pabloxmena :
dstarr3 :
The perfect solution for people that want to lose 12TB of data in one fell swoop.
Hi bro!
The same used to be said on previous hdd capacities...but here we are don't we ?
I imagine (for nas at least) that people will buy a couple to create proper raid, not just one.
That is correct.
Hard drive capacities are a double edged sword due to the benefit of more capacity and the URE, unrecoverable read error, of those drives which could possibly corrupt data.
With a URE of 10^14 bits an error occurs on average every 12.5 terabytes
With a URE of 10^15 bits an error occurs on average every 125 terabytes
and so on.
With a 4 terabyte drive with an URE of 10^14 you could have written the drive more than 3 times before the average possibility of a URE would be due.
But with a 12 terabyte drive you would barely be able to fill the drive once.
According to
http://www.seagate.com/www-content/datasheets/pdfs/ironwolf-12tbDS1904-9-1707US-en_US.pdf
The Seagate 4 terabyte drives are 10^14 meaning they can only write on average 12.5 terabytes before "messing up" matching the above situation.
The capacities higher than 4 terabytes, including the 12 terabyte in the article, are all 10^15 URE.
125 terabytes should be more than enough for most people.
Interestingly enough all drives are rated by Seagate for 180 terabytes a year, 55 terabytes passed their rated URE, at least for the 10^15.
I don't even need to do the math for the 4 terabyte drive with a 10^14 URE to see that is a bad idea.
Data being corrupted isn't a drive failure and would fall under the "Two years of data recovery included (Seagate Rescue)" mentioned in the article, not a drive replacement.
The drive could work perfectly for another 125 terabytes.
TL;DR?
Don't buy the Seagate 4 terabyte drive.