Hitachi's 4 TB Hard Drives Take On The 3 TB Competition

[Guest]

There needs to be a long term test on drives, much like car mags have long term tests. Reliability of new drives is terrible, especially Seagate. As the capacities get bigger, you have more to lose. It makes more sense to distribute your data across more smaller drives in RAID arrays. Between the two 750GB 7200.11 drives, I've RMA'd them a total of 5 times. The last time I asked for a 7200.12, and that one is now going back for a replacement. What good is a 5 year warranty if you have to replace the drive 3-5 times?

 

[alidan]

i currently have 5 harddrive in active use
250gb
1500gb
1500gb
750gb
120gb

i want a 4tb drive, in the 200$ range so i can retire all my current drives (the 1.5tb drives game me the most problems, needing to be replaced twice) and have some healthy legroom. it would also cut down noice levels, and allow me to be rid of drives that are 6-8 years old.

 

[pnorman]

You say that the 4 TB drives are more expensive per drive than 3 TB drives, yet you neglect bay costs.

The break even point using the costs you quoted is for when 4 TB gets cheaper per TB than 3 TB for 5400 RPM drives is $20/bay.

Hot swap bays generally cost a minimum of $20/bay if you already have an enclosure, with costs coming in at around $40/bay when you include enclosure costs. You can expect to pay at least the same cost to two times the cost for the rack space and power consumption over a year.

This doesn't matter if you just have a few TB of data but 4 TB drives are not marketed at those people. A friend just bought six 4TB drives for his array. If he had used 3TB drives he would of had no room for expansion as his storage needs grow.

 

[blackbirden]

About the noice again, ihave to disagree, i have a 1Tb WD drive about a year old, when reading and writing the noice from arm movements are loud enough to disturb while watching a movie and atleast this disk seems a bit unbalanced what also creates a "humming" resonace sound from my tv bench.
I also have several other HDDs that are both older and newer that has way lower noice level.

Totally i have 7 HDD all bought within last two years and there are differences, 2 of them are very loud compared to the rest, so for HTPC and media stations (hometheatre) it is very intresting information

 

[Guest]

Very satisfied of my HITACHI 4TB 5K4000
Very quiet.

 

[Kand]

4TB for 340 EURO, really?
way too expensive, for that money you can get 2 drives with 5TB capacity from Seagate

 

[g-unit1111]

4TB is pretty impressive but do Hitachi HDs still have the same questionable long-term reliability that they're known for or have they improved in the long-term department?

 

[ctmk]

Anyone noticed about the 2400 power on hours specification? THG editor is freaking us out.

i checked the seagate web, found http://enterprise.media.seagate.com/2010/04/inside-it-storage/diving-into-mtbf-and-afr-storage-reliability-specs-explained/

[citation]“These drives shall achieve an AFR of 0.55% (MTBF of 1,600,000 hours) when operated in an environment that ensures the HDA case temperatures do not exceed the values specified in Section 6.4.1.Operation at case temperatures outside the specifications in Section 6.4.1 may increase the AFR (decrease the MTBF). AFR and MTBF statistics are population statistics that are not relevant to individual units.
AFR and MTBF specifications are based on the following assumptions for Enterprise Storage System environments:
•8,760 power-on hours per year
•250 average on/off cycles per year
•Operating at nominal voltages
•System provides adequate cooling to ensure the case temperatures specified in Section 6.4.1 are not exceeded”

To calculate AFR, we use this formula: AFR = 1 – exp ( – Annual Operating Hours / MTBF)

But even with the knowledge of the formula set aside for a moment, the AFR percentage itself (i.e., .55% in the above example) is itself obviously more easily understood and clear.[/citation]


Somethings tells me that the less than 1% AFR is based on 2400 power on hours/year. which means the AFR for seagate barracuda 3tb is around 3.65%

anyone agrees on this or has second thoughts?

 

[ctmk]

[citation][nom]ctmk[/nom]Anyone noticed about the 2400 power on hours specification? THG editor is freaking us out.i checked the seagate web, found http://enterprise.media.seagate.co [...] explained/[citation]“These drives shall achieve an AFR of 0.55% (MTBF of 1,600,000 hours) when operated in an environment that ensures the HDA case temperatures do not exceed the values specified in Section 6.4.1.Operation at case temperatures outside the specifications in Section 6.4.1 may increase the AFR (decrease the MTBF). AFR and MTBF statistics are population statistics that are not relevant to individual units.AFR and MTBF specifications are based on the following assumptions for Enterprise Storage System environments:•8,760 power-on hours per year•250 average on/off cycles per year•Operating at nominal voltages•System provides adequate cooling to ensure the case temperatures specified in Section 6.4.1 are not exceeded”To calculate AFR, we use this formula: AFR = 1 – exp ( – Annual Operating Hours / MTBF)But even with the knowledge of the formula set aside for a moment, the AFR percentage itself (i.e., .55% in the above example) is itself obviously more easily understood and clear.[/citation]Somethings tells me that the less than 1% AFR is based on 2400 power on hours/year. which means the AFR for seagate barracuda 3tb is around 3.65%anyone agrees on this or has second thoughts?[/citation]
3.65% for 24/7 users.

 

[Guest]

Create a big harddisk easily by releasing 5 1/4 " size.
Manufacturer can get more than 10 TB without problems.
Now big harddisk needed by many datacenter.
It is big opportunity.
try to talk to google, facebook, Microsoft and others. and I believe they will love to buy 10 TB harddisk or more from manufacturer if they sell it

 

[TheBigTroll]

and i still cant use more than 200gbs on my hard drive...........

 

[scarlet_billows]

I'm considering putting two ST3000DM001 Barracudas in my system for data and backup. But this 2400 hours power-on rating has me worried and I've never used Seagate before.

I am using since 3 years 4x Western Digital 640 AAKS drives in my Mac Pro without incidents (running them in two Raid 0 arrays). But WD only has the 5400rpm Green drive and I want 7200.

How concerned should I be about the 2400 hours thing?

Thanks for any insight/experiences with this drive.

 

[Guest]

Hi Tom, My interest is that since my Seagate drive died after 100 days use over 2 years. That had a 1 year limited warranty - I am looking for long term reliability and the peace of mind factor...

Hitachi claim warranties of 3 - 5 years for a 4TB drive with a MTBF of 2,000,000 hours for Enterprise version which is a 228 years - not sure what this is for Desk top versions.

Are you able to verify this in you (non-) destructive testing centre.

Also, if a hard drive should fail, I am told that WD are almost impossible to recover from but that Seagate are in the 90% for recoverable drives. My Barracuda 1.5TB had a seized spindle and subsequent board failure.

My Email is wmbfpz at gmail-com

 

[Kent_Diego]

[citation][nom]JOSHSKORN[/nom]I'm curious, can you install Windows 7 x64 to these 4 TB drives and will the full drive be recognized? With the latest motherboards, of course.At that capacity, why bother with 5400 RPM?[/citation]
I just did a 3TB Seagate as primary boot drive with a SSD cache using Intel SRT. Awesome in all respects but not easy to set up. You have make a special EFI bootable USB flash drive to install Windows using UEFI. An internal DVD drive will not work and a standart x64 Window DVD will not work.

 

[zedeck]

How can you say; "(Seagate's Barracuda) isn't designed to run all day and night, just like this Western Digital disk."

If on WD site, WD says: "WD Green hard drives are designed for use as secondary drives in PCs, for external enclosures and other applications for which low noise and low heat are beneficial."

What nonsense !!!!