White label 4TB

[Chuckleb]

I have around 150 of the WL drives from a couple years back and they are still running strong, no failures. I was one of the first to buy them on the boards here and the GoHardDrive folks were pretty honest. It's been a couple years so things may change. I know one big batch came in from their shop with all poor firmwares and they were honest and didn't want to sell them to be. We were going to buy another 200 or so but they couldn't get enough.

We switched out to Seagate 4TB NAS and then now are on 6TB Hitachi NAS. Great for LSI cards, they don't drop out.

 

[nephri]

6Tb Hitachi are very smart but buying 8 of them for a "36Tb raidz2 vdev" are very expensive.... i'm so sad !!!

 

[andrewbedia]

I have around 150 of the WL drives from a couple years back and they are still running strong, no failures. I was one of the first to buy them on the boards here and the GoHardDrive folks were pretty honest. It's been a couple years so things may change. I know one big batch came in from their shop with all poor firmwares and they were honest and didn't want to sell them to be. We were going to buy another 200 or so but they couldn't get enough.

We switched out to Seagate 4TB NAS and then now are on 6TB Hitachi NAS. Great for LSI cards, they don't drop out.

I have to agree. I've bought various WL drives from them and the one time I did have a problem with a drive, they fixed me up without me having to spend any money.

 

[Boddy]

I have a 12 G/bs raid card sitting about. I recognise there is a price premium for 12 G/bs drives.

But do you think that these 6 TB SAS models from Seagate for around $300 are a worthwhile investment?
How durable are Seagate drives or am I best going for another brand?

SEAGATE ST6000NM0034 6TB 7200RPM SAS 12Gb/s 3.5" ENTERPRISE HARD DRIVE

*NEW 5-YEAR WARRANTY* Seagate ST6000NM0034 3.5" 6TB SAS 12Gb/s 7.2K RPM 128M HDD

Seagate ST6000NM0014 6TB 7200 RPM 128MB Cache SAS 12Gb/s 3.5" Enterprise Hard Dr

Cheers

 

[Chuckleb]

Provantage has then fit $282. They are interesting, I should compare these to the HGST 6TB that I am using. I wonder what the major differences are other than obvious SAS/SATA and 6gbps vs 12gbps

 

[T_Minus]

What possible benefit could 12 have vs 6 on a spinning disk??? Sounds like marketing mumbo jumbo to me.

 

[Chuckleb]

Potentially access off the cache? That spec doesn't really concern me much. What I am really interested in is the enterprise vs NAS comparison if they are same cost and other details. Plus warranty.

 

[Boddy]

Just as a simple comparison:
$125 WL 4TB drive = $31.25 per TB
$282 Seagate 6TB drive = $47 per TB

 

[Chuckleb]

You should factor things like drive density (less drives to fail, power, slots) and age of drive. The ones you buy will be new vs unknown. Though if you so party, 2x extra 6TB drives hurt more than 2x 4TB drives - cashwise.

 

[Boddy]

What possible benefit could 12 have vs 6 on a spinning disk??? Sounds like marketing mumbo jumbo to me.

Glancing at Storage Review's article, perhaps maybe only a slight advantage in certain scenarios and no or less advantage compared to other HDDs in other scenarios. Seems real life comparison is not as simple as 12 vs 6.

Bummer, as I would have hoped to get twice the output with 12 vs 6, but it seems not the case at this stage.
But I guess there is the mechanical aspect of a HDD holding it back?
Especially with 6 TB the disk speed is only 7200 RPM, I guessing to minimise overheating?

This leads me to the question:
How reliable are SSDs to store databases, etc and would only a SSD hit 12 Gb/s threshold?

The label on Seagate's drive on Amazon site does look rather gimmicky and not what I would expect for an enterprise drive. But I guess one should not judge a book by it's cover. (This could be just a Photoshop marketing exercise?)

Cheers

 

[Boddy]

You should factor things like drive density (less drives to fail, power, slots) and age of drive. The ones you buy will be new vs unknown. Though if you so party, 2x extra 6TB drives hurt more than 2x 4TB drives - cashwise.

True. But there is also heat factor with 6Tb drives to consider. I read that HGST has resorted to using helium to keeping their drives cool, where Seagate is more conventional design.
(PS. Did you get my PM from last week?)
Cheers

 

[Chuckleb]

I find that the HGST drives are really cool overall, perhaps moreso than my WD drives or Seagates. I don't think that helium is necessarily used for cooling, I think it was originally designed for performance reasons. The control of the air inside the drive allowed them to pack more platters in I think was the reason.

 

[pricklypunter]

The Helium isn't used for cooling the disk. Helium is approximately 7 times less dense than air, therfore in a Helium atmosphere the platters and heads have much less resistance to movement. It's purely a clever mechanical performance enhancement.