Seagate 5TB 2.5" external drive - 95$ [costco]

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canta

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Nov 26, 2014
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running zfs on linux 1.8 RC2 for 4 drives with raidz1 for testing and rsync my backup to test the speed

Total DISK READ : 120.71 M/s | Total DISK WRITE : 60.36 M/s
Actual DISK READ: 60.36 M/s | Actual DISK WRITE: 63.42 M/s
TID PRIO USER DISK READ DISK WRITE SWAPIN IO> COMMAND
13029 be/4 root 0.00 B/s 0.00 B/s 0.00 % 43.02 % [txg_sync]
19792 be/4 root 60.36 M/s 0.00 B/s 0.00 % 20.00 % mount.ntfs /dev/sdf1 /mnt/ntfs -o rw
12634 be/4 root 60.36 M/s 0.00 B/s 0.00 % 10.31 % rsync -avhe -v --info=progress2 /mnt/ntfs /tank
12636 be/4 root 0.00 B/s 60.36 M/s 0.00 % 0.00 % rsync -avhe -v --info=progress2 /mnt/ntfs /tank

the writing speed is 55M/s to 90 M/s... it shoot 130M/s for less than 8s at the begining.
reading raidz1 to /dev/null can achieve 130M/s...

the backup source is SSD on USB3, I know can peak more than 130M/s when reading.

this is from cockpit:
upload_2018-12-21_9-53-13.png


5T SMR seagate seems ok-ish,
 
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Stereodude

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Feb 21, 2016
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I bought one of these drives from Costco's website before the sale ended. Received it today. As expected it writes >100MB/sec sustained (10's of minutes+). If they're SMR Seagate certainly figured out how to make them perform like PMR drives.
 
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Markess

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May 19, 2018
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Can someone who has these shucked post their drive model number(s)? Could be that Seagate uses more than one model in these? I picked up the 4GB a couple weeks ago and the drive inside was a ST4000LM024, which is PMR according to Seagate's documentation ( https://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/seagate-laptop-fam/barracuda_25/en-us/docs/100804767c.pdf ). If the 5TB are from the same family (the 5TB is ST5000LM000), then it should be PMR as well.

I can't speak to performance, I've got mine storing unattended backups, but it seems to be working so far.
 
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Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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I had 10 of these running in a Supermicro SC216 24/7 for about 6 months and then 2 of them failed back to back. Now I only run the server on an as needed basis. Seems they are not suitable for 24/7.
 

Aquatechie

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Oct 29, 2015
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I had 10 of these running in a Supermicro SC216 24/7 for about 6 months and then 2 of them failed back to back.
Were your failed drives 4TB or or 5TB models?
Not that I think either makes a difference in suitability for 24/7 operation...
 
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Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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Were your failed drives 4TB or or 5TB models?
Not that I think either makes a difference in suitability for 24/7 operation...
by all accounts it used to make a difference, the 4tb has high failure rates and the 5tb has much lower failure rates and better performance. (4tb behaves more like SMR compared to 5tb drives)

I say used to as that was a year+ ago, today I have not seen any comments really.
 
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Markess

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May 19, 2018
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I had 10 of these running in a Supermicro SC216 24/7 for about 6 months and then 2 of them failed back to back. Now I only run the server on an as needed basis. Seems they are not suitable for 24/7.
Thanks for this. Mine is in an Atom box that comes up daily to backup home PCs and then goes down again. I'd considered pulling it and moving the disk and process to one of the (almost) always on machines as a VM. Now I think I'll just keep it the way it is!
 
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poots

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Jul 12, 2018
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I have 10 of these in a striped raidz1 array, ask me anything. Been pretty happy with them so far.



 
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arnbju

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Mar 13, 2013
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I had 10 of these running in a Supermicro SC216 24/7 for about 6 months and then 2 of them failed back to back. Now I only run the server on an as needed basis. Seems they are not suitable for 24/7.
I have 6 4TB drives in a 846 using adapters running 24/7 for 1,5 years. No failures so far
 
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Savant

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Mar 15, 2017
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I've ran 6x 4tb in a mirrored zfs for the last 3y or so only experiencing one failure. I had a spare on hand and the array was back up to full performance the next morning. I honestly didn't notice a performance hit in my usage.

My array usage is primary backup destination and media storage with an occasional VM for testing. I've never been unable to sustain full 1gb throughput (112-114MB) from it. When replicating the ZFS set to a connected disk shelf of 15x2tb 7200rpm in a 3xraidz2 it usually sustains ~314MB.

I have been overly impressed with the performance for what the disks are. If the 5tb are any better at all I'd like to pick up some myself.
 
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Samir

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Jul 21, 2017
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I had 10 of these running in a Supermicro SC216 24/7 for about 6 months and then 2 of them failed back to back. Now I only run the server on an as needed basis. Seems they are not suitable for 24/7.
This is why I never try to do this shucking stuff or run consumer drives in enterprise applications. It's just too much hassle for the price difference (although that is changing as of late as I have 2x of the 10TB easystores for off-site backups).
 

canta

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Nov 26, 2014
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They were the 5TB. I think the spindle motor failed in both.
Kind of late the last train

are you disabling apm by setting to >250?
Mine is ok running on 6 drives in lianli q25.
Compact mini itx case.
The drive loves to stop the motor and parking the head 10 seconds in idle.

i am running zol on the top of centos7.5
 
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Bert

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Mar 31, 2018
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I am considering getting one of these drives. I am planning to shuck them and use these drives 24/7 low rate of read/write operations such as active file server and NVR storage. Data durability is not important but reliability of these drives are concerning. There are several comments indicating how these drives fail so quickly even under moderate backup/restore scenario on costco web site. I wonder how forum members feel about them now.

By the way, it is kind of concerning after 2 years, the price of these drives are pretty much same. I am not even observing prices drops on regular SAS drives although 8TBs should be getting decommissioned nowadays.
 
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Bert

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Has anyone successfully run them over a year period of time 24/7? I was complaining about high prices now these are the cheapest drives on the market :)

Has there been consensus on these are not being SMR drives? I read multiple reports on this forum.

Btw, these drives are still $89 in costco, and probably the last drives left under $20/TB with reasonable size/power usage.
 
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