: 12,000,138,625,024 bytes [12.0 TB]
Logical block size: 4096 bytes
LU is fully provisioned
Rotation Rate: 7200 rpm
Form Factor: 3.5 inches
Logical Unit id: 0x5000cca2b093735c
Serial number:
Device type: disk
Transport protocol: SAS (SPL-3)
Local Time is: Wed Sep 20 17:09:44 2023 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
Temperature Warning: Enabled
Read Cache is: Enabled
Writeback Cache is: Disabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Health Status: OK

Grown defects during certification <not available>
Total blocks reassigned during format <not available>
Total new blocks reassigned <not available>
Power on minutes since format <not available>
Current Drive Temperature: 51 C
Drive Trip Temperature: 85 C

Manufactured in week 07 of year 2022
Specified cycle count over device lifetime: 50000
Accumulated start-stop cycles: 2
Specified load-unload count over device lifetime: 600000
Accumulated load-unload cycles: 4
Elements in grown defect list: 0

Vendor (Seagate Cache) information
Blocks sent to initiator = 4752045768704

Error counter log:
Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total
ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected
fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors
read: 0 0 0 0 39726 1260.168 0
write: 0 0 0 0 2234 24046.724 0
verify: 0 0 0 0 97 0.000 0

Non-medium error count: 0

Self-test execution status: 72% of test remaining
SMART Self-test log
Num Test Status segment LifeTime LBA_first_err [SK ASC ASQ]
Description number (hours)
# 1 Background long Self test in progress ... - NOW - [- - -]
# 2 Background short Completed - 29 - [- - -]

Long (extended) Self-test duration: 65535 seconds [1092.2 minutes]

Background scan results log
Status: scan is active
Accumulated power on time, hours:minutes 46:02 [2762 minutes]
Number of background scans performed: 0, scan progress: 75.25%
Number of background medium scans performed: 0

Protocol Specific port log page for SAS SSP
relative target port id = 1
generation code = 1
number of phys = 1
phy identifier = 0
attached device type: SAS or SATA device
attached reason: loss of dword synchronization
reason: unknown
negotiated logical link rate: phy enabled; 12 Gbps
attached initiator port: ssp=1 stp=1 smp=1
attached target port: ssp=0 stp=0 smp=0
SAS address = 0x5000cca2b093735d
attached SAS address = 0x56c92bf00046ec03
attached phy identifier = 2
Invalid DWORD count = 1
Running disparity error count = 1
Loss of DWORD synchronization = 0
Phy reset problem = 0
Phy event descriptors:
Invalid word count: 1
Running disparity error count: 1
Loss of dword synchronization count: 0
Phy reset problem count: 0
relative target port id = 2
generation code = 1
number of phys = 1
phy identifier = 1
attached device type: no device attached
attached reason: unknown
reason: power on
negotiated logical link rate: phy enabled; unknown
attached initiator port: ssp=0 stp=0 smp=0
attached target port: ssp=0 stp=0 smp=0
SAS address = 0x5000cca2b093735e
attached SAS address = 0x0
attached phy identifier = 0
Invalid DWORD count = 0
Running disparity error count = 0
Loss of DWORD synchronization = 0
Phy reset problem = 0
Phy event descriptors:
Invalid word count: 0
Running disparity error count: 0
Loss of dword synchronization count: 0
Phy reset problem count: 0

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor: HGST
Product: HUH721212AL4205
Revision: D630
Compliance: SPC-4
User Capacity: 12,000,138,625,024 bytes [12.0 TB]
Logical block size: 4096 bytes
LU is fully provisioned
Rotation Rate: 7200 rpm
Form Factor: 3.5 inches
Logical Unit id: 0x5000cca2b0955b9c
Serial number:
Device type: disk
Transport protocol: SAS (SPL-3)
Local Time is: Wed Sep 20 17:09:58 2023 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
Temperature Warning: Enabled
Read Cache is: Enabled
Writeback Cache is: Disabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Health Status: OK

Grown defects during certification <not available>
Total blocks reassigned during format <not available>
Total new blocks reassigned <not available>
Power on minutes since format <not available>
Current Drive Temperature: 52 C
Drive Trip Temperature: 85 C

Manufactured in week 07 of year 2022
Specified cycle count over device lifetime: 50000
Accumulated start-stop cycles: 2
Specified load-unload count over device lifetime: 600000
Accumulated load-unload cycles: 4
Elements in grown defect list: 0

Vendor (Seagate Cache) information
Blocks sent to initiator = 4806269730816

Error counter log:
Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total
ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected
fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors
read: 0 0 0 0 41824 1260.178 0
write: 0 0 0 0 257 24051.715 0
verify: 0 0 0 0 279 0.000 0

Non-medium error count: 0

Self-test execution status: 73% of test remaining
SMART Self-test log
Num Test Status segment LifeTime LBA_first_err [SK ASC ASQ]
Description number (hours)
# 1 Background long Self test in progress ... - NOW - [- - -]
# 2 Background short Completed - 30 - [- - -]

Long (extended) Self-test duration: 65535 seconds [1092.2 minutes]

Background scan results log
Status: scan is active
Accumulated power on time, hours:minutes 47:01 [2821 minutes]
Number of background scans performed: 0, scan progress: 74.78%
Number of background medium scans performed: 0

Protocol Specific port log page for SAS SSP
relative target port id = 1
generation code = 2
number of phys = 1
phy identifier = 0
attached device type: SAS or SATA device
attached reason: unknown
reason: unknown
negotiated logical link rate: phy enabled; 12 Gbps
attached initiator port: ssp=1 stp=1 smp=1
attached target port: ssp=0 stp=0 smp=0
SAS address = 0x5000cca2b0955b9d
attached SAS address = 0x56c92bf00046ec04
attached phy identifier = 3
Invalid DWORD count = 0
Running disparity error count = 0
Loss of DWORD synchronization = 0
Phy reset problem = 0
Phy event descriptors:
Invalid word count: 0
Running disparity error count: 0
Loss of dword synchronization count: 0
Phy reset problem count: 0
relative target port id = 2
generation code = 2
number of phys = 1
phy identifier = 1
attached device type: no device attached
attached reason: unknown
reason: power on
negotiated logical link rate: phy enabled; unknown
attached initiator port: ssp=0 stp=0 smp=0
attached target port: ssp=0 stp=0 smp=0
SAS address = 0x5000cca2b0955b9e
attached SAS address = 0x0
attached phy identifier = 0
Invalid DWORD count = 0
Running disparity error count = 0
Loss of DWORD synchronization = 0
Phy reset problem = 0
Phy event descriptors:
Invalid word count: 0
Running disparity error count: 0
Loss of dword synchronization count: 0
Phy reset problem count: 0

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor: HGST
Product: HUH721212AL4205
Revision: D630
Compliance: SPC-4
User Capacity: 12,000,138,625,024 bytes [12.0 TB]
Logical block size: 4096 bytes
LU is fully provisioned
Rotation Rate: 7200 rpm
Form Factor: 3.5 inches
Logical Unit id: 0x5000cca2b0954274
Serial number:
Device type: disk
Transport protocol: SAS (SPL-3)
Local Time is: Wed Sep 20 17:10:02 2023 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
Temperature Warning: Enabled
Read Cache is: Enabled
Writeback Cache is: Disabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Health Status: OK

Grown defects during certification <not available>
Total blocks reassigned during format <not available>
Total new blocks reassigned <not available>
Power on minutes since format <not available>
Current Drive Temperature: 52 C
Drive Trip Temperature: 85 C

Manufactured in week 07 of year 2022
Specified cycle count over device lifetime: 50000
Accumulated start-stop cycles: 2
Specified load-unload count over device lifetime: 600000
Accumulated load-unload cycles: 4
Elements in grown defect list: 0

Vendor (Seagate Cache) information
Blocks sent to initiator = 4736057081856

Error counter log:
Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total
ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected
fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors
read: 0 0 0 0 41664 1260.155 0
write: 0 0 0 0 109 24046.736 0
verify: 0 0 0 0 53 0.000 0

Non-medium error count: 0

Self-test execution status: 72% of test remaining
SMART Self-test log
Num Test Status segment LifeTime LBA_first_err [SK ASC ASQ]
Description number (hours)
# 1 Background long Self test in progress ... - NOW - [- - -]
# 2 Background short Completed - 29 - [- - -]

Long (extended) Self-test duration: 65535 seconds [1092.2 minutes]

Background scan results log
Status: scan is active
Accumulated power on time, hours:minutes 46:17 [2777 minutes]
Number of background scans performed: 0, scan progress: 74.62%
Number of background medium scans performed: 0

Protocol Specific port log page for SAS SSP
relative target port id = 1
generation code = 2
number of phys = 1
phy identifier = 0
attached device type: SAS or SATA device
attached reason: unknown
reason: unknown
negotiated logical link rate: phy enabled; 12 Gbps
attached initiator port: ssp=1 stp=1 smp=1
attached target port: ssp=0 stp=0 smp=0
SAS address = 0x5000cca2b0954275
attached SAS address = 0x56c92bf00046ec05
attached phy identifier = 1
Invalid DWORD count = 0
Running disparity error count = 0
Loss of DWORD synchronization = 0
Phy reset problem = 0
Phy event descriptors:
Invalid word count: 0
Running disparity error count: 0
Loss of dword synchronization count: 0
Phy reset problem count: 0
relative target port id = 2
generation code = 2
number of phys = 1
phy identifier = 1
attached device type: no device attached
attached reason: unknown
reason: power on
negotiated logical link rate: phy enabled; unknown
attached initiator port: ssp=0 stp=0 smp=0
attached target port: ssp=0 stp=0 smp=0
SAS address = 0x5000cca2b0954276
attached SAS address = 0x0
attached phy identifier = 0
Invalid DWORD count = 0
Running disparity error count = 0
Loss of DWORD synchronization = 0
Phy reset problem = 0
Phy event descriptors:
Invalid word count: 0
Running disparity error count: 0
Loss of dword synchronization count: 0
Phy reset problem count: 0

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor: HGST
Product: HUH721212AL4205
Revision: D630
Compliance: SPC-4
User Capacity: 12,000,138,625,024 bytes [12.0 TB]
Logical block size: 4096 bytes
LU is fully provisioned
Rotation Rate: 7200 rpm
Form Factor: 3.5 inches
Logical Unit id: 0x5000cca2b095e0f0
Serial number:
Device type: disk
Transport protocol: SAS (SPL-3)
Local Time is: Wed Sep 20 17:10:04 2023 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
Temperature Warning: Enabled
Read Cache is: Enabled
Writeback Cache is: Disabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Health Status: OK

Grown defects during certification <not available>
Total blocks reassigned during format <not available>
Total new blocks reassigned <not available>
Power on minutes since format <not available>
Current Drive Temperature: 50 C
Drive Trip Temperature: 85 C

Manufactured in week 07 of year 2022
Specified cycle count over device lifetime: 50000
Accumulated start-stop cycles: 3
Specified load-unload count over device lifetime: 600000
Accumulated load-unload cycles: 10
Elements in grown defect list: 0

Vendor (Seagate Cache) information
Blocks sent to initiator = 10974127980544

Error counter log:
Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total
ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected
fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors
read: 0 0 0 0 41947 1369.440 0
write: 0 0 0 0 810 24068.250 0
verify: 0 0 0 0 39 8409.547 0

Non-medium error count: 0

Self-test execution status: 73% of test remaining
SMART Self-test log
Num Test Status segment LifeTime LBA_first_err [SK ASC ASQ]
Description number (hours)
# 1 Background long Self test in progress ... - NOW - [- - -]
# 2 Background short Completed - 150 - [- - -]

Long (extended) Self-test duration: 65535 seconds [1092.2 minutes]

Background scan results log
Status: scan is active
Accumulated power on time, hours:minutes 167:09 [10029 minutes]
Number of background scans performed: 1, scan progress: 74.07%
Number of background medium scans performed: 1

Protocol Specific port log page for SAS SSP
relative target port id = 1
generation code = 2
number of phys = 1
phy identifier = 0
attached device type: SAS or SATA device
attached reason: unknown
reason: unknown
negotiated logical link rate: phy enabled; 12 Gbps
attached initiator port: ssp=1 stp=1 smp=1
attached target port: ssp=0 stp=0 smp=0
SAS address = 0x5000cca2b095e0f1
attached SAS address = 0x56c92bf00046ec06
attached phy identifier = 0
Invalid DWORD count = 47
Running disparity error count = 47
Loss of DWORD synchronization = 0
Phy reset problem = 0
Phy event descriptors:
Invalid word count: 47
Running disparity error count: 47
Loss of dword synchronization count: 0
Phy reset problem count: 0
relative target port id = 2
generation code = 2
number of phys = 1
phy identifier = 1
attached device type: no device attached
attached reason: unknown
reason: power on
negotiated logical link rate: phy enabled; unknown
attached initiator port: ssp=0 stp=0 smp=0
attached target port: ssp=0 stp=0 smp=0
SAS address = 0x5000cca2b095e0f2
attached SAS address = 0x0
attached phy identifier = 0
Invalid DWORD count = 0
Running disparity error count = 0
Loss of DWORD synchronization = 0
Phy reset problem = 0
Phy event descriptors:
Invalid word count: 0
Running disparity error count: 0
Loss of dword synchronization count: 0
Phy reset problem count: 0

 

[Serhan]

I picked up six (two additional yesterday, still shipping). Drives all look good, only issue I see is they were all manufactured very close to each other (within a day or two) and all are from the same factory. Haven't run any badblocks tests on them yet. Stats from smartctl for four drives (not sure what the power on hours were when I got them but I believe they were under 24 hours for all drives. I think the seller or whomever they got them from turned them on, wrote some data to verify the disks, and then turned them off):

Thank you!