Review Seagate FireCuda 8TB HDD Review: A Solid Storage Solution

[Admin]

The Seagate FireCuda is a relatively fast, affordable HDD that would make for a solid storage solution for most users. Additional comfort comes courtesy of Seagate’s strong warranty and software support.

Seagate FireCuda 8TB HDD Review: A Solid Storage Solution : Read more

 

[neojack]

it's a great piece of technology, but i wonder what is the use case


surveillance ? nah the SSD part would wear of too fast

Archive ? an SMR archive drive is cheaper and enough for the task (rare writes, occasional read)

Photo/video editing ? maybe, if youre an individual wanting to save some money. But time = money if it's your job, a bunch of 4TB SSD would fare better on long term.

Gaming ? maybe but you would know that it's not an ideal solution and would want to upgrade to an SSD eventually because of the eventual stuttering.

OS : absolutely not, even the cheapest 128GB sata SSD would be much better. Unless you like to take a coffee while your PC boots.

File server ? hey maybe for a small business, but how do they fare in RAID ? does the SSD cache gets in the way ?
I think 2 of them in raid1 for a file server would be a good solution for a Small Business's file server.
Or maybe more in a software Raid array to avoid compatibility problems ?

 

[BleuCheddar]

it's a great piece of technology, but i wonder what is the use case


surveillance ? nah the SSD part would wear of too fast

Archive ? an SMR archive drive is cheaper and enough for the task (rare writes, occasional read)

Photo/video editing ? maybe, if youre an individual wanting to save some money. But time = money if it's your job, a bunch of 4TB SSD would fare better on long term.

Gaming ? maybe but you would know that it's not an ideal solution and would want to upgrade to an SSD eventually because of the eventual stuttering.

OS : absolutely not, even the cheapest 128GB sata SSD would be much better. Unless you like to take a coffee while your PC boots.

File server ? hey maybe for a small business, but how do they fare in RAID ? does the SSD cache gets in the way ?
I think 2 of them in raid1 for a file server would be a good solution for a Small Business's file server.
Or maybe more in a software Raid array to avoid compatibility problems ?

What SSD part/cache? It has normal RAM for a cache like any plain HDD has for decades? This isn't an SSHD (it is mentioned throughout the article that it is ann HDD and in the title even).

This is suitable for a NAS that uses ZFS in any configuration-be it a mirror or a RAID config (thanks CMR!), local storage that is sensitive to network latency but not high bandwidth, archiving that has large changes regularly that SMR will choke on or perhaps a drive for storing games (since this is a gaming brand of Seagate's) that weren't designed for SSDs or aimed at an older game collection.

With how cheap NAND is, I don't think anyone would even consider this for an OS drive if they understand current technology or concerns with boot time.

This drive would be functional for any sort of RAID configuration-be it hardware or software, but if for a business, factors like NAS specific firmware and warranties that call out use in RAID configurations or NAS use cases may be preferable unless sensitive on price. But if you're sensitive to costs, getting some 8TB easy stores and shucking them may be worth the loss of RPM (7200 vs. 5400/5640) for the cost savings.

 

[neojack]

You are right it's not an sshd ! I was under this impression since they used the name "firecuda"

Ok so, well they released a 7000rpm hdd. Hurray

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

If you're going to list the (Price per TB), you might as well list the (Price per GB) as well
Especially if you want to compare and contrast against Cheapo SSD's.

And use the appropriate ¢ symbol.

 

[bit_user]

If you dig into some of the synthetic benchmarks, it's interesting to see where some of the drives fall apart.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

If you dig into some of the synthetic benchmarks, it's interesting to see where some of the drives fall apart.

I like to see where the SLC cache fails and the true native performance shows up.

I wonder how a Hybrid SSHD with Optane would've performed if it had 16 GiB and beyond of Optane integrated as their "Flash" Buffer solution on top of large DRAM cache that modern HDD's use ( ≥ 2 GiB)

I'm also tired of SSD's w/o DRAM, stop being cheap and give me quality SSD's with DRAM on board.

 

[bit_user]

I like to see where the SLC cache fails and the true native performance shows up.

This is the opposite:

​

​

The Seagate BarraCuda 8TB and HGST UltraStar He8 8TB seem to be exhibiting SMR-type behavior.

The sustained writes were also quite telling.

​

Here, HGST UltraStar He8 8TB holds up reasonably well, though at a the second-lowest rate. But the Seagate BarraCuda 8TB seems to be thrashing pretty badly. That might be okay for backups, but not any kind of writing task that's QoS-sensitive. Fortunately, it doesn't exhibit such anomalies during reads.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I prefer to use the smallest block size possible down to 1 KiB if possible, and only increasing the Block Size if it's necessary to fit a single drive into a single partition.

I'm not a big fan of wasted space due to large cluster size.

 

[bit_user]

I prefer to use the smallest block size possible down to 1 KiB if possible, and only increasing the Block Size if it's necessary to fit a single drive into a single partition.

I'm not a big fan of wasted space due to large cluster size.

On Linux, you can't use a filesystem block size smaller than the page size. That made it painless, when SSDs switched over to 4 kiB sectors.

There's also a scheme (known as the T10 Data Integrity Field (DIF)) for doing host-based error correction that exposes sectors as 520 bytes, instead of 512. Most enterprise drives support this. The extra bits are meant to hold ECC.

Data Integrity Field - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I haven't found clear information on whether it's been extended to 4 kiB sectors, but maybe they just skipped that and went to NVMe's raw mode (I forget what it's called), where the host can bypass most of the block layer normally implemented by the drive firmware.

Regarding sector sizes, there's a similar tradeoff for RAIDs. You have to decide the granularity at which you want to spread data across the different drives. I think the current RAID I have is using a 64 kiB chunk size (stripe size = num_logical_drives * chunk_size), which that first graph I quoted shows to be a safe choice for maximum throughput. However, the tradeoff isn't about speed vs. space-efficiency, but rather what I/O size you want to optimize for. If you make your stripes too large (or too small) for your typical I/O size, then it's just your performance that suffers.

 

[giorov]

What SSD part/cache? It has normal RAM for a cache like any plain HDD has for decades? This isn't an SSHD (it is mentioned throughout the article that it is ann HDD and in the title even).

This is suitable for a NAS that uses ZFS in any configuration-be it a mirror or a RAID config (thanks CMR!), local storage that is sensitive to network latency but not high bandwidth, archiving that has large changes regularly that SMR will choke on or perhaps a drive for storing games (since this is a gaming brand of Seagate's) that weren't designed for SSDs or aimed at an older game collection.

With how cheap NAND is, I don't think anyone would even consider this for an OS drive if they understand current technology or concerns with boot time.

This drive would be functional for any sort of RAID configuration-be it hardware or software, but if for a business, factors like NAS specific firmware and warranties that call out use in RAID configurations or NAS use cases may be preferable unless sensitive on price. But if you're sensitive to costs, getting some 8TB easy stores and shucking them may be worth the loss of RPM (7200 vs. 5400/5640) for the cost savings.

"All three drives have a 256MB cache which is adequate for this capacity."

 

[Amdlova]

Intel removes support to optane in z b h 7xx chipsets... only old ones can

 

[lmcnabney]

$20/TB when NAND is closing in on $30. Good plan

 

[bit_user]

Intel removes support to optane in z b h 7xx chipsets... only old ones can

Those are Optane DIMMs. I've never heard of anyone using them in a desktop board, but you're right that without chipset support it definitely won't be possible.

Anyone with an Optane NVMe drive can continue using it just fine, as those never required any special motherboard support.

 

[bit_user]

$20/TB when NAND is closing in on $30. Good plan

Yes, smaller HDDs aren't where the best value is at. However, the price listed in the review is $146, which works out to $18.25 per TB.

What are you using as your cost basis for NAND? If I go to Newegg, the cheapest 8 TB drive they sell is $750. That works out to $93.75 per TB. As that's still a specialty product, it's much cheaper to go with 2x 4 TB drives. In that case, their cheapest is $162, which works out to $40.50 per TB. By those numbers, NAND is still more than 2.2x as expensive as the HDD they reviewed.

But, let's keep going. The cheapest 2 TB drive is only $61. So, that's $30.50 per TB, or 1.67x as expensive.

So, if you actually needed 8 TB of storage, you buy 4x the cheapest SATA SSDs, put them in a RAID-0, and hope that none of them fails (hint: failure probability increases exponentially with the number of drives... definitely not helped by using the cheapest) and it'd cost 67% more. Maybe you buy a better quality model and now you're back to spending $40/TB or around 2.2x as much. Maybe you decide to buy an extra one to make a RAID-5, to mitigate against failure, and now you're spending $50/TB or 2.74x as much.

You obviously have some sort of deep-seated hatred of HDDs, but they still make a lot of sense for higher-capacity storage. And 8 TB definitely falls in that range.

 

[Deleted member 489584]

Yes, smaller HDDs aren't where the best value is at. However, the price listed in the review is $146, which works out to $18.25 per TB.

What are you using as your cost basis for NAND? If I go to Newegg, the cheapest 8 TB drive they sell is $750. That works out to $93.75 per TB. As that's still a specialty product, it's much cheaper to go with 2x 4 TB drives. In that case, their cheapest is $162, which works out to $40.50 per TB. By those numbers, NAND is still more than 2.2x as expensive as the HDD they reviewed.

But, let's keep going. The cheapest 2 TB drive is only $61. So, that's $30.50 per TB, or 1.67x as expensive.

So, if you actually needed 8 TB of storage, you buy 4x the cheapest SATA SSDs, put them in a RAID-0, and hope that none of them fails (hint: failure probability increases exponentially with the number of drives... definitely not helped by using the cheapest) and it'd cost 67% more. Maybe you buy a better quality model and now you're back to spending $40/TB or around 2.2x as much. Maybe you decide to buy an extra one to make a RAID-5, to mitigate against failure, and now you're spending $50/TB or 2.74x as much.

You obviously have some sort of deep-seated hatred of HDDs, but they still make a lot of sense for higher-capacity storage. And 8 TB definitely falls in that range.

You can google "Disk Prices per TB" and use any number of websites that auto-track market rates. lmcnabney is correct that sometimes NAND can dip as low as $29-$30 for new.

I'm buying used 2TB SATA NAND for $18-$22/TB off eBay(up to 11 drives now). I'm also collecting info on each drive in Crystal so I can see financially how I come out with expected lifetimes, etc. I'm tired of using my production RAID on spinning rust - backup is fine but that latency and time to wake is just totally unnecessary at these NAND prices.

Additionally those same $/TB tracking websites will reveal just how cheap 10TB data center drives have become. I bought several of them, and they arrived more carefully packaged than any retail OEM drive I've ever bought. All of them had under 45,000 hours, they came with a 5-year warranty direct from the seller(untested by me, but still nice), and shipping was quick. Why in god's name would I ever buy an $18.25/TB drive when the alternative I just detailed is less than $7/TB?

This retail new 8TB HDD is DoA as far as I'm concerned - I'd look to see it discounted steeply in short manner as all OEMs see the writing on the wall for sub-20TB HDD and realize it's a race to the bottom.

 

[lmcnabney]

You obviously have some sort of deep-seated hatred of HDDs, but they still make a lot of sense for higher-capacity storage. And 8 TB definitely falls in that range.

Nope, I am just annoyed at their recent trend (in the last 3 years) of not dropping in price at all. There haven't been any technological jumps in spinning rust during this time period. They haven't suddenly gotten any faster. The remaining three manufacturers on earth have pretty much decided to stay at the same price. This is not a big surprise because the same type of pricing is found in other industries. There are only three national wireless providers in the US (although they resell their service to other brands) and they have had their prices fixed at levels that dwarf those found across Asia and Europe. HDD profits have remained nice and plump (despite falling sale numbers) until that last six months when they dropped dramatically as enterprise began to deploy a lot more NAND since the calculus shifted based upon the cost of drives, floor space, reliability, speed, power utilization and cooling made HDD a bad investment.

 

[bit_user]

You can google "Disk Prices per TB" and use any number of websites that auto-track market rates. lmcnabney is correct that sometimes NAND can dip as low as $29-$30 for new.

The key point is quantity, as I was careful to explain. The drives you're using for that cost basis are small ones, which means they must be aggregated. Doing that increases the failure probability, especially if you're using bottom-of-the-barrel models. Anything you do to mitigate those reliability issues adds even more cost.

So, that's really a false comparison. What you and @lmcnabney are doing by comparing the cheapest SSDs is disingenuous. It would be like if I computed the $/TB for the cheapest 20 TB HDD ($290, in case you're wondering) and acted as if you could get whatever HDD capacity you wanted for $14.50/TB.

Additionally those same $/TB tracking websites will reveal just how cheap 10TB data center drives have become. I bought several of them, and they arrived more carefully packaged than any retail OEM drive I've ever bought. All of them had under 45,000 hours, they came with a 5-year warranty direct from the seller(untested by me, but still nice), and shipping was quick. Why in god's name would I ever buy an $18.25/TB drive when the alternative I just detailed is less than $7/TB?

You might be comfortable running used SSDs, but a lot of people aren't. Also, where can you buy a used SSD with a full 5-year warranty? These drives ship new with a 5-year warranty. Are you sure they're not just giving you the remainder of that?

Currently, datacenter SSDs are abnormally cheap. Expect to see somewhat of a rebound, in the latter half of the year. That could even carry on through to used ones.

Also, with server SSDs transitioning to oddball form factors, it's soon going to be more difficult to reuse these in desktop PCs and there will be increased competition (i.e. higher prices) for used ones that you can reuse. So, enjoy it while it lasts.
: (

This retail new 8TB HDD is DoA as far as I'm concerned - I'd look to see it discounted steeply in short manner as all OEMs

I believe the quoted $146 is the steeply-discounted price.

 

[bit_user]

Nope, I am just annoyed at their recent trend (in the last 3 years) of not dropping in price at all. There haven't been any technological jumps in spinning rust during this time period.

If there have been no technological jumps, why would you expect the products to get cheaper or offer more TB/$? Technological advances are the thing that drives cheaper capacity!

That's why NAND has gotten cheaper per TB. They're packing more bits per cell, using node shrinks to increase the number of cells per layer, and stacking more layers. All of which have contributed to dramatically higher density, and that's why it's gotten cheaper.

Meanwhile, CMR platter densities have basically hit a wall. That's why HDDs are resorting to HAMR, which adds non-trivial cost. It's not like the industry suddenly got lazy. Maybe you can show them how to further increase platter density. I'm sure they'd appreciate it.

There are only three national wireless providers in the US

You can't wish away the limits of physics so easily. Competition is a powerful force, but it's not magic.

 

[Deleted member 489584]

The key point is quantity, as I was careful to explain. The drives you're using for that cost basis are small ones, which means they must be aggregated. Doing that increases the failure probability, especially if you're using bottom-of-the-barrel models. Anything you do to mitigate those reliability issues adds even more cost.

So, that's really a false comparison. What you and @lmcnabney are doing by comparing the cheapest SSDs is disingenuous. It would be like if I computed the $/TB for the cheapest 20 TB HDD ($290, in case you're wondering) and acted as if you could get whatever HDD capacity you wanted for $14.50/TB.


You might be comfortable running used SSDs, but a lot of people aren't. Also, where can you buy a used SSD with a full 5-year warranty? These drives ship new with a 5-year warranty. Are you sure they're not just giving you the remainder of that?

Currently, datacenter SSDs are abnormally cheap. Expect to see somewhat of a rebound, in the latter half of the year. That could even carry on through to used ones.

Also, with server SSDs transitioning to oddball form factors, it's soon going to be more difficult to reuse these in desktop PCs and there will be increased competition (i.e. higher prices) for used ones that you can reuse. So, enjoy it while it lasts.
: (


I believe the quoted $146 is the steeply-discounted price.

I can tell from your reply to my post that you didn't actually check what I said before immediately jumping back on your keyboard, cool. If you had read my post more carefully you would have seen that I never claimed used SSDs w/ 5-year warranty: I said 10TB used data center drives were being sold with 5-year warranty through the seller. Here is a direct link to the seller "goHardDrive" page: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSG5YC76.

I was just offering a market-realistic PoV as someone looking to migrate their production RAID away from spinning rust for the performance and electricity-saving benefits. And you don't have to take my word for it - I told you the means to verify the information I claimed was true.

You are right that there is overhead and risk to my approach - but I read and understood those risks and still decided to try it with ZFS(while also offering my reasoning). I run regular full backups of my production RAID, and with these new flash drives I will be able to build a full second backup for off-site storage using my current production drives! I'm not asking you to change your mind, just sharing my approach and thoughts. =)

Further, if 2TB drives are too puny, or the used market is a non-starter: you have "not unreasonable" prices on retail new NAND in 4TB sizes are running street price of $36.50. Still don't think that's big enough? 8TB Samsung QVO are $49/TB.

I'd wager that for most users dipping a toe into self-hosted running a few SSDs on a NAS and backup to spinning rust is a simpler option that uses less electricity and provides superior performance. It's worth the cost in my eye to at least give it a try, but of course your mileage may vary.

If you're running a backup solution with high redundancy, (if not, stop reading this and go do that immediately) you could just stripe some extremely reliable SSDs like the Samsung QVOs and call it a day. I'm currently running one backup copy on HDD in RAID 1, and another inbound as RAID 6 when I pivot this flash in, so there's no real fear here even with my used flash.

 

[bit_user]

I can tell from your reply to my post that you didn't actually check what I said before immediately jumping back on your keyboard, cool. If you had read my post more carefully

I read your post before replying, cool.

you would have seen that I never claimed used SSDs w/ 5-year warranty: I said 10TB used data center drives were being sold with 5-year warranty through the seller.

You went from talking about how SSDs were cheap and you were sick of using "spinning rust', to then talking about "data center drives", without ever specifying that you meant hard drives. Don't blame me for inferring you were still talking about SSDs!

Here is a direct link to the seller "goHardDrive" page: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSG5YC76.

Yes, thank you. That helps.

I wouldn't trust them to honor that warranty. If you have a failure in the first few months, you'll probably get it covered. However, you never know when they might just decide to close up shop. And Amazon won't cover any issues you have beyond 90 days.

There are lots of shady characters in the aftermarket harddrive business, going back many years.

prices on retail new NAND in 4TB sizes are running street price of $36.50.

As I said above, the best price I found on Newegg was $40.50/TB. Did you reply without reading my posts, cool.

It's no fair quoting prices from sellers you wouldn't actually buy from. Also, we're talking minimum prices, not typical, and comparing it against a HDD that's not the minimum-priced. I never buy the absolute cheapest SSD I can find - do you?

Still don't think that's big enough? 8TB Samsung QVO are $49/TB.

Where are you seeing it for that price? The cheapest 8 TB drive I found on Newegg (and sold by Newegg) was $750 for a Samsung.

I'd wager that for most users dipping a toe into self-hosted running a few SSDs on a NAS and backup to spinning rust is a simpler option that uses less electricity and provides superior performance.

Probably less than 1% of NAS users have a SSD NAS and a HDD RAID to back that onto. That's overkill, IMO.

It's worth the cost in my eye to at least give it a try, but of course your mileage may vary.

We're talking budget SSDs and HDDs, yet you expect people to buy and setup RAIDs of both? Simple home users?

If you're running a backup solution with high redundancy, (if not, stop reading this and go do that immediately) you could just stripe some extremely reliable SSDs like the Samsung QVOs and call it a day.

I wouldn't call QVO "extremely reliable". Do you even know how long they'll retain data, when powered off? A kid could leave their NAS at home and powered down, while they study abroad for a semester. Then, come back to find the drives are corrupted and the array is failed.

 

[COLGeek]

Folks, as a reminder, civility is required by all. You can disagree without becoming disagreeable.

Thank you.

 

[Deleted member 489584]

I read your post before replying, cool.


You went from talking about how SSDs were cheap and you were sick of using "spinning rust', to then talking about "data center drives", without ever specifying that you meant hard drives. Don't blame me for inferring you were still talking about SSDs!


Yes, thank you. That helps.

I wouldn't trust them to honor that warranty. If you have a failure in the first few months, you'll probably get it covered. However, you never know when they might just decide to close up shop. And Amazon won't cover any issues you have beyond 90 days.

There are lots of shady characters in the aftermarket harddrive business, going back many years.


As I said above, the best price I found on Newegg was $40.50/TB. Did you reply without reading my posts, cool.

It's no fair quoting prices from sellers you wouldn't actually buy from. Also, we're talking minimum prices, not typical, and comparing it against a HDD that's not the minimum-priced. I never buy the absolute cheapest SSD I can find - do you?


Where are you seeing it for that price? The cheapest 8 TB drive I found on Newegg (and sold by Newegg) was $750 for a Samsung.


Probably less than 1% of NAS users have a SSD NAS and a HDD RAID to back that onto. That's overkill, IMO.


We're talking budget SSDs and HDDs, yet you expect people to buy and setup RAIDs of both? Simple home users?


I wouldn't call QVO "extremely reliable". Do you even know how long they'll retain data, when powered off? A kid could leave their NAS at home and powered down, while they study abroad for a semester. Then, come back to find the drives are corrupted and the array is failed.

You claim to have read my post, but if you had actually consumed the information and googled "disk prices per tb" you would have pulled up the corresponding information. Here let me help you: https://diskprices.com/.

Filter that to SSDs, bump the min capacity to whatever you're interested in, and away it goes. There are other websites that will also track other websites (you seem to be a Newegg person, I believe there's one for that as well).

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089C3TZL9

If you had consumed the information at the beginning of my original reply to this thread, you would have understood its entirely, and that the price per TB involves all disk media (not just flash, but also rotational). Those websites track them all by interface and media type.

If you have a large data store, regardless of in a RAID or not, regardless of in a NAS or not - yes you should have it backed up at least ONE place. I encourage anyone with data they value to invest in 3-2-1 education and fundamentals of storage solutions.

I would consider brand-new flash of any kind (SLC, TLC, 3DNAND, etc) reliable when provided with warranty by a brand as reputable and time-tested as Samsung. Your mileage may vary, but you should always have a backup solution in place regardless.