Seagate Enterprise Performance 10K v8 & TurboBoost HDD Review

[Guest]

Seagate pioneered the SSHD, which marries the capacity of an HDD with the performance of an SSD. Tom's IT Pro tested the company's new 10K Enterprise drive.

Seagate Enterprise Performance 10K v8 & TurboBoost HDD Review : Read more

 

[Quixit]

Seagate actually only pioneered the term "SSHD", Samsung had the first commercially available hybrid hard drive.

 

[hannibal]

Maybe so, but this HD is really good! Just have to hope that consumer level HD:s will also get these bumps!

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Back in the day, I used 15k Seagate drives in all my workstations w/o a significant cost premium. After hours they were gaming boxes. I'd still buy them today if there was a reasonable cost premium. Been putting SSHDs in all workstation / gaming builds for a while about a third w/ no SSDs .... haven't bough a HD in 4 years.

 

[SteelCity1981]

HDD's are not going anywhere anytime. so while SSD's perform a lot better, in read write, HDD's on the other hand have the capacity SSD's simply can't match esp when it comes to price per GB.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

SSHDs provide a "best of both world's" scenario....tho an SSD for OS and apps and SSHDs for data and games rocks. A typical user works on the same files / plays the same games in streaks of time and the SSHD logic putting most frequently used stuff on the SSD portion works real well here.

In the office, I may spend a few weeks working on a short list of CAD drawings which will sit day after day on the SSD portion of the SSHD....as I move on to a new project, the old files get moved off the SSD portion and new ones get moved on. When playing FC3, the far Cry files sit on the SSD portion and when I move on to a new region or FC4, the old ones again get moved to the slow portion of the drive and the new ones on.

Of course if you work or play random things every day, then the benefit is much less.

 

[alidan]

HDD's are not going anywhere anytime. so while SSD's perform a lot better, in read write, HDD's on the other hand have the capacity SSD's simply can't match esp when it comes to price per GB.

they are honestly getting close to the point that for a normal person you could justify the cost premium with piece of mine due to no mechanical failures.

personally my ideal set up would be

ssd boot - check
hdd mass storage - check
ssd game - no check - few games would really benefit from ssd, but damn would it be nice for the ones that do
ssd mass image storage / porn - no check - im going on somewhere around 1-2 million images and sorting them is kind of a nightmare on a hdd due to loading folders times, at worst it can be around 5 minutes for some.

 

[tom10167]

an enterprise is not a normal person. Even if SSDs were 50% off tomorrow with an unlimited supply there are tons of companies that still wouldn't switch.

 

[cats_Paw]

Seagate is the worst HDD company closly followed by western digital.
They have the highest failure rate, and the worst performance.
There is a reason they spend so much money on advertising their HDDs, because other way noone would buy em.

Hitachi, Samsung. Those are the companies you want for HDDs (but obviously this can change in a blink of an eye if the next models suck).

 

[JackNaylorPE]

If your using the backblaze data for your source, it's totally irrelevant. The bonehead who put consumer drives in a server application you would think should be fired. My guess is they got them so cheap, it's more cost effective to use 5 consumer drives than buy one enterprise drive.

Consumer drives have a feature called head parking which moves the heads away from the spinning platter to protect them from vibration and an accidental desk bump. Each drive is rated for a certain number of parking cycles ..... server drives are not subject to desk bumps and are vibration isolated if designed correctly so the "consumer protection feature" actually decreases reliability in a server as they many see 50,000 cycles in a month.

So lets look at some "real data" indicating drives returned 6 - 12 months into the warranty period.

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/927-6/disques-durs.html

- Seagate 0,69% (contre 0,86%)
- Western 0,93 (contre 1,13%)
- HGST 1,01% (contre 1,08%)
- Toshiba 1,29% (contre 1,02%)

Top 5 failure rates

- 4,76% WD Black WD4001FAEX
- 4,24% WD Black WD3001FAEX
- 3,83% WD SE WD3000F9YZ
- 2,56% HGST Travelstar 7K1000
- 2,39% Toshiba DT01ACA300

and for the next reporting period

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/934-6/disques-durs.html

- Seagate 0,68% (contre 0,69%)
- Western 1,09% (contre 0,93%)
- HGST 1,16% (contre 1,01%)
- Toshiba 1,34% (contre 1,29%)

Top 5 failure rates

- 4,58% WD Red WD60EFRX
- 3,40% Toshiba 3 To DT01ACA300
- 2,93% WD Green 4 To WD40EZRX
- 2,78% WD SE 3 To WD3000F9YZ
- 2,14% Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 1 To

For enterprise drives

- 0,00% Seagate Enterprise Value ST2000NC001
- 0,00% Seagate Enterprise Capacity ST2000NM0033
- 0,00% Seagate Enterprise Value ST3000NC002
- 0,00% Seagate Constellation ES ST4000NM0033

 

[Nintendork]

LOL

The drive cost in between the 850 Pro/EVO 2TB. Enterprise HDD's are doomed.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

They serve their purpose for their specific applications.

 

[PaulAlcorn]

Consumer drives have a feature called head parking which moves the heads away from the spinning platter to protect them from vibration and an accidental desk bump. Each drive is rated for a certain number of parking cycles ..... server drives are not subject to desk bumps and are vibration isolated if designed correctly so the "consumer protection feature" actually decreases reliability in a server as they many see 50,000 cycles in a month.

So lets look at some "real data" indicating drives returned 6 - 12 months into the warranty period.

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/927-6/disques-durs.html

- Seagate 0,69% (contre 0,86%)
- Western 0,93 (contre 1,13%)
- HGST 1,01% (contre 1,08%)
- Toshiba 1,29% (contre 1,02%)

Top 5 failure rates

- 4,76% WD Black WD4001FAEX
- 4,24% WD Black WD3001FAEX
- 3,83% WD SE WD3000F9YZ
- 2,56% HGST Travelstar 7K1000
- 2,39% Toshiba DT01ACA300

and for the next reporting period

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/934-6/disques-durs.html

- Seagate 0,68% (contre 0,69%)
- Western 1,09% (contre 0,93%)
- HGST 1,16% (contre 1,01%)
- Toshiba 1,34% (contre 1,29%)

Top 5 failure rates

- 4,58% WD Red WD60EFRX
- 3,40% Toshiba 3 To DT01ACA300
- 2,93% WD Green 4 To WD40EZRX
- 2,78% WD SE 3 To WD3000F9YZ
- 2,14% Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 1 To

For enterprise drives

- 0,00% Seagate Enterprise Value ST2000NC001
- 0,00% Seagate Enterprise Capacity ST2000NM0033
- 0,00% Seagate Enterprise Value ST3000NC002
- 0,00% Seagate Constellation ES ST4000NM0033

Thanks for posting this, more should be educated on these facts.

 

[jasonkaler]

There are many comments related to price, but I don't see many on reliability.
Enterprise drives are usually thrashed 24/7 with huge amounts of data per day that consumer drives do not face.
SSD's do not last long with the high number of writes that are expected.

 

[jasonkaler]

I don't really see why SS memory to a drive helps that much compared to adding RAM.
SS cache would not last long if it is overwritten often, thus the busiest parts of the drive can not be cached, unless the data is static.
Perhaps it's the density and price of SS compared to RAM - Easier to put 100GB SSD than 100GB RAM.

 

[BorgOvermind]

If your using the backblaze data for your source, it's totally irrelevant. The bonehead who put consumer drives in a server application you would think should be fired. My guess is they got them so cheap, it's more cost effective to use 5 consumer drives than buy one enterprise drive.

Consumer drives have a feature called head parking which moves the heads away from the spinning platter to protect them from vibration and an accidental desk bump. Each drive is rated for a certain number of parking cycles ..... server drives are not subject to desk bumps and are vibration isolated if designed correctly so the "consumer protection feature" actually decreases reliability in a server as they many see 50,000 cycles in a month.

So lets look at some "real data" indicating drives returned 6 - 12 months into the warranty period.

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/927-6/disques-durs.html

- Seagate 0,69% (contre 0,86%)
- Western 0,93 (contre 1,13%)
- HGST 1,01% (contre 1,08%)
- Toshiba 1,29% (contre 1,02%)

Top 5 failure rates

- 4,76% WD Black WD4001FAEX
- 4,24% WD Black WD3001FAEX
- 3,83% WD SE WD3000F9YZ
- 2,56% HGST Travelstar 7K1000
- 2,39% Toshiba DT01ACA300

and for the next reporting period

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/934-6/disques-durs.html

- Seagate 0,68% (contre 0,69%)
- Western 1,09% (contre 0,93%)
- HGST 1,16% (contre 1,01%)
- Toshiba 1,34% (contre 1,29%)

Top 5 failure rates

- 4,58% WD Red WD60EFRX
- 3,40% Toshiba 3 To DT01ACA300
- 2,93% WD Green 4 To WD40EZRX
- 2,78% WD SE 3 To WD3000F9YZ
- 2,14% Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 1 To

For enterprise drives

- 0,00% Seagate Enterprise Value ST2000NC001
- 0,00% Seagate Enterprise Capacity ST2000NM0033
- 0,00% Seagate Enterprise Value ST3000NC002
- 0,00% Seagate Constellation ES ST4000NM0033

If your using the backblaze data for your source, it's totally irrelevant. The bonehead who put consumer drives in a server application you would think should be fired. My guess is they got them so cheap, it's more cost effective to use 5 consumer drives than buy one enterprise drive.

Consumer drives have a feature called head parking which moves the heads away from the spinning platter to protect them from vibration and an accidental desk bump. Each drive is rated for a certain number of parking cycles ..... server drives are not subject to desk bumps and are vibration isolated if designed correctly so the "consumer protection feature" actually decreases reliability in a server as they many see 50,000 cycles in a month.

So lets look at some "real data" indicating drives returned 6 - 12 months into the warranty period.

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/927-6/disques-durs.html

- Seagate 0,69% (contre 0,86%)
- Western 0,93 (contre 1,13%)
- HGST 1,01% (contre 1,08%)
- Toshiba 1,29% (contre 1,02%)

Top 5 failure rates

- 4,76% WD Black WD4001FAEX
- 4,24% WD Black WD3001FAEX
- 3,83% WD SE WD3000F9YZ
- 2,56% HGST Travelstar 7K1000
- 2,39% Toshiba DT01ACA300

and for the next reporting period

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/934-6/disques-durs.html

- Seagate 0,68% (contre 0,69%)
- Western 1,09% (contre 0,93%)
- HGST 1,16% (contre 1,01%)
- Toshiba 1,34% (contre 1,29%)

Top 5 failure rates

- 4,58% WD Red WD60EFRX
- 3,40% Toshiba 3 To DT01ACA300
- 2,93% WD Green 4 To WD40EZRX
- 2,78% WD SE 3 To WD3000F9YZ
- 2,14% Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 1 To

For enterprise drives

- 0,00% Seagate Enterprise Value ST2000NC001
- 0,00% Seagate Enterprise Capacity ST2000NM0033
- 0,00% Seagate Enterprise Value ST3000NC002
- 0,00% Seagate Constellation ES ST4000NM0033

Not relevant also. I never had a WD black to fail (and used ~300 so far since the 750GB ones). WD greens were the only ones that actually had failures.

Seagate had the most HDD failures in history since ever. That is a fact.
Numbers are worldwide so disastrous that seagate had to stop using MTBF and they switched to AFR (Annualized Failure Rate).
Yes, I did not trust many statistics too, but working withing a company that changes hundreds of HDDs per quarter makes the verdict clear: the only do not buy HDD is Seagate.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Using consumer drives in a server application is like putting a Radeon in a rendering build and then complaining that it sucks at rendering. So yes, using hardware not recommended for a particular application makes the data irrelevant.

1. Please explain how published documented failure rates (between 6 and 12 months of usage) are not relevant. These drives have been returned and replaced under warranty so how do you explain these drives being replaced if they didn't fail ?

2. Please supply a published reference for your "fact".

3. What size were your Blacks ?... the 2 TB do very well,

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/927-6/disques-durs.html
- 0,70% WD Black WD2003FZEX
- 0,56% WD Black WD2002FAEX

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/934-6/disques-durs.html
- 0,38% WD Black WD2003FZEX

The 3 and 4 TB not so much but later models are much improved

- 1,18% WD Black WD4003FZEX

4. On storage review.com, Seagate has the distinction of making the most reliable drive and the least reliable drive.

5. I'd also note that it is quite mathematically possible to have lowest failure rate and have more drives fail. It can NOT however be argued that they haven't had the lowest return rate over the last four 6 month study periods because it's been documented and published by an independent 3rd party.

Never fail ? All drive models fail. Look at user reviews:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6AH2AK0382

2 of 2 Failed

Pros: Large, fast, relatively quiet

Cons: Failure rate

Other Thoughts: I bought two of these drives in August of 2013, one to use as a Time Machine backup drive for my laptop, the other to use as a storage drive attached to my media center Mac Mini. Over the past year, the backup drive has become unreadable several times, requiring me to reformat and start from scratch with a fresh backup. The media drive recently failed, and now makes a clicking sound when powered up.

Pros: Large drive, fast, reasonable cool

Cons: 4 of 6 drives failed within 3 months, one other within 6 months

Other Thoughts: Purchased these drives for the warranty, and paid accordingly. First drive worked well in NAS. Ordered a second one...wouldn't boot. It was a gift, so past the 30 day window. RMA to WD. Replacement drive DOA. RMA again. Replacement of the replacement failed SMART. RMA for the 4th drive, finally working (for 4 months so far). The initial drive, which prompted the subsequent purchase, started throwing SMART errors at 5 months. RMA to WD. This replacement just died after 3 months. So, of 5 drives I have had in my hands, only one works now. WD initally gave the RMA drives a 6 month warranty, instead of 5 years. I complained and they gave me back the 5 years. Frankly, if I have to RMA every few months, at my shipping cost, it isn't worth it anyway. I am going to RMA the current dead drive, but I won't be putting one of these back in any NAS that I need to use daily.

Pros: when it worked it worked great

Cons: After the first six months of installing this drive I had barely used it. Only after six months i started using it and it then broke after some minor use. The first signs of it breaking was that it made a repetitive "clicking" sound, where after that I tried to use data from it, which caused my PC to utterly crash.

Other Thoughts: Now I can't even access the HDD in the BIOS. I am very frustrated and disappointed by the whole thing...

Pros: what should of been a nice drive gave me SMART failure straight from the box so I have no Pros.

Cons: what should of been a nice drive gave me SMART failure straight from the box

You can find similar stories for every drive ever made . All we can do is play the law of averages and that means avoiding ones that fail more than others..... The 2 TB Black's have proven themselves excellent in this respect.... the 3 and 4 TB are now getting into that territory. As long as a particular model can consistently stay below 2% I am not that much concerned. The behardware site gives me reliable data in that respect, backblaze does not as the very features that make a consumer drive and reliable drive, result in premature failure in a server environment.

 

[BorgOvermind]

I'd agree with that under 2%, but for not using RAID 0's.
In RAID 0, below 0.1% is what i'd aim for.

Regarding you model question, I've been using RAIDs since the max capacity was 200GB / drive.

As for various random testing, they are not wide enough. They do not consider continuous uptime vs. multi-on-off scenarios. they do not consider the temperature environment or other variables of this type. Lab testing is not practical testing.
Relevant long term testing you can do while having 1000+ workstations in different environments available for testing.