Seagate 8TB Archive HDD Review
We create more data every time we snap a picture with our phone, record a video or post something to a social media website. The budding Internet of Things (IoT) means that our thermostats, vehicles and toasters (conceivably) only add to this unending stream of data. The Internet reaches to the far flung corners of the globe and the number of users streaming data, seemingly just into the nether, continues to expand every day.
The only problem is that the data isn't actually disappearing into the nether. We expect to be able to retrieve a family picture in mere milliseconds from Facebook even if we uploaded it (and forgot about it) five years ago. We increasingly (and blindly) trust that our social media services will safely store our data and memories, well, forever.
The picture from your latest snap has to land somewhere, and that "somewhere" is a server that churns away day and night. This influx of data creates a tremendous challenge at the other end of the pipe, and datacenter operators are tasked with keeping this exponentially increasing burden of data under safe keeping; but the key is to do it in a cost-effective manner.
HDD vendors have responded to the need for more storage with clever engineering that increases the amount of storage they can provide per device, as well as per dollar. The newest innovation comes in the form of SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording), which overlays data tracks to increase the amount of available storage capacity.
The Seagate SMR datacenter offering lowers cost to an unheard-of three cents per gigabyte of storage (and that is at retail pricing). This low cost has made the drives increasingly popular with consumers for bulk data storage, which is a use-case the drive excels at.
However, SMR is not without its tradeoffs. For those who aren't familiar with the limitations of SMR technology it can become a frustrating experience. Never fear, we've got it all figured out. Come along as we explore all things SMR in our Seagate 8TB Archive HDD Review at Tom's IT Pro.
MORE: How We Test Enterprise HDDs
MORE: SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) 101
Paul Alcorn is a Contributing Editor for Tom's IT Pro, covering Storage. Follow him on Twitter and on Google+.
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In a couple of years, SSD's will come with 10TB+, but meanwhile this is a very good deal.
Also, power loss can lead to corrupted sectors with SMR, so you have to be more careful.
Five of these in raid-6 give 24 TB of storage space, very awesome.
Actually, Seagate uses a section of the platter to back up the volatile cache, so these drives are less likely to experience data loss than a typical desktop HDD.
Yeah, except I've experienced it. It happens when data is being transferred from the buffer (on the drive, that buffer track) to a shingled area and you get a power loss. It shows up as corrupted sectors, but they aren't. After you use the drive for a while, the corrupted sectors drop back to 0.
From some engineers:
In my case, it was permanent. 4728 sectors were flagged as bad, on a 5TB model. Eventually, the sectors were reclassified as ok, but the data loss and corruption was permanent. I have overall data redundancy and checksums, so I didn't actually lose any data overall because of this.
The drive is marketed as "Archive HDD", and in that context, it's excellent. Most people don't write that much non-sequential data for extended periods of time. For most consumer use, this drive is a very good choice.
The persistent cache is about 20-25 GB, so actually, you can write relatively a lot of random data without any performance degradation.
Remember, this is "kinda gotcha" 8TB. Not the real deal. Only through sketchy SMR or witchcraft helium.
I just want to back up by RAID periodically to something that's offsite except during backups, and in the even I need to pull from an archive, during recovery.
Don't mind spending more on a helium drive from HGST if it means the data is safer, but is it?
Meh, it has flaws. Less active usage may be better for reliability, but then again, constant operation constantly checks for errors so it would find errors more quickly. So as usual, the answer is to use multiple drives/services. Including onsite, offsite, online, etc.
That can't be the end answer. There'd be an infinite regress of infinite backups: backup the backup, and then back that up, and then back that up. . . . and back that up too . . . .
What's a good stopping point? It seems like backing up working files is sufficient. What would warrant backing up archives outside enterprise applications?
It's your choice. Drives are inherently unreliable. If your data isn't really important, 1 or no backups is probably enough. If you care, add more backups. It's just statistics at this point. There is no perfect system.
What do I do?: Two active sites (work/home) for important recent data, along with USB stick(s) and possibly cloud. Two passive sites (external HDD) for important old data, and 1 passive site for old lesser important stuff. Some long term data like photos and stuff uploaded to Backblaze online as well.
I'll just backup my RAID until it's full and I need to offload. Initially, one backup will be enough. But once all 4 TB of my RAID 1 is full, I'll have to delete things from the RAID to make space, which will result in only the archived copy unless I back that up.
So for now,
System SSD + Data RAID + RAID Bakcup
But then once I need to offload and make space on the RAID, it will be:
System SSD + Data RAID + RAID Backup + Emergency Recovery Archive
System SSD = 750 GB
Data RAID = 2 x 4 TB in RAID 1 (for single drive fault tolerance)
RAID Backup = Single 4 TB Drive
Emergency Disaster Recovery Archive = An 8 TB drive to hold twice as much as the Data RAID
That should keep things pretty sage if I keep the Emergency Disaster Recovery Archive in a fireproof safe. There's nothing worth backing up on the SSD.
Do you commute to work or something similar? Because if you do, I suggest only doing the "Raid Backup" once a month or so, and bringing that to a secure place at work to have a good "offsite" backup. Keep the EDR in a fireproof at home or whatever. In between the monthly or so backups, rely on USB flash drive(s).
Go surf Amazon. 256gig monster thumb drives are being sold for peanuts. Do you generate more than 256 gigs of new data every few weeks to a month? I doubt it. But if so, use those 1tb portable HDDs which are also being sold for (relative) peanuts.
I definitely could, but having 20 TB of drives should be fine, and I like the simplicity of having only 4 storage devices for the entire solution. I can see the USBs turning into a messy drawer where I'll probably lose drives.
It's less secure though. The system you have protects only against random hard drive failure/corruption. Your immediate data is not safe from house catastrophe or power surges etc. All you have is that "fireproof" archive and no offsite.
Just watch out for the issues I listed...