WD's 3TB Internal HDD Comes with PCI-e Card

[hellwig]

[citation][nom]schizofrog[/nom]I don't understand your concern. If you are going to RAID Mirror then why does it matter about the size of the disk? I could understand a concern if you were using a RAID Stripe.[/citation]
The concern is rebuilding the array if 1 drive fails. 3TB of data is a tremendous amount of data. If 1 drive fails, you must replace it, and rebuilt your array. However, in order to rebuild the array, you must read ALL the data off of ALL the other drives in the array. This greatly increases the chances of encountering another failure (i.e. faulty data on one drive, or causing a hardware failure on another drive). Someone did some math on this once that basically said that it would be impossible to rebuild a RAID array that used 2TB disks, because the number of data accesses to rebuild the array would exceed the specified durability of the harddrive.

Yeah, you might get lucky and be able to rebuild your array, or you might get another error and loose all that data. And as for backups, where are you going to backup 3TB of data? Probably another 3TB drive, but then again, you have to read all 3TB of that data off that backup drive, and thus, the same problem all over again.

 

[fredgiblet]

[citation][nom]aevm[/nom]I've got a few questions...If I build a new PC in 2011, and I want a lot of disk space, I must look for a motherboard with EFI, get Windows 7 64-bit, and then I can use these 3 TB disks without needing HBA cards? What if I want to add 6 of these new disks to my current machine? Would I need 6 HBA cards? I don't have PCI-E slots for all of them. Does one HBA card support multiple drives?There's a more detailed review herehttp://www.storagereview.com/weste [...] d30ezrsdtl[/citation]

32-bit OR 64-bit 7 should be fine. I doubt you'd need 6 cards to install 6 drives, more likely each card has at least 2 inputs, though we won't know until we actually get a look at them.

 

[zak_mckraken]

[citation][nom]jupiter optimus maximus[/nom]3tb is not enough for my family VHS video collection.[/citation]
You need to learn editing.

 

[techguy378]

[citation][nom]dgingeri[/nom]Does anyone know of a UEFI motherboard available right now? I've seen a couple laptops that use it, but not desktop systems.[/citation]
UEFI motherboards have been available for years, exclusively from Intel as far as I know. I've had an Intel DP35DP motherboard (P35 NB/ICH9R SB) and I currently have a more recent Intel DP43TF motherboard (P43 NB/ICH10 SB). I would strongly recommend getting the latest and greatest Intel motherboard because their EFI firmware supports things like AHCI that earlier models such as the ones I mentioned didn't support.

 

[lukeiamyourfather]

[citation][nom]schizofrog[/nom]I don't understand your concern. If you are going to RAID Mirror then why does it matter about the size of the disk? I could understand a concern if you were using a RAID Stripe.[/citation]

Even with RAID 5 and 6 there are some concerns over whether the data could actually be rebuilt without encountering a URE (unrecoverable read error) which would cause the rebuild to fail.

Unless the drives can become more reliable and have URE less often as capacity grows then more and more parity (RAID 5 = 1 parity, RAID 6 = 2 parity) will be needed to rebuild a failed array without encountering a URE. More about that here.

http://storagemojo.com/2010/02/27/does-raid-6-stops-working-in-2019/

Long story short, there's legitimate reason to be concerned about putting that much data on a single disk, even in a fault tolerant RAID array.

 

[lukeiamyourfather]

Correction of my previous post.

Unless the drives can become more reliable and have URE less often as capacity grows then more and more parity (RAID 5 = 1 parity, RAID 6 = 2 parity) will be needed to rebuild a failed array without failing from a URE. More about that here.

The rebuild would encounter a URE, but it wouldn't cause the rebuild to fail with more parity (double, triple, etc.).

 

[mickey21]

[citation][nom]hellwig[/nom]The concern is rebuilding the array if 1 drive fails. 3TB of data is a tremendous amount of data. If 1 drive fails, you must replace it, and rebuilt your array. However, in order to rebuild the array, you must read ALL the data off of ALL the other drives in the array. This greatly increases the chances of encountering another failure (i.e. faulty data on one drive, or causing a hardware failure on another drive). Someone did some math on this once that basically said that it would be impossible to rebuild a RAID array that used 2TB disks, because the number of data accesses to rebuild the array would exceed the specified durability of the harddrive.Yeah, you might get lucky and be able to rebuild your array, or you might get another error and loose all that data. And as for backups, where are you going to backup 3TB of data? Probably another 3TB drive, but then again, you have to read all 3TB of that data off that backup drive, and thus, the same problem all over again.[/citation]
You need to reread his statement. He is not talking about RAID 5 or 6, he is talking about RAID1 Mirror which would have an identical copy of the data should 1 drive fail. A rebuild should recover or a drive image should correct.
Also, some of your facts are a little off. The idea behind exceeding (actually around 2.5TB) is not due to the need to read all of the data and causing another failure (although possible still not the main concern for this), but the fact that the likely hood of a failed read/write during the rebuild becomes 1. Due to the fact that the chance of a read/write miscalc is 1 in ~2.5TB. If I told you the chance of anything was 1 in 2 and you did that anything twice, your chance is now 1 in 1. There are ways around this, but not something the average user will know or do. Not the concern of the durability of the drive, though of course that does matter.

Reading a 3TB drive isn't inherently sensitive and I am sure WD knows a thing or two about the usefulness of there 3TB drive. In practice, yeah you could keep a backup or run RAID10 or RAID5/6 with Mirror, though I guess 6(+) x 3TB drives would get a bit pricey. What am I saying though I use 22 x 2TB drives in my gaming rig so people like me dont care about these things.

As for the comments for porn, yeah, most people who do carry a lot of storage dont use even a fraction of that for porn. These days it doesnt take much from backing up your DVD/Blueray collection to HD Camera capture and editing. Heck even my Steam Cache is over 1TB on its own. After you consider I mirror that cache, over 2TB to Steam games alone. And the world is headed that way as it is. WD/Seagate/Toshiba/Hitachi/Samsung/etc know this.

 

[JD13]

The transfer rates wouldn't be as good as the 7200 RPM drives. I have a 2TB green drive; it's ok for backup, your Windows Experience will definitely suffer with this drive.

 

[Guest]

This reminds me of when they used to bundle EIDE ISA cards with CD-ROM drives. I had to get one because the on-board controller was only IDE. Yeah, it's not quite the same since the the 3TB drives still use SATA, but whatever. Back then hard drives were about $1000/GB, so a 2TB drive would have cost around $2 million if it existed.

 

[SteelCity1981]

My asus laptop has EFI.

 

[thillntn]

2tb are around 100 bucks now...i'd rather buy 3 and put on a raid 5 .these will be nice in the future when a new system supports them tho.....

 

[dEAne]

This is on my next build

 

[Guest]

You are worried about mirrored disks? Really? 3tb is the level to worry? I am worred about 3GB? Let alone 3tb... In ten years it'll be 300TB, so get over you fear and embrace it!

 

[wotan31]

[citation][nom]theoutbound[/nom]Until we have a solution that doesn't involve shoving a controller card into a PCI-e slot, I'll stick to multiple smaller drives.[/citation]
The solution is stop using Microsoft Windows. Linux and OSX can use >2TB drives right now today. It's just Windows that has these product limitations.

 

[wotan31]

[citation][nom]schizofrog[/nom]I don't understand your concern. If you are going to RAID Mirror then why does it matter about the size of the disk? I could understand a concern if you were using a RAID Stripe.[/citation]
How foolish. RAID is not s substitute for backup. Ever. Backup your data regularly and enjoy the performance of a stripe.

 

[cklaubur]

[citation][nom]wotan31[/nom]The solution is stop using Microsoft Windows. Linux and OSX can use >2TB drives right now today. It's just Windows that has these product limitations.[/citation]

Did you not read the article??? The issue is not Windows, it's the current BIOS implementation most motherboards are using. That's what the card is for. Even using Linux or one of these affected motherboards will have issues.

 

[sudeshc]

I am happy that this is happening wounder if we can some day be able to do RAID with multiple 5TB or more drives and that too if they are SSD drives it will simply rock......

 

[techguy378]

[citation][nom]steelcity1981[/nom]My asus laptop has EFI.[/citation]
It probably relies on a BIOS compatibility module to boot Windows. The only difference between my PC and an Intel Mac is that the PC uses FAT for the EFI system partition and the Mac uses a read only HFS partition for the EFI system partition.

Your Asus laptop on the other hand likely only supports an MBR partition table, hardly a true EFI implementation.

 

[thirtydot]

[citation][nom]mickey21[/nom]If I told you the chance of anything was 1 in 2 and you did that anything twice, your chance is now 1 in 1.[/citation]
This is not how probability works.

 

[nottheking]

I'm always wary of brand-new hard drive sizes. History has shown that when freshly out, they'll be less reliable than more-established sizes. While the most distinct (and recent) memory involved all those Baracuda 7200.11 1 TB drives, (which seemingly had a 100% early failure rate) the truth is even WD wasn't immune to the loss in reliability.

So for now, I'd personally stick with 1 and 1.5 TB drives, and later perhaps 3 TB drives once the 4 TB ones are out. An added benefit of taking less-than-maximum-size disks: they won't be crammed with 4-5 platters, which increases heat production, and reduces fault resistance.
[citation][nom]mickey21[/nom]If I told you the chance of anything was 1 in 2 and you did that anything twice, your chance is now 1 in 1. There are ways around this, but not something the average user will know or do.[/citation]
Uh, no. Just as an aside here, if you have a 1/2 odds of something happening in a given span, and go through two tries, then the odds are 3/4. That's because you had a 50% odds the first time, and a 50% chance out of the remaining 50% it'd NOT happen even the second time.

 

[youssef 2010]

I don't think anyone would need a partition that's over 2.19TB in size or do you mean that windows can't recognize the drive if it's total capacity is over 2TB?? Please explain

 

[youssef 2010]

[citation][nom]wotan31[/nom]The solution is stop using Microsoft Windows. Linux and OSX can use >2TB drives right now today. It's just Windows that has these product limitations.[/citation]

and game on Linux? I don't think so

 

[zak_mckraken]

If I told you the chance of anything was 1 in 2 and you did that anything twice, your chance is now 1 in 1.

Uh, no. Just as an aside here, if you have a 1/2 odds of something happening in a given span, and go through two tries, then the odds are 3/4. That's because you had a 50% odds the first time, and a 50% chance out of the remaining 50% it'd NOT happen even the second time.

You're both wrong. If you have a 50% chance of success, the odds will always be 1/2. You can try one time or you can try a hundred times, the odds are still 1/2. If you do try a hundred times, you will "probably" succeed 50 times. The again, it's probabilities... you may never succeed or you may succeed all 100 times.

Here's the perfect example : flip a coin and call heads. If it's tails, do you really think you have 75% chance to get heads the next time?

 

[dogman-x]

From the article: "Unfortunately, even if installed on a machine with a EFI-embedded motherboard, Windows XP machines can't use either drive because the OS offers native support for MBR only."

I thought the MBR limitation was 2.19TB PER PARTITION. If this is right, then a drive larger than 2.19TB can be used with Windows XP, as long as it is formatted into multiple partitions.

Is this right?

 

[pocketdrummer]

[citation][nom]christiangordon[/nom]I agree huron... i would be worried about data on such a large HDD. I would prefer to have a few smaller 1TB or 2TB disks mirrored.[/citation]

Why not just mirror the 3TB drive? Either way, you lose a HDD's worth of data to redundancy.

Personally, I can't wait for SSDs to FINALLY become affordable. Until 500GB SSDs are affordable, they still won't be worth it.

For now, higher density drives still increase performance, and we can RAID 0+1 for the same price as an SSD and still quadruple the storage and have redundancy as well.