26TB Seagate External Drive $249.99 Walmart

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

e97

Active Member
Jun 3, 2015
335
216
43
From Walmart, shipped and sold by Newegg

The warranty is different:

Bare Barracuda - 2 years
External Expansion - 1 year

but they should be the same drive internally based on reports

an third party warranty to bring it to 4 years is $30-$40.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Samir

Bert

Well-Known Member
Mar 31, 2018
1,022
514
113
46
I am not excited about these large drives. It is a pain to get the data out of them since they are still limited by the same interface speed. Unless they improve the read speeds and by design they cannot, I think I will stick to my 14TB drives; I think it is not an upgrade to get a 26TB drive to replace a 14TB. What do you think?
 

Rock

Member
Jan 28, 2020
92
62
18
Northern California
I am not excited about these large drives. It is a pain to get the data out of them since they are still limited by the same interface speed. Unless they improve the read speeds and by design they cannot, I think I will stick to my 14TB drives; I think it is not an upgrade to get a 26TB drive to replace a 14TB. What do you think?
Are these large drives a good deal? I think it depends on your circumstances.

I am limited by the available number of bays that I can put drives into, thus higher density is an advantage.
If I had many empty drive bays, and was willing to deal with the additional power consumption and heat then multiple smaller drives may be the right answer.
RAID, striping the drives for speed may also be an answer for some cases.

Would I like to see low cost spinning media drives with faster read/write speeds? Absolutely yes I would.

Would I love to see 24TB NVME drives at this price? HECK YES I WOULD!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Samir

Samir

Post Liker and Deal Hunter Extraordinaire!
Jul 21, 2017
3,817
1,916
113
50
HSV and SFO
I am not excited about these large drives. It is a pain to get the data out of them since they are still limited by the same interface speed. Unless they improve the read speeds and by design they cannot, I think I will stick to my 14TB drives; I think it is not an upgrade to get a 26TB drive to replace a 14TB. What do you think?
In general, newer drives have been increasing speeds steadily over the years. My original 16TB Exos would saturate gigabit, but now the newer version of them will saturate 2.5Gb. These are still not SSD speeds (and won't be to preserve the profitable market segmentation), but they are faster than they were in the past. Even any modern day sata drive is faster than the famed WD Velociraptor drives that made headlines back in the day as are SAS drives faster than the original SCSI Cheetah drives.
 

Bert

Well-Known Member
Mar 31, 2018
1,022
514
113
46
In general, newer drives have been increasing speeds steadily over the years. My original 16TB Exos would saturate gigabit, but now the newer version of them will saturate 2.5Gb. These are still not SSD speeds (and won't be to preserve the profitable market segmentation), but they are faster than they were in the past. Even any modern day sata drive is faster than the famed WD Velociraptor drives that made headlines back in the day as are SAS drives faster than the original SCSI Cheetah drives.
2.5Gb/sec is roughly 300MB/sec which has been the standard sequential read bw of drives over a decade now, right? I have not seen, read or measured any substantial increase on this space. There is also no breakthrough in this area for acceleration. Number of spindles is maxed around 10 and the bit density on each track is pretty much same. The only change is increase in tracks by making tracks narrower.

I am not trying to create an argument but surprised to hear your experience and trying to figure out if I am missing something. Sure modern SATA drives are faster than old 10K/15K rpm sas 2.5" drives.

It would be great if you can share the data from 16TB Exos and newer 24TB sata drive rates under crystal disk mark
 
  • Like
Reactions: Samir and nexox

etorix

Active Member
Sep 28, 2021
215
123
43
I think it is not an upgrade to get a 26TB drive to replace a 14TB
Almost twice the storage in the same form factor, for essentially the same wattage… and probably about the same price that these 14 TB when they were first introduced.
Ticks every box for "upgrade" in my book. Whether you need or want this upgrade is another matter.
 

BlueFox

Legendary Member Spam Hunter Extraordinaire
Oct 26, 2015
2,462
1,874
113
2.5Gb/sec is roughly 300MB/sec which has been the standard sequential read bw of drives over a decade now, right? I have not seen, read or measured any substantial increase on this space. There is also no breakthrough in this area for acceleration. Number of spindles is maxed around 10 and the bit density on each track is pretty much same. The only change is increase in tracks by making tracks narrower.
It has not. Hard drives have only gotten near 300MB/s recently (dual actuator notwithstanding). Density and read/write speeds have been increasing linearly over the years. Larger newer drives are faster than smaller older ones.
 

Culbrelai

New Member
Jan 2, 2021
21
8
3
This is basically the best deal for storage you'll find right now. Because of all of those certain techtubers making videos about cheap used enterprise nand or cheap used enterprise hdds the price of places like serverpartsdeals have rocketed up. I am using 4 of these drives, 2 of these shuck ones and 2 of the 24tb bare drive internal ones and am very pleased so far.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Samir

Samir

Post Liker and Deal Hunter Extraordinaire!
Jul 21, 2017
3,817
1,916
113
50
HSV and SFO
2.5Gb/sec is roughly 300MB/sec which has been the standard sequential read bw of drives over a decade now, right? I have not seen, read or measured any substantial increase on this space. There is also no breakthrough in this area for acceleration. Number of spindles is maxed around 10 and the bit density on each track is pretty much same. The only change is increase in tracks by making tracks narrower.
I wouldn't say a decade as I don't think the 16TB Exos have even been out that long, but time flies and my memory isn't what it used to be so I could be mistaken.

I think the development direction for hard drives has changed since the introduction and widespread adoption of SSDs for speed-sensitive applications. The focus now seems to be on bigger vs faster (where faster was once a priority). And I think hard drives will only exist as long as the cost/storage/size ratio is better than the 32/64/100TB 2.5" SSDs that are out now. The day you can pack more in an inch of space on a SSD and it costs less, good hard drives prices for that size are done (as is the case for 1TB and 2TB hard drives today which are becoming as rare as hen's teeth at prices cheaper than SSDs).

I don't have the ability to do any crystal disk tests at this time since I don't have a 24TB and my 16TB are in a NAS.
 

Samir

Post Liker and Deal Hunter Extraordinaire!
Jul 21, 2017
3,817
1,916
113
50
HSV and SFO
Hard drives have only gotten near 300MB/s recently (dual actuator notwithstanding). Density and read/write speeds have been increasing linearly over the years. Larger newer drives are faster than smaller older ones.
This is my recollection as well. With even same size larger drives today outperforming their older models by a large margin now. It's easiest to see this when comparing the Exos line in 16TB as it has evolved over time. I recall my drives that I got when they were almost just introduced were maxing at 160MB/sec and today's drives are well over 220MB/s.
 

Samir

Post Liker and Deal Hunter Extraordinaire!
Jul 21, 2017
3,817
1,916
113
50
HSV and SFO
I am using 4 of these drives, 2 of these shuck ones and 2 of the 24tb bare drive internal ones and am very pleased so far.
How are the sustained write speeds? How different are they than the sustained read speeds?
 

kapone

Well-Known Member
May 23, 2015
1,821
1,210
113
Hard drives have only gotten near 300MB/s recently
So...we're finally able to saturate the SAS1/SATA II...connection? :p I mean, 3gbps is...well....dead. Just kidding.

But on a more positive note, 24x HDDs at max 300MBps now essentially require a dedicated HBA (SAS3 or better, with a wide link to an expander, or a native 24 port HBA). The pcie bus will bottleneck after that (24x300MBps = ~7.2GBps).

We're gonna need boards with a lot more pcie lanes. Oh wait...:)
 

Rain

Active Member
May 13, 2013
282
127
43
CMR or SMR?
CMR. Seagate only uses SMR in some of the smaller Barracudas and the higher-end Mozaic line. These recent high-capacity Seagate external drives are all listed as Class 1 Laser products, meaning they are using Seagate's HAMR technology to achieve the density.

I bought a few directly from Newegg when they started this sale last week and have been testing them with badblocks since receiving them (using fans to keep them cool because the enclosures are like little ovens). I've seen very constant write performance between passes. Zero indications of the drives being SMR.

For those wondering: A single full sequential pass (write or read, doesn't matter) takes roughtly 1.5 days over USB3 in the enclosure. The enclosure likely isn't impacting performance much: The drives report that the Secure Erase operation takes roughly 1.5 days as well.

Newegg must have had a shipload of these for the sale to have lasted this long and remained in stock. The limit per customer was originally five when the sale started (it's one now).
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Samir and Fritz