8 Tb drive

[Humanzee]

http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/12/s...ed-hard-drive/ so seagate has a new 8tb drive, and im about to rebuild my server. This drive is kinda slow however, and only has a 150MB/s read speed. I don't really know my read write requirements, does anybody have a comment about this drive for use as a recording directory, or should it only be used for something like movie storage. ?

[MattHelm]

That's as fast as most HDs these days (real word vs. testing software). They were comparing it to a SSD when they said it was slow.

It looks like you have 3 turners and 2 clients, so I'd (personally) want at least 2 recording drives anyway.

Do you run Comskip or something like it?

Not sure if I like the sound of the SMR tech.

[Humanzee]

actually those specs are way out of date, i have been lurking for years. I have a ceton 4 tuner that does most of the heavy lifting and a hdhomerun that gets a few over the air things. I might be ditching cable, so the tuner count may drop. I just don't want to be guessing if any hickups in the stream are because of a HDD bottleneck. My current server is 7 years old, and im running some 2tb wd green drives. If this new is at least as fast as those older ones, I should probably be ok, no?

Yes I run comskip, and sometimes mpg2repair.

[KryptoNyte]

I'm currently recording 6 HD tuners simultaneously to an old Western Digital Green (3TB) drive without issue. I don't have much faith in the WD Green drive longevity, but it writes at about 80 megabytes per second (max), so as long as that Seagate drive has a decent write speed, I would think you'll be okay.

If you were recording on 6 tuners, and watching on 4 or 5 extenders at the same time, I suppose things could get dicey.

That SMR tech better be darn reliable if they are selling those drives as "archive" drives.

[stanger89]

Personally, I'd want a 7200RPM drive, maybe a couple, for recording, especially with a slew of tuners going.

[Tiki]

I saw the articles about the new Seagate SMR drives and was sort of surprised by the fact that they characterized them as slow, but then listed speeds that sound similar to most other HDDs. Even Seagate refers to them as "archival storage".

My suspicion is that while the sequential performance is similar to typical 3TB and 4TB drives, the random read/write performance may not be as good (I haven't seen data on that - just speculating). For real-time multimedia recording and playback of several simultaneous streams (recording from multiple tuners and playing back on multiple clients), I think the random performance will be more important than the sequential performance.

My bigger concern is with reliability. SMR technology is very new and Seagate is the only manufacturer currently using it. I have found Seagate hard drives to be terribly unreliable over the last few years. Every Seagate Barracuda 2TB or 3TB hard drive I've ever bought has failed after less than 3 years of use (I've had 3 fail in the past 18 months). Of the dozens of hard drives I've used over the last 20 years, I've only ever had one other failure (a WD Red drive that was DOA when I received it). I usually keep a drive for 3-7 years before I run low on space and swap it out for something newer and bigger. I've used drives from Samsung, Hitachi, Toshiba, Intel, Western Digital, and HGST without problems. I suspect the problem with Seagate is related to their overly-aggressive head parking algorithm used to save energy (it also tends to make them noisy).

Anyway, 8TB of data is a lot to lose if a drive dies on you. Some sort of RAID would probably be a good idea with drives this big. Of course RAID performance is even more dependent on random read/write speed. So, I'm not sure I'd jump at using these drives for Sage.

[BobPhoenix]

What I've read on other forums is that the WRITE speeds are why they are listed as slow. What I read: "...when writing a sector they have to write the overlapping sectors as well...". That would mean a write would involve multiple sectors but a read would not.

Found the exact quote I was looking for:
"...slower due to the re-writing that's needed on overlapping tracks." By someone I trust to know on the unRAID forums.

[Humanzee]

I think I am hearing you Tiki. It was just so appealing to be able to swap 4 drives in my system for 1, the 4 TB I run for recording drives today holds way more TV than we actually watch, however, they are full, now that we are recording umpteen episodes of Mickey mouse play house everyday. Ha!

I should probably build a NAS anyway and backup all the things we want to keep between the server and the NAS. Keep recording local and on faster drives.

The archive setting in Sage, it just keeps things from being deleted correct? or is there a plugin that might move those recordings to another volume. Just wondering.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by Humanzee

The archive setting in Sage, it just keeps things from being deleted correct? or is there a plugin that might move those recordings to another volume. Just wondering.

Correct. SJQ would be an option to move the recordings to another archive volume. I've seen posts by others that use it. Personally I just do it manually whenever my recording drives fill up.

[KryptoNyte]

Now, I've had exactly the opposite experience as Tiki, with maybe a few more than 20 drives. I've had every other drive type fail, but never a Seagate (there are 5 Seagates in the bunch).

In fact, I purchased (3) 2TB Western Digital Green drives in the past 8 years, and all three have failed. I mailed them all back to WD, and they returned (3) 3TB Green drives. I immediately disabled the head parking on all three, and (1) of them has now failed in a remote system in less than (2) years.

I have a feeling that all spindle hard drive technology is roughly equivalent at any particular price point. That's the part that worries me - 8TB for $260. I think I'll let them simmer for a year or two in someone else's home and see how the reviews pan out.

[MattHelm]

I have 8 (6 1TB and 2 1.5TB) WD green drives in 2 SageTV servers, and most are over 5 years old, and not a single failure.

Dad's (1/2 of them) record about 2-3 shows each a weekday, and sometimes 5 each a day on the weekend (some shows on the weekend are 3+ hours). (yes, 40+ shows on the weekend, I've created a recording monster!!!)

I have had failures on almost every make of HD, so I won't say one is better. I do like WD's warranty system, at least for new DOA drives. (replacement takes about 2 or 3 days, max.)

[KryptoNyte]

Matt, it took me 2 to 3 weeks to get my (3) green drives swapped out under warranty. How did you come to the conclusion that it only takes a few days?

I can't find any real trend out in the wild that says one is better than the other, either. Even the WD black and red drives don't seem to show any special longevity as time passes.

[MattHelm]

Warranty:
Put the serial number in their system.
Set a claim.
You then get a RMA(?) by email.
Add CC to their system.
Send drive, and they will ship them at the same time.
If drive isn't dead, they will change something.
If isn't they cancel the pending.

I know the 1 RED I had DOA, was shipped the day after (submitted the claim LATE at night) and received either 2 or 3 days after. They cancelled the CC pending charge about 10 days after the claim. I paid zero, as they sent a shipping sticker for UPS. Hardest thing I had to do, was read that super small Serial number on the drive. (ending up taking a digital picture and zooming in)

[KryptoNyte]

I don't recall seeing that as an option, but good to know for future reference. I doubt that I ever gave them a credit card number.

[Skirge01]

I almost posted this earlier and deleted it, but since the thread is still going on, I'll throw it out there. While it's not scientific, it does work for the most part. If you're deciding between a drive that is $99 or $300 (or, any drive which is 3x the price of another), here's how I look at it:

I began moving to more expensive drives, but I realized that Backblaze had a point about the ROI of those. A year or so ago, I was deciding between a $99 (Seagate) or nearly $300 (WD Enterpise) for a 3TB drive. The annual cost breakdown worked out as follows:

1 year = $99 vs $300
2 years = $50 vs $150
3 years = $33 vs $100
4 years = $25 (warranty expired) vs $75
5 years = $20 vs $60
6 years = $16 vs $50 (warranty expired)

At the 3 year mark, I can already buy a brand new $99 drive for the current value of the $300 drive. By the time the warranty expires on the more expensive drive, I could buy 2 of the cheaper drives for the current value of the expensive drive. Obviously, the prices could also drop over these years and that needs to be considered.

Bottom line is that I realized that a drive at 3x the cost of the cheapest one is not worth the money.