26TB Seagate HDD for 250 USD

[BackupProphet]

Expansion Desktop Hard Drive | Seagate US

Enhance your storage capacity with the Seagate expansion desktop external hard drive, which is perfect for adding space, consolidating files, and freeing up your computer’s drive.

www.seagate.com

 

[EasyRhino]

I just finished dumping a backup onto one of these.

Much bigly.

edit: use an incognito window and disable your adblocker and you can sign up for seagate's newsletter and get 10% off.

 

[Samir]

Nice find! $9.615/TB for those doing the math.

 

[bvd]

My wife's closest friend has had 3 of their externals (same model, different capacities - 18 first, followed by two 24s) fail within 3 months of buying them. It may just be that she's hard on it or treating it like a thumb drive,but I kinda doubt it tbh, and thought to at least mention it, just in case.

... Still tempting regardless though lol

 

[iraqigeek]

edit: use an incognito window and disable your adblocker and you can sign up for seagate's newsletter and get 10% off.

Unfortunately, that discount doesn't apply to the 26TB drive. I kept getting invalid coupon code, but when I added another drive that didn't have such a steep discount, the coupon worked only for the other drive.

 

[Samir]

My wife's closest friend has had 3 of their externals (same model, different capacities - 18 first, followed by two 24s) fail within 3 months of buying them. It may just be that she's hard on it or treating it like a thumb drive,but I kinda doubt it tbh, and thought to at least mention it, just in case.

... Still tempting regardless though lol

Their cases are a bit lackluster on cooling when pounding the drive for days at a time. Generally most externals are guily of this. I always just point a fan at them and it takes their temps way down and prevents any issues.

 

[BackupProphet]

You dont shuck them?

 

[Samir]

You dont shuck them?

Nope. They're consumer drives imo, so I don't put them in places where I use real enterprise ones. They're great at what they do--off site backup.

 

[BackupProphet]

I thought most drives were very similar. I use "damaged" drives as backup. You know the ones that spend 10 seconds to read/write a sector or two.

 

[Samir]

I thought most drives were very similar. I use "damaged" drives as backup. You know the ones that spend 10 seconds to read/write a sector or two.

I've got some 'bad sector' drives I do use as backups of backups of backups. A good format that scrubs the sectors marks the bad ones bad so they're not used and the rest of the drive is usually good to go.

I have an older 20GB drive where something is wrong with a whole head or platter--so 10GB of it is good, and 10GB unusable. It still works as a boot drive in one system. I can always image another drive and toss it in the day that drive fails.

Drives don't have to be perfect in all use cases ime.

 

[BackupProphet]

They are not exactly bad sectors that will show up in smart. They are damaged sectors that just takes a long time to read. When you run badblocks on a bunch of harddrives, you will sometimes see that a hard drive is significantly slower than others.

 

[Samir]

They are not exactly bad sectors that will show up in smart. They are damaged sectors that just takes a long time to read. When you run badblocks on a bunch of harddrives, you will sometimes see that a hard drive is significantly slower than others.

Ah, the 'swapped out' sectors. Yeah, these cause extra seeks since these 'spare sectors' are typically not sequential with the other sectors, killing transfer speeds. But you are right--it will pass smart tests in this configuration. My need for speed isn't that demanding for drives, and if it was, I'd be using sas ssds.

 

[BackupProphet]

No no ,they are not swapped out. They are just bad, and the firmware has not figured they should be remapped. Even a remapped sector shouldnt spend 10 seconds being read.

 

[Samir]

No no ,they are not swapped out. They are just bad, and the firmware has not figured they should be remapped. Even a remapped sector shouldnt spend 10 seconds being read.

Wow, that's some bad firmware. Usually ime a high level format in windows with a surface scrub marks those sectors bad.

 

[BackupProphet]

This is very common in SAS enterprise grade hard drives, no matter brand, HGST, Toshiba, WD, Seagate

 

[EasyRhino]

Their cases are a bit lackluster on cooling when pounding the drive for days at a time. Generally most externals are guily of this. I always just point a fan at them and it takes their temps way down and prevents any issues.

Yeah I think mine was reporting around 63C when doing a format or a large transfer. Which is... just too hot for regular use.

Unfortunately, that discount doesn't apply to the 26TB drive. I kept getting invalid coupon code, but when I added another drive that didn't have such a steep discount, the coupon worked only for the other drive.

That's weird it worked for me a couple weeks ago but maybe Seagate clamped down on their store.

 

[Samir]

This is very common in SAS enterprise grade hard drives, no matter brand, HGST, Toshiba, WD, Seagate

Ah yes, they will time out longer than SATA drives. But windows format will typically not wait that long and mark the sector as bad ime.

 

[grenskul]

Ah yes, they will time out longer than SATA drives. But windows format will typically not wait that long and mark the sector as bad ime.

That's not how that works. Windows (or any operating system) has zero Input on anything that low level. That's exclusively up to the controller. Windows might fail the format due to a timeout but it has zero input on bad blocks, failing sectors, remapping or anything of the sort. That stuff is not exposed in any way. And even when it barely is (hybrid cmr/smr drives for example) the controller takes the commands as a suggestion at best.

 

[Samir]

That's not how that works. Windows (or any operating system) has zero Input on anything that low level. That's exclusively up to the controller. Windows might fail the format due to a timeout but it has zero input on bad blocks, failing sectors, remapping or anything of the sort. That stuff is not exposed in any way. And even when it barely is (hybrid cmr/smr drives for example) the controller takes the commands as a suggestion at best.

Not saying it does mark it at the drive level, but at the format level. This has been around since dos 3.3 ime. There's a line item under the report from the chkdsk command that will show it.

And to correct what you posted, it depends on which 'controller' you're referring to, because drives have their own controller that manages the low-level format and sector management, and then there is the HBA/RAID controller that can also send/request sector remapping commands. And while not common anymore, Windows does sometimes get information on bad sectors when it states that a drive is not readable or the old, 'Abort, Retry, Fail?' prompt.

 

[grenskul]

Not saying it does mark it at the drive level, but at the format level. This has been around since dos 3.3 ime. There's a line item under the report from the chkdsk command that will show it.

It can't mark anything because it can't see anything. The operating system doesn't have acess to physical sectors it's all virtual and controller managed. It might put a red mark in the mbr/gpt but those are meaningless and can be removed by just removing said mbr/gpt and creating it anew.
Physically it's all controller managed. Anything the OS does is irrelevant.

Edit after his edit: I'm referring to the controller embedded on the board of the disk .
And again "at the format level" isn't a thing. It's windows being ridiculous and saving it in a literal file in the drive and hasn't been relevant since the early 2000s. That list of addresses is literally useless. You can't avoid bad sectors at the filesystem level. Since what is now in sector 5000 can be in sector 6000 in a couple of minutes and the OS will never see a difference . The controller silently remaps it if there is a problem. It's not been a thing for a very long time. This is just legacy useless garbage that just hasn't been removed yet for compatability.