While I am greatly appreciative of any new content from Anandtech I've lost interest in hard disk drives. I can fit all of my data, including video on a 2 or 4TB SSD, which are now pretty affordable and becoming more so every day.
Not true. Modern HDDs have a duty cycle rating that IMO is absurdly low. Example: Western Digital Gold 22TB has a duty cycle of 550TB/year. That's 25 drive writes per year, which is worse than even a QLC SSD.
Year after year people make these claims. And yet year after year I sit with a bunch of old drives (some HD, some SSD) with sizes like 250GB or 1TB, ganged together via an Apple RAID JBOD to form a tertiary backup drive, just wishing they all would die so I could guiltlessly throw them away. All older than ten years, some almost as old as twenty years. (As for newer drives, I have 5TB, 8TB, 12TB, 16TB. All still going just fine. NORMAL use cases...)
Yes, drives die, and they die unexpectedly, both SSD and HD. BUT under normal usage by the time they're ready to die, the state of the art has moved on so much you usually just do not care. Obsessing about "will it die soon" is just about the dumbest way to approach buying a drive, for normal people's normal use cases.
For a price. My friend's IT department at work just forked over $18,000 to get data pulled from an SSD. The most I ever heard for a single hard disk was $3,000. In fact I'd never even hard of anything close to $18k for entire RAID arrays.
It's incredibly complex, especially because of the way modern SSD's are self encrypting so if the failure is in the controller (which is more common than you think) it's pretty insane to imagine how they brute force their way through data reconstruction.
AT has no business recommending anything these days, especially hard drives, since they haven't done any amount of testing. There is literally not even benchmark data to support a recommendation so a whole pile of salt grains are needed when reading one of their "best x, y, or z" articles.
Yeah, I don't entirely trust numbers in data sheets, particularly for noise. Some rotating devices have bearings go bad, even early in their life, and this can add a number of dB. Also I would be skeptical of power consumption numbers for quite a few reasons, mainly workload dependence. It is legendary in the "green building" space that people spend a lot on a building upgrade that is supposed to lower energy bills and the savings are not what people expected -- predicting how energy consumption is affected by weather, workload and all that is still cutting edge stuff.
I have two of the Seagate Exos Enterprise installed in a Tower PC in RAID-Z configuration. These are not terribly loud compared to the case fans and other stuff. When the drives boot up they make a satisfying and throaty sound that makes me think of a sports car but I find them very easy to live with.
The fact is that Enterprise HDD's are a mainstream product that ship in very high numbers, but you can't get a 14TB drive off the shelf at Best Buy because not many people want them. I just built a "gaming PC" and it is all NVMe. The more consumer oriented parts are produced in small numbers and less cost effective, a problem which I think is compounded with there being too many specialized SKUs... I am very worried about the vendor not doing good QA on the firmware for a drive which is specialized in "7 to 8 drive NAS units storing 50% AAC music files and 50% JPEG XL images, only used from Tuesday to Thursday" which is what some of these HDDs seem to be coming to.
As for anandtech it is sad that they run this article every month and never do any testing but you know, the web is in bad shape today. It is all about having layout shifts that make people accidentally click on ads when they are trying to click on a link, I mean otherwise they wouldn't get any money from ads, particularly on a site with tech saavy readers. In that environment the content really falls by the wayside.
Even if you can fit all your data on your SSD, my browser (cache?) causes about 100GB of writes to my SSD per day. I ended up moving the whole browser directory back onto an HDD.
Firefox has a config option which allows you to force the cache to RAM only, preventing web browsing from generating SSD write activity. It does wipe your cookies and other garbage each time you close the browser, but that isn't always a bad idea since it also eliminates a lot of advertiser tracking. I'm not sure if that's available in Chrome though, but given the class action lawsuits against Google for collecting data even if you explicitly tell Chrome and Google not to do so, I wouldn't touch that browser unless it was under Microsoft's rip of the Chromium source which means Edge...kinda yuck also, but eh, better than letting Google molest you through your browser, I suppose.
My 500GB SSD has 47300GB writes, and it's still 95% good, according to crytaldiskinfo. Assuming I write 100GB/day to it, at this rate, it'll take another what... 10 years? before it even hits 60%
Hard drive manufacturers could use some tough love. Things are reversed from how they used to be.
The Enterprise Exos is a Chevy, it's a product that is economical because it is produced in large numbers. Those other drives are Cadillacs, but not in a good way. (More in the "blow your head gaskets at 17,000 miles" way) Hardly any consumers demand large hard drives, and those who feel uncomfortable putting an enterprise parts in their CD are paying handsomely for the privilege.
Hard drive manufacturers are making it worse by offering way too many SKUs. Best Buy might stock large hard drives if the manufacturers could settle on one SKU, but with so many twisty little drives that all look alike, retailers just say "no thanks, let's let Amazon have these sales."
If we were talking audiophiles than marketing like "My life wouldn't be meaningful if I didn't have NAS drives for betweeen 15 and 18 drive bays in my 17 drive bay NAS" but PC enthusiasts aren't like that, in fact they're just going to assume that special drives for video surveillance are a scam, even if they're not.
Don't be afraid of the Exos. I have two of them spinning in the next room, they are not especially loud compared to the case and power supply fans in my machine. You will by no means save enough energy with a higher-profit drive to pay the exorbitant price. There is no way you are saving the Earth with the expensive drive either because the CEO is just going to buy another corporate jet with the profits.
A couple years ago WD tried to get rid of some redundant HD brands. Then they brought them back, so sales must have suffered.
Best Buy does sell large HDs, up to 20TB, but naturally in a consumer friendly package (external USB). If you want a bare drive just remove it from the package.
The toshiba enterprise drives are the best choice imo. Essentially priced similar, or cheaper, than the consumer WD/seagate drives. I'm happy with mine. I also like rooting for the underdog.
I reckon most people are buying ordinary Seagate Barrucudas and WD Blues. Not saying those are recommended but they are common and cheap. Really, can most people afford a Gold? Even a Red is costlier than the Blue. At the end of the day, cost wins. Last year, I bought a 4 TB Blue, the WD40EZAZ, and while I was sceptical of SMR, it works well and is fast. Space-wise, it's divine. How long it will last, I don't know but am hoping for the best.
People on the tech sites really seem to hate on the SMR drives but if you are going with a hard drive you've already decided performance isn't the top priority otherwise you'd be using an SSD. A SMR HD really isn't bad as long as you are avoiding it's worst case scenarios and can be noticeably cheaper. I picked up a WD Blue of the same model too and for $50 it's a really good 4tb hd. I've got no complaints about it. I suppose a non-SMR drive would have been faster initially cloning the data over from my old drive but I just let it run overnight and it was fine. Haven't noticed any slowness with it in day to day use.
I've had the same experience. No complaints and it works fast for the most part. Only on rare occasions when the SMR trimming or garbage collection coincides with writing does it slow a bit. But rare because usually Windows does that when idle. All in all, great drive.
I am greatly dissapointed that 2.5" drives are currently handicapped at 5TB.
I use two of them in a ZFS mirror and they work great. Even if they are SMR drives (they are) - over WiFi I get about 11-12MB/s speed while the 2.5" SMR drives are able to sustain about 25-35MB/s - which is still 3 times more then I need.
I really look forward 8TB 2.5" HDD capacities.
One can of course buy 8TB SSD ... but its just one order of magnitude more expensive ...
Agreed, it would be so nice if we could build a NAS using just 2.5" drives. Maybe upgrade it to SSDs, should SSD capacity ever increase enough (currently not hold my breath for that).
I couldn't agree more. It's odd there has been a 5TB wall for 2.5" drives (and at 15mm height no less) for a solid decade with no momentum. With modern platter densities there should easily be 8TB 2.5" drives that aren't even SMR. These kinds of drives are ideal for compact applications like DVR's, HTPC's, micro-workstations, and obviously portable drives.
Current 5TB 2.5" USB 3.0 drives have 75MB/sec write speeds after the NAND cache (1GB it seems) is full.
What is really weird that with me (Netherlands), the Toshiba MG09 is actually the cheapest HDD per GB... go figure (and I have an MG08 and MG09 running, they're not even louder than consumer HDD imo).
Toshiba's regularly go on sale for CHEAP here in the USA. They're totally worth it when they undercut the competition (the X300 has been reliable in my applications for Blue Iris DVRs) but they aren't attractive at all when comparably priced to a WD Red Plus or a Seagate Skyhawk.
I have 5 of the 18Gib Exos drives in a TrueNAS Core tower cabinet and it's right by me. It does warm up a bit but isn't terrible. Not very loud at all! The 12s, which I have 4 of, are in an old Netgear NAS and they work very well.
But as to *Warranties*...
EVERY time I get drives, from Amazon, Newegg, B&H, etc, I check the serials even before I open the individual packages.
I cannot tell you how many drives I've sent back when, after the advert says, "5 Year Warranty", the drives come back from the Seagate Serial check as w/o Seagate warranty.
Both Amazon and B&H have had returned drives from me. Annoying. And checking in with the vendors doesn't always yield results. I DO make them pay for my irritation when they dissemble on the warranty. Even B&H, a reasonably reputable firm had to pull their entire stock when HALF of my drives were without warranty. They took them back of course, but they were not happy that their stock wasn't legit. It took weeks for me to get clear of that.
There was one vendor from Amazon that had Seagate warrantied drives (never had fault with them, I think they were HyperHawk ) but I couldn't find them as of 2022-11-6. So maybe they went poof. Amazon seems to rotate through vendors...
Yeah it's a shame suppliers make it so difficult. It's one of the reasons I buy boxed retail. Costs more but a better chance at having a warranty. Plus better protected in shipping.
I often find mfrs themselves sell products at, or close to, prices Amazon advertises. Shipping may be extra, but I've never lost sleep over "is it genuine"?
- Why don't you mention WD Black? - Seagate BarraCuda Pro has been discontinued 14 months ago. No official replacement has been announced, - What about Seagate FireCuda 8 TB (ST8000DX001). It's 3,5 SATA, 7200rpm, CMR and non-raid. Could this be a replacement for Barracuda Pro? If not, why not? - Exos is listed as a suggestion for "high-capacity desktop". Why? I always thought that Exos is optimized for RAID use.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
44 Comments
Back to Article
Hulk - Friday, November 4, 2022 - link
While I am greatly appreciative of any new content from Anandtech I've lost interest in hard disk drives. I can fit all of my data, including video on a 2 or 4TB SSD, which are now pretty affordable and becoming more so every day.Samus - Friday, November 4, 2022 - link
That's cool but some of us seed out 42TB of pr0n, finna need dem drivesThreska - Friday, November 4, 2022 - link
Plus HDD doesn't have the whole "number of writes" that flash is saddled with.The Von Matrices - Friday, November 4, 2022 - link
Not true. Modern HDDs have a duty cycle rating that IMO is absurdly low. Example: Western Digital Gold 22TB has a duty cycle of 550TB/year. That's 25 drive writes per year, which is worse than even a QLC SSD.name99 - Friday, November 4, 2022 - link
Year after year people make these claims.And yet year after year I sit with a bunch of old drives (some HD, some SSD) with sizes like 250GB or 1TB, ganged together via an Apple RAID JBOD to form a tertiary backup drive, just wishing they all would die so I could guiltlessly throw them away. All older than ten years, some almost as old as twenty years.
(As for newer drives, I have 5TB, 8TB, 12TB, 16TB. All still going just fine. NORMAL use cases...)
Yes, drives die, and they die unexpectedly, both SSD and HD. BUT under normal usage by the time they're ready to die, the state of the art has moved on so much you usually just do not care. Obsessing about "will it die soon" is just about the dumbest way to approach buying a drive, for normal people's normal use cases.
Mars999 - Saturday, December 31, 2022 - link
dittoinighthawki - Saturday, November 5, 2022 - link
"Absurdly low"? That's 1.5TB of writes per day, every day, for a full year. That's an insane amount of data.Dante Verizon - Sunday, November 6, 2022 - link
If an SSD dies you lose everything. If an HDD fails, you have very high chances of recovering contentThreska - Sunday, November 6, 2022 - link
A recovery service could handle both.Samus - Tuesday, November 8, 2022 - link
For a price. My friend's IT department at work just forked over $18,000 to get data pulled from an SSD. The most I ever heard for a single hard disk was $3,000. In fact I'd never even hard of anything close to $18k for entire RAID arrays.It's incredibly complex, especially because of the way modern SSD's are self encrypting so if the failure is in the controller (which is more common than you think) it's pretty insane to imagine how they brute force their way through data reconstruction.
Dug - Monday, November 21, 2022 - link
After spending $18k, they will probably think more about redundancy and backups.boozed - Saturday, November 5, 2022 - link
AT recommending nearly the largest drives available to "consumers" is basically a meme at this point.PeachNCream - Saturday, November 5, 2022 - link
AT has no business recommending anything these days, especially hard drives, since they haven't done any amount of testing. There is literally not even benchmark data to support a recommendation so a whole pile of salt grains are needed when reading one of their "best x, y, or z" articles.PaulHoule - Thursday, February 2, 2023 - link
Yeah, I don't entirely trust numbers in data sheets, particularly for noise. Some rotating devices have bearings go bad, even early in their life, and this can add a number of dB. Also I would be skeptical of power consumption numbers for quite a few reasons, mainly workload dependence. It is legendary in the "green building" space that people spend a lot on a building upgrade that is supposed to lower energy bills and the savings are not what people expected -- predicting how energy consumption is affected by weather, workload and all that is still cutting edge stuff.I have two of the Seagate Exos Enterprise installed in a Tower PC in RAID-Z configuration. These are not terribly loud compared to the case fans and other stuff. When the drives boot up they make a satisfying and throaty sound that makes me think of a sports car but I find them very easy to live with.
The fact is that Enterprise HDD's are a mainstream product that ship in very high numbers, but you can't get a 14TB drive off the shelf at Best Buy because not many people want them. I just built a "gaming PC" and it is all NVMe. The more consumer oriented parts are produced in small numbers and less cost effective, a problem which I think is compounded with there being too many specialized SKUs... I am very worried about the vendor not doing good QA on the firmware for a drive which is specialized in "7 to 8 drive NAS units storing 50% AAC music files and 50% JPEG XL images, only used from Tuesday to Thursday" which is what some of these HDDs seem to be coming to.
As for anandtech it is sad that they run this article every month and never do any testing but you know, the web is in bad shape today. It is all about having layout shifts that make people accidentally click on ads when they are trying to click on a link, I mean otherwise they wouldn't get any money from ads, particularly on a site with tech saavy readers. In that environment the content really falls by the wayside.
ads295 - Monday, November 7, 2022 - link
+1I thought I was the only one who wanted 4TB drives.
Samus - Tuesday, November 8, 2022 - link
I'm still buying WD Blacks which they don't even mention. They seem to top out at 8TB but are insanely fast and reliable.catavalon21 - Tuesday, December 27, 2022 - link
My thought exactly.ballsystemlord - Saturday, November 5, 2022 - link
Even if you can fit all your data on your SSD, my browser (cache?) causes about 100GB of writes to my SSD per day. I ended up moving the whole browser directory back onto an HDD.PeachNCream - Saturday, November 5, 2022 - link
Firefox has a config option which allows you to force the cache to RAM only, preventing web browsing from generating SSD write activity. It does wipe your cookies and other garbage each time you close the browser, but that isn't always a bad idea since it also eliminates a lot of advertiser tracking. I'm not sure if that's available in Chrome though, but given the class action lawsuits against Google for collecting data even if you explicitly tell Chrome and Google not to do so, I wouldn't touch that browser unless it was under Microsoft's rip of the Chromium source which means Edge...kinda yuck also, but eh, better than letting Google molest you through your browser, I suppose.ballsystemlord - Saturday, November 5, 2022 - link
Thanks!meacupla - Saturday, November 5, 2022 - link
My 500GB SSD has 47300GB writes, and it's still 95% good, according to crytaldiskinfo.Assuming I write 100GB/day to it, at this rate, it'll take another what... 10 years? before it even hits 60%
ballsystemlord - Saturday, November 5, 2022 - link
That would mean that it has a lifetime of 1000TBW. Using the same projections, my SSD has a lifetime of 250TBW.Leeea - Sunday, November 6, 2022 - link
FileHistory backup on a HDD is pretty nice.No replacement for real backups, but so convenient for its versioning.
PaulHoule - Friday, November 4, 2022 - link
Hard drive manufacturers could use some tough love. Things are reversed from how they used to be.The Enterprise Exos is a Chevy, it's a product that is economical because it is produced in large numbers. Those other drives are Cadillacs, but not in a good way. (More in the "blow your head gaskets at 17,000 miles" way) Hardly any consumers demand large hard drives, and those who feel uncomfortable putting an enterprise parts in their CD are paying handsomely for the privilege.
Hard drive manufacturers are making it worse by offering way too many SKUs. Best Buy might stock large hard drives if the manufacturers could settle on one SKU, but with so many twisty little drives that all look alike, retailers just say "no thanks, let's let Amazon have these sales."
If we were talking audiophiles than marketing like "My life wouldn't be meaningful if I didn't have NAS drives for betweeen 15 and 18 drive bays in my 17 drive bay NAS" but PC enthusiasts aren't like that, in fact they're just going to assume that special drives for video surveillance are a scam, even if they're not.
Don't be afraid of the Exos. I have two of them spinning in the next room, they are not especially loud compared to the case and power supply fans in my machine. You will by no means save enough energy with a higher-profit drive to pay the exorbitant price. There is no way you are saving the Earth with the expensive drive either because the CEO is just going to buy another corporate jet with the profits.
cbm80 - Friday, November 4, 2022 - link
A couple years ago WD tried to get rid of some redundant HD brands. Then they brought them back, so sales must have suffered.Best Buy does sell large HDs, up to 20TB, but naturally in a consumer friendly package (external USB). If you want a bare drive just remove it from the package.
Soulkeeper - Friday, November 4, 2022 - link
The toshiba enterprise drives are the best choice imo.Essentially priced similar, or cheaper, than the consumer WD/seagate drives.
I'm happy with mine.
I also like rooting for the underdog.
GeoffreyA - Saturday, November 5, 2022 - link
I reckon most people are buying ordinary Seagate Barrucudas and WD Blues. Not saying those are recommended but they are common and cheap. Really, can most people afford a Gold? Even a Red is costlier than the Blue. At the end of the day, cost wins. Last year, I bought a 4 TB Blue, the WD40EZAZ, and while I was sceptical of SMR, it works well and is fast. Space-wise, it's divine. How long it will last, I don't know but am hoping for the best.kpb321 - Saturday, November 5, 2022 - link
People on the tech sites really seem to hate on the SMR drives but if you are going with a hard drive you've already decided performance isn't the top priority otherwise you'd be using an SSD. A SMR HD really isn't bad as long as you are avoiding it's worst case scenarios and can be noticeably cheaper. I picked up a WD Blue of the same model too and for $50 it's a really good 4tb hd. I've got no complaints about it. I suppose a non-SMR drive would have been faster initially cloning the data over from my old drive but I just let it run overnight and it was fine. Haven't noticed any slowness with it in day to day use.GeoffreyA - Sunday, November 6, 2022 - link
I've had the same experience. No complaints and it works fast for the most part. Only on rare occasions when the SMR trimming or garbage collection coincides with writing does it slow a bit. But rare because usually Windows does that when idle. All in all, great drive.ballsystemlord - Saturday, November 5, 2022 - link
@Ganesh Toshiba has a cheaper 18TB HDD. You did not list it $298: https://www.newegg.com/toshiba-mg09aca18te-18tb/p/...The Von Matrices - Saturday, November 5, 2022 - link
That HDD is sold by a third-party seller, not Newegg itself.ballsystemlord - Saturday, November 5, 2022 - link
So it doesn't count??Leeea - Sunday, November 6, 2022 - link
It doesn't count.vermaden - Saturday, November 5, 2022 - link
I am greatly dissapointed that 2.5" drives are currently handicapped at 5TB.I use two of them in a ZFS mirror and they work great. Even if they are SMR drives (they are) - over WiFi I get about 11-12MB/s speed while the 2.5" SMR drives are able to sustain about 25-35MB/s - which is still 3 times more then I need.
I really look forward 8TB 2.5" HDD capacities.
One can of course buy 8TB SSD ... but its just one order of magnitude more expensive ...
Regards.
bug77 - Saturday, November 5, 2022 - link
Agreed, it would be so nice if we could build a NAS using just 2.5" drives. Maybe upgrade it to SSDs, should SSD capacity ever increase enough (currently not hold my breath for that).Samus - Tuesday, November 8, 2022 - link
I couldn't agree more. It's odd there has been a 5TB wall for 2.5" drives (and at 15mm height no less) for a solid decade with no momentum. With modern platter densities there should easily be 8TB 2.5" drives that aren't even SMR. These kinds of drives are ideal for compact applications like DVR's, HTPC's, micro-workstations, and obviously portable drives.Current 5TB 2.5" USB 3.0 drives have 75MB/sec write speeds after the NAND cache (1GB it seems) is full.
Umfri - Sunday, November 6, 2022 - link
What is really weird that with me (Netherlands), the Toshiba MG09 is actually the cheapest HDD per GB... go figure (and I have an MG08 and MG09 running, they're not even louder than consumer HDD imo).Samus - Tuesday, November 8, 2022 - link
Toshiba's regularly go on sale for CHEAP here in the USA. They're totally worth it when they undercut the competition (the X300 has been reliable in my applications for Blue Iris DVRs) but they aren't attractive at all when comparably priced to a WD Red Plus or a Seagate Skyhawk.coburn_c - Sunday, November 6, 2022 - link
Watch those Newegg links, if they say OEM there is no warranty despite the product page claiming there is oneSpiritWolf - Sunday, November 6, 2022 - link
I have 5 of the 18Gib Exos drives in a TrueNAS Core tower cabinet and it's right by me. It does warm up a bit but isn't terrible. Not very loud at all! The 12s, which I have 4 of, are in an old Netgear NAS and they work very well.But as to *Warranties*...
EVERY time I get drives, from Amazon, Newegg, B&H, etc, I check the serials even before I open the individual packages.
I cannot tell you how many drives I've sent back when, after the advert says, "5 Year Warranty", the drives come back from the Seagate Serial check as w/o Seagate warranty.
Both Amazon and B&H have had returned drives from me. Annoying. And checking in with the vendors doesn't always yield results. I DO make them pay for my irritation when they dissemble on the warranty. Even B&H, a reasonably reputable firm had to pull their entire stock when HALF of my drives were without warranty. They took them back of course, but they were not happy that their stock wasn't legit. It took weeks for me to get clear of that.
There was one vendor from Amazon that had Seagate warrantied drives (never had fault with them, I think they were HyperHawk ) but I couldn't find them as of 2022-11-6. So maybe they went poof. Amazon seems to rotate through vendors...
Leeea - Sunday, November 6, 2022 - link
thanks for the tips!Threska - Monday, November 7, 2022 - link
Yeah it's a shame suppliers make it so difficult. It's one of the reasons I buy boxed retail. Costs more but a better chance at having a warranty. Plus better protected in shipping.catavalon21 - Tuesday, December 27, 2022 - link
I often find mfrs themselves sell products at, or close to, prices Amazon advertises. Shipping may be extra, but I've never lost sleep over "is it genuine"?tonmischa - Wednesday, November 9, 2022 - link
- Why don't you mention WD Black?- Seagate BarraCuda Pro has been discontinued 14 months ago. No official replacement has been announced,
- What about Seagate FireCuda 8 TB (ST8000DX001). It's 3,5 SATA, 7200rpm, CMR and non-raid. Could this be a replacement for Barracuda Pro? If not, why not?
- Exos is listed as a suggestion for "high-capacity desktop". Why? I always thought that Exos is optimized for RAID use.