Thanks for the pipeline post. Most other sites which I read yesterday that talked about this launch missed the fact that this drive is SMR....that is rather critical I would think considering the performance penalty.
Now I just wish there were more 2.5" slot based NAS out there!
Agreed. That would make some of the older HP DL360 servers which utilize the 2.5 hotswaps actually quite usable. You can get them for about $200ish and being able to have 16TB would make them quite practical depending on the cost of the new 2TB drives. That would make a nice lower-power NAS.
SMR drives, or at least the SMR device managed ones like these, are not good for RAID in a NAS. They are only reasonable for archiving and even the speed there can be painful.
I tried out an 8TB 3.5" drive and wrote about 2TB of files sequentially which should have stayed at full speed, but due to how files can get laid down on the disk, it wasn't purely sequential. The speed dropped off quite badly while it moved tracks. This is exactly what Seagate says it will do, which makes it good for only a narrow use case.
Done and done. I built a DL380 G5 with six WD Green 2TB 2.5" drives years ago. Still chugging along as a crashplan server for my colleagues. The WD drive is 10mm, but that matches the typical 2.5" SAS drives used in servers.
The news here is that 2TB now fits in a laptop, but who would want this slow piece of junk in their laptop?
Pretty impressive to get two platters into 7mm. I mean by the time you account for the lid and base, you are looking at 4-5mm to fit the rest of the mechanics!
I don't understand. An enterprise 2TB 2.5" shingled drive makes perfect sense. Bu this isn't an enterprise drive, it's specifically labelled as a mobile drive, it even has a picture of a laptop printed right on... What's the point of a shingled laptop drive? The write performance would be crippling.
Let me be clear: I'm not questioning why they made this drive, I'm questioning why they're calling it a mobile drive.
My presumption is that the intended target laptop is a higher end thin one that has an m.2 slot for an SSD and a 7mm bay for an HDD. In this case there probably is a (small) market for getting as large a capacity drive as possible into it, even at the expense of speed.
I have a Lenovo T430s that's got a micro-SATA slot and a 7mm bay for a HDD. This seems like an ideal solution for a speedy OS + programs and plenty of storage for everything else.
Other than installing games or transferring media content I can't imagine doing a lot of long sustained writes to a laptop, let alone rewrites.
I'm not disagreeing with you that I wouldn't put this HDD in my laptop, but for a causal user who just wants a lot of space for their media collection / photography etc and are limited to a 7mm slot, I suppose it might be the ticket.
Pretty happy with the 2TB Samsung in my Laptop, although I think that's 9.5mm. I think SMR is more suited to write once, read many applications like media collections.
Shame that HVD and so on never panned out - BDR is more expensive per GB than HDDs which is crazy. 25GB is pretty small by modern standards. It would be cool if we could have a HDD format which was essentially like a caddy because bare drives with PCB exposed and the like don't exactly store/stack nicely for use in docks.
You're behind the times...Backblaze published a new report covering their experience from 2013-2015 and we don't hate Seagate anymore, we hate WD now... But (...they find that...) HGST disks are still more reliable than any other brand they use.
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creed3020 - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
Thanks for the pipeline post. Most other sites which I read yesterday that talked about this launch missed the fact that this drive is SMR....that is rather critical I would think considering the performance penalty.Now I just wish there were more 2.5" slot based NAS out there!
ZeDestructor - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
I have one. It's not very useful now, and won't be anytime soon because of the miserly 1gbit ethernet.About the only reason I can think of for a 2.5" NAS is building a super-fast all-SSD NAS, but you need real network speed for that.
bill.rookard - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
Agreed. That would make some of the older HP DL360 servers which utilize the 2.5 hotswaps actually quite usable. You can get them for about $200ish and being able to have 16TB would make them quite practical depending on the cost of the new 2TB drives. That would make a nice lower-power NAS.chekk - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
SMR drives, or at least the SMR device managed ones like these, are not good for RAID in a NAS. They are only reasonable for archiving and even the speed there can be painful.I tried out an 8TB 3.5" drive and wrote about 2TB of files sequentially which should have stayed at full speed, but due to how files can get laid down on the disk, it wasn't purely sequential. The speed dropped off quite badly while it moved tracks. This is exactly what Seagate says it will do, which makes it good for only a narrow use case.
monsted - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
Done and done. I built a DL380 G5 with six WD Green 2TB 2.5" drives years ago. Still chugging along as a crashplan server for my colleagues. The WD drive is 10mm, but that matches the typical 2.5" SAS drives used in servers.The news here is that 2TB now fits in a laptop, but who would want this slow piece of junk in their laptop?
lmcd - Saturday, February 20, 2016 - link
secondary disk to an SSD in a 15.6in with only one 2.5 in addition to its M2damianrobertjones - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
"with such extreme capacity."Will it then be ULTRA extreme when they move to 6mm. What about 5mm? NINJA extreme.
DigitalFreak - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
Still waiting on a 7200 RPM 2TB 2.5" drive...fanofanand - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
The developers for the game Clash of Kings have already sorted this out. It's "Super Mega Ultra", in that order.statement - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
WD2003FZEXextide - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
Pretty impressive to get two platters into 7mm. I mean by the time you account for the lid and base, you are looking at 4-5mm to fit the rest of the mechanics!Solandri - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
IBM managed to fit an entire drive with one platter into 5mm.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive
DigitalFreak - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
Ha! I still have an 8GB Seagate micro-drive around here somewhere.Guspaz - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
I don't understand. An enterprise 2TB 2.5" shingled drive makes perfect sense. Bu this isn't an enterprise drive, it's specifically labelled as a mobile drive, it even has a picture of a laptop printed right on... What's the point of a shingled laptop drive? The write performance would be crippling.Let me be clear: I'm not questioning why they made this drive, I'm questioning why they're calling it a mobile drive.
Concillian - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
My presumption is that the intended target laptop is a higher end thin one that has an m.2 slot for an SSD and a 7mm bay for an HDD. In this case there probably is a (small) market for getting as large a capacity drive as possible into it, even at the expense of speed.Golgatha - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
I have a Lenovo T430s that's got a micro-SATA slot and a 7mm bay for a HDD. This seems like an ideal solution for a speedy OS + programs and plenty of storage for everything else.darkfalz - Friday, February 19, 2016 - link
Other than installing games or transferring media content I can't imagine doing a lot of long sustained writes to a laptop, let alone rewrites.I'm not disagreeing with you that I wouldn't put this HDD in my laptop, but for a causal user who just wants a lot of space for their media collection / photography etc and are limited to a 7mm slot, I suppose it might be the ticket.
lmcd - Saturday, February 20, 2016 - link
Aren't the read speeds just fine? Perfect for a gamer with a huge collection.ruthan - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
Im still waiting for 4 TB 2.5 drive for my desktop, external 4 TB are out maybe 6 months. Maybe i should buy external one and crack the case..darkfalz - Friday, February 19, 2016 - link
You might find it's 11mm or something.Lolimaster - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
Rocking 4 6TB WD Blacks for my friends private network (movies, anime, manga, comics, popcorn, emulators).Spectrophobic - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
"popcorn"( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
tipoo - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
Are they going to make more laptop hybrids? I'd love that 2TB one with 16GB NAND cache for consoles in particular.jasonelmore - Thursday, February 18, 2016 - link
seagate already has a 2 TB 2.5 drive for under $80, and its pretty damn slim.. without the SMR performance penalty at 9.5mmSeems like a lot of sacrifice just for 2.5mm, but props for pushing the technology
darkfalz - Friday, February 19, 2016 - link
Pretty happy with the 2TB Samsung in my Laptop, although I think that's 9.5mm. I think SMR is more suited to write once, read many applications like media collections.Shame that HVD and so on never panned out - BDR is more expensive per GB than HDDs which is crazy. 25GB is pretty small by modern standards. It would be cool if we could have a HDD format which was essentially like a caddy because bare drives with PCB exposed and the like don't exactly store/stack nicely for use in docks.
lmcd - Saturday, February 20, 2016 - link
You just ignored an entire area of HDD design involving keeping this thing from shocks and anything that could damage it (read: nearly everything).But cool thought, wonder if anyone else thought of it :P
AnnonymousCoward - Friday, February 19, 2016 - link
Seagate needs to match the reliability of WD or Toshiba platters before I'd consider.ZaphodB - Wednesday, March 2, 2016 - link
You're behind the times...Backblaze published a new report covering their experience from 2013-2015 and we don't hate Seagate anymore, we hate WD now... But (...they find that...) HGST disks are still more reliable than any other brand they use.Osamede - Friday, March 4, 2016 - link
Quieter & cooler than 3.5". Yet, cheaper than SSD. That's why.