[AUS] Purchasing 500TB of hard drives

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wings

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Mar 2, 2021
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Hi! I need to purchase 500TB worth of hard drives. My target is $23 AUD/TB or about $17.61/TB.

If anyone would like to sell drives to me, that would be awesome.
 
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wings

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Tcalp

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Oct 15, 2020
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I already bought 9 drives off Amazon this morning. I'm trying to figure out if getting 5% less storage per dollar is worth it to just be done and purchase all the drives I could want.
Manufacturers are on a hard push to release 100TB drives by 2025-2026 to maintain relevancy over growing nand storage capacities. I can't say who will win that war in the short term, but we will be seeing much larger drives soon with HARM coming to front. So I wouldn't be in a huge rush to pick-up a massive amount of storage unless you really need it.
 

wings

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Mar 2, 2021
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Manufacturers are on a hard push to release 100TB drives by 2025-2026 to maintain relevancy over growing nand storage capacities. I can't say who will win that war in the short term, but we will be seeing much larger drives soon with HARM coming to front. So I wouldn't be in a huge rush to pick-up a massive amount of storage unless you really need it.
For my use case I can't wait until even 2023 ;(
 
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Samir

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Well I wasn't suggesting to wait until 100TB drives are released, but we will be seeing 30/40/50TB drives coming down the pike pretty soon...
I doubt this. 20TB drives were announced over a year ago and you still can't buy them.
 
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alex_stief

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Yeah, I don't really see that either. Not with any technology available today, or in the foreseeable future.
 
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Tcalp

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Yeah, I don't really see that either. Not with any technology available today, or in the foreseeable future.
HAMR drives only started shipping in December, they will be growing. They will also be looking to double the spindle density by adding a second read/write spindle into 3.5" drives. It's not all that hard to get there when you start doubling up.
 

Tcalp

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Oct 15, 2020
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I'm about to return 480tb of drives because I don't like the SMART data, want these? lol
It's not uncommon for DC drives to have a low number reallocated sectors once they get to a recycler. Most drives have an internal count / limit that is used before it will even report in as a bad count within SMART data -- not sure if that's what you might be seeing or not. Doesn't mean the drives are failing, just well used :p
I wouldn't suggest buying used drives unless you are okay with that :)

As to the packing they came in, there is nothing wrong with that style of packing, though it's missing the bottom/top foam liner that is meant to keep the cardboard cells from shifting and shouldn't have been shipped like that.
 

zackiv31

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It's not uncommon for DC drives to have a low number reallocated sectors once they get to a recycler. Most drives have an internal count / limit that is used before it will even report in as a bad count within SMART data -- not sure if that's what you might be seeing or not. Doesn't mean the drives are failing, just well used :p

I wouldn't suggest buying used drives unless you are okay with that :)
Yeah I was looking for more information about this. I've had hundreds of drives in my lifetime, I haven't had drives new or used since the 3TB Seagate days that have had reallocated sectors. To get 50 drives from the same lot with them, to me means they were explicitly filtered out as "drives with reallocated sectors". I would expect the good drives to be somewhere else. I have 13x HGST 12tb's with the same amount of hours without reallocated sectors. So while I was ok with a few drives to have had reallocated sectors, I was not OK w/ having 48 of them. That can't be normal, right?

Now if you told me that all of these drives had those "defects" straight from the factory, and that the IBM firmware simply wasn't hiding it... then, I may contemplate keeping them. But no one has seemed to indicate that. So I'm still assuming these are the "reallocated sector" lot.

As to the packing they came in, there is nothing wrong with that style of packing, though it's missing the bottom/top foam liner that is meant to keep the cardboard cells from shifting and shouldn't have been shipped like that.
I mean yes, the liner I would say is pretty important. A couple of the drives came out clicking, so they clearly were disturbed by the transit.
 
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Samir

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As to the packing they came in, there is nothing wrong with that style of packing, though it's missing the bottom/top foam liner that is meant to keep the cardboard cells from shifting and shouldn't have been shipped like that.
That style of packaging leaves a lot to be desired since any drop will cause drives to bang against each other like dominos. If they're not immobile in those slots and cushioned on each end, that's not proper packaging imo.
 

Samir

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Yeah I was looking for more information about this. I've had hundreds of drives in my lifetime, I haven't had drives new or used since the 3TB Seagate days that have had reallocated sectors. To get 50 drives from the same lot with them, to me means they were explicitly filtered out as "drives with reallocated sectors". I would expect the good drives to be somewhere else. I have 13x HGST 12tb's with the same amount of hours without reallocated sectors. So while I was ok with a few drives to have had reallocated sectors, I was not OK w/ having 48 of them. That can't be normal, right?

I mean yes, the liner I would say is pretty important. A couple of the drives came out clicking, so they clearly were disturbed by the transit.
I too have had many, many drives and usually will keep using them even after they do silly things like a whole head stops working, lol.

It really depends on how many spare sectors there are by default. If there's 256 spare sectors, it's still got a lot to go before running out of sectors. If it has 50 spare, it's definitely close.

The clicking drives definitely means some shock. And while the other drives don't show any issues now, it doesn't mean that their life wasn't somehow shortened by the shocks.
 

Tcalp

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Oct 15, 2020
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That style of packaging leaves a lot to be desired since any drop will cause drives to bang against each other like dominos. If they're not immobile in those slots and cushioned on each end, that's not proper packaging imo.
Oh for sure, that cardboard cell is meant to have a foam liner or a really wonky laser cut cardboard (IBM was using the cardboard last I saw) on each side to keep the cardboard cells / drives in place. Without that it's a pretty useless divider, and shouldn't be shipped that way.
 

Tcalp

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The single drive was packed with a thin brown envelope whilst the other 2 was in a box that was truly banged up. All 3 drive packing boxes had some kind of damage to them. I am going to test the drives before I shuck, but I was not very impressed at all.
I've seen a good number of amazon boxes show up far worse. Though I wouldn't worry too much, new hard drives in full park can take an exceptional amount of gforce without issue. They are designed to be thrown around by shipping companies.
 
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