12TB Easystore USB HDDs @ BestBuy $180

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ReturnedSword

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Yep, that's a pretty solid strategy. And like you said, once you add up all the copies of the data, it does start to get pricey. Then you start to think that some product from AWS that's got 99.9999999% uptime might be better for the price, and then realize that it would be just yet another backup medium. :D
For sure, GSuite unlimited can be had for $120/yr while BackBlaze is $60/yr "per computer." The resourceful will quickly see the way these plans may be gently "bent." This is vastly cheaper in investing in a second backup NAS, which in rust drives alone cost me $2,300. That works out to over 19 years of GSuite yearly costs. There is a benefit to having a copy of your data closer though, as quite a few cloud-happy enterprises have found out in DR situations. In the event of a DR situation, you'd have to ask yourself how much you value getting up and running again as soon as possible. Waiting for the data to be restored can take quite a while, especially if a copy needs to be shipped to you on physical medium.
 

Samir

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Yes, I still have my MP3 collection as well my fansub anime collection from way back when I was more active in that scene. Nowadays I somewhat keep up with fansubbing, but it's mostly my nephews and nieces that watch it now after I curate each series.

My backup NAS is running old gear that I already had, but I'm considering building a new backup NAS using an Atom C3000 platform. The benefit here is that it won't use as much power. The processing power is kind of pokey but it probably won't matter as long as it can reliably push a gigabit connection, which it should have no problem doing. It's come down to mostly chassis selection and willpower to do it though.

My dad was technical for back in the mainframe days. He knows his way around modern hardware but isn't techy in today's sense. He still turns off stuff he doesn't use, and doesn't like the idea of a computer running 24/7 using power. A QNAP box though, won him over since it's an "appliance," hah. Certain QNAP models support concurrent DAS mode over Thunderbolt. I set him up with a TVS-872XT with the CPU upgraded to a i7 8700T and 32 GB DDR4.
Neat! Very cool that the next generation has taken an interest. :)

Yep, power starts to be the biggest factor when dealing with something on 24x7. But there's no way to trim out how much power the drives use--they just use it. These days the cpu has to do a lot of 'nas stuff' that's a lot more overhead than back in the early nas days so I wouldn't skimp too much on the cpu. Be sure there's enough single thread performance or threads as needed to keep it running 100%, and then plan for the bloated updates, haha.

That's so cool you're 2nd gen into computing. I think many of us that get into this stuff either started from scratch or picked up later starting from scratch. :D Very cool to know about the DAS capability of the QNAPs--I didn't know they could do that. Sounds like a powerhouse of a NAS after that upgrade. :D
 

Samir

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For sure, GSuite unlimited can be had for $120/yr while BackBlaze is $60/yr "per computer." The resourceful will quickly see the way these plans may be gently "bent." This is vastly cheaper in investing in a second backup NAS, which in rust drives alone cost me $2,300. That works out to over 19 years of GSuite yearly costs. There is a benefit to having a copy of your data closer though, as quite a few cloud-happy enterprises have found out in DR situations. In the event of a DR situation, you'd have to ask yourself how much you value getting up and running again as soon as possible. Waiting for the data to be restored can take quite a while, especially if a copy needs to be shipped to you on physical medium.
Totally, and the local DR scenario is why our storage right now is DAS on servers that can be quickly moved to even a laptop to keep us up and running.

I've had to deal with one drive crash that cost us only an hour of downtime before we were 100% again, but a true DR would take us more time to get completely back on our feet due to the loss of other equipment like our network scanners and pretty 30" monitors. :D
 

Samir

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@Patrick bit of range anxiety?, not going to live dangerously haha
That's not range anxiety. :D

Range anxiety is when you start out with reaching your destination with 11% left, and then midway on your trip you're up in the mountains of New Mexico at 11pm and the temp drops from the 40s to the 20s and the car starts telling you you'll have 5%, 4% and then 'you need to charge soon' aka 'you're not going to make it!'. :eek: I learned how to milk every ounce of power out of that thing on that trip. :eek: I thought I was going to freeze and starve to death if I got stranded! (This was on a trip from Chicago to San Francisco in a Tesla Model 3 that was pretty fun until that moment.)
 
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josh

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Okay, just ran into these while looking for something else. Not a sale per se, but a decent deal at just over $200 shipped even considering the short warranty (only 30 days--not sure if these are refurbs or what):
Scratch & Dent HGST 14TB DC HC530 SAS 12Gb s 512e SE 3.5" Helium (0F31052)
Tempting but the lack of warranty on such a large drive is slightly concerning.

The BestBuy deal is over btw. Anyone knows if Amazon will match BestBuy's prices on BF from past experiences? I don't reside in the US and have always had to ship to a forwarder which BB specifically cancels orders for.
 
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Spartacus

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Generally no price matching is done on blackfriday/weekend for any retailer BB flat out refuses, even against their own prices.

2 Years isn't a horrible warranty (just gotta be careful not to break the enclosure shucking)
 
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josh

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Generally no price matching is done on blackfriday/weekend for any retailer BB flat out refuses, even against their own prices.

2 Years isn't a horrible warranty (just gotta be careful not to break the enclosure shucking)
I was talking about only 30 days on the 14TB SAS.
Not looking for price matching in the sense of adjusting prices but whether Amazon would run the same promotional price or is BB usually the only one with such competitive pricing?
I'm sure this promotion comes back on BF since it's in their newsletter.
 
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josh

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Does anyone know if the 8TB Elements on Amazon for $125 is a good deal for shucking? I'll probably hold out until BF to see if Amazon/Newegg starts selling the 12TBs at $180 as well but I might have to fall back on the 8TBs since BestBuy is an ass about forwarders.
 
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Samir

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Does anyone know if the 8TB Elements on Amazon for $125 is a good deal for shucking? I'll probably hold out until BF to see if Amazon/Newegg starts selling the 12TBs at $180 as well but I might have to fall back on the 8TBs since BestBuy is an ass about forwarders.
If it's basically the same as the BB one, then it should be fine with all the usual caveats of shucking. :)
 

josh

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If it's basically the same as the BB one, then it should be fine with all the usual caveats of shucking. :)
The reports seem to suggest the easystores are mostly helium drives and the elements are mostly air drives. Technically same cost/GB but not sure about lifespan
 
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Samir

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The reports seem to suggest the easystores are mostly helium drives and the elements are mostly air drives. Technically same cost/GB but not sure about lifespan
These are consumer drives and shucked if being used internally so lifespan won't be anything great since they are just 2yr warranty drives in stock form.
 

BLinux

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I think it's a matter of there being some sort of ceiling that's been hit when trying to read such tightly packed data on the platters. Before, the read speeds would increase as the density increased, but if there's a physics limit to how fast the data can be read/written, then just the size will increase and that's it.

It would be nice if drives would have gone up in speed as their size increased. A 6x increase in sustained read/write speeds would put these 12TB drives somewhere near 1200MB/s for peak read speeds (based on a peak of 200MB/s for the 2TB HGSTs I've got). :eek:
This is just pure speculation on my side, but I think with the introduction of SSDs (SATA/SAS/NVMe), R&D on faster HDDs gradually slowed down over the years. We're seeing less and less of those 10K RPM, 12K RPM, 15K RPM HDDs... and most are now 7200RPM.. so if the platter is only spinning so fast, there's going to be a speed limit. The R&D on HDD technology has mostly been focused only on capacity in recent years, I think...
 
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josh

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These are consumer drives and shucked if being used internally so lifespan won't be anything great since they are just 2yr warranty drives in stock form.
The consensus is these drives are relabeled Reds/Ultrastars. I guess they would be the lower binned units performance capped by firmware but still same product line technically?
 
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Kuz

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For sure, GSuite unlimited can be had for $120/yr while BackBlaze is $60/yr "per computer." The resourceful will quickly see the way these plans may be gently "bent." This is vastly cheaper in investing in a second backup NAS, which in rust drives alone cost me $2,300. That works out to over 19 years of GSuite yearly costs. There is a benefit to having a copy of your data closer though, as quite a few cloud-happy enterprises have found out in DR situations. In the event of a DR situation, you'd have to ask yourself how much you value getting up and running again as soon as possible. Waiting for the data to be restored can take quite a while, especially if a copy needs to be shipped to you on physical medium.

I would love to have an excuse to splurge on one of those for offsite storage, however my limited 10mbps download and 1mbps upload are my limiting factors.... hence 120TB of onsite storage ;)
 
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Samir

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This is just pure speculation on my side, but I think with the introduction of SSDs (SATA/SAS/NVMe), R&D on faster HDDs gradually slowed down over the years. We're seeing less and less of those 10K RPM, 12K RPM, 15K RPM HDDs... and most are now 7200RPM.. so if the platter is only spinning so fast, there's going to be a speed limit. The R&D on HDD technology has mostly been focused only on capacity in recent years, I think...
Now that I think about it, I agree with you. The 15k drives are well established and no one is trying for 20k or faster, and 7200rpm drives with 200MB/s peak speeds seems to be the goal with the focus being on larger sizes vs performance since an ssd will wipe any drive in terms of performance.
 

Samir

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They are not SMR. They look like they may be helium though.
If you don't have a 'don't cover this hole' on the drive somewhere, it's a sealed system that would very likely be helium since it looks identical to the 14TB.