Seagate becomes first to ship massive 8TB hard drive

They are a cloud backup/storage company, I think they are fairly new. So they buy (or were buying) a lot of 'consumer' level drives because they were the least expensive. They buy a lot of drives apparently.

I think they probably have the most recent data that is publicly available, its been at least a year since Google's update to their somewhat well known 2009? paper.
OK, so this is essentially a start up, using the cheapest drives possible in unknown operating conditions. Yes?

1. I won't be using them as a "backup solution" anytime soon.

2. When Google releases data on drive longevity, expect me to be paying a lot more attention.

Seventh Reign...I suggest you google ....
"Three-year, 27,000 drive study reveals the most reliable hard drive makers"
And this is the same data, and the same study, by "Back Blaze". And again, IMHO, this company is a start up, publishing data about consumer drives used in commercial conditions.

They have managed to convince me NOT to buy a 1.5TB Seagate "Green" HDD. That said, it's something I wouldn't touch with a 10' pole in the first place.

So, when Google publishes a study on drive failure rates, I'll be a lot more inclined to listen. I also tend to doubt, they'll be throwing the lowest class of home use HDDs into their server racks.

"12,000,000" search results in well......, as soon as the "Eco Drives" spin up?
 
OK, so this is essentially a start up, using the cheapest drives possible in unknown operating conditions. Yes?
Get off my lawn, kid. They used consumer drives of 3 brands and have 25 thousand consumer hard drives in their study (and in their datacenters). Dunno about you, but that is a bunch of bigass datacenters, not a startup. And the number is indeed SIGNIFICANT.

They offer UNLIMITED storage for 5$/month, so they do need a buttload of cheap storage space. This is very likely a smart PR move (as now everyone that knows avbout had drives knows about them), but hey.

1. I won't be using them as a "backup solution" anytime soon.
Ever heard of data redundancy and RAID? It's not like they store your stuff on a single drive.
If a drive dies they have RAID and backups. And with the price difference between consumer and enterprise drives, it's not even hard to do it.

2. When Google releases data on drive longevity, expect me to be paying a lot more attention.
Do you buy enterprise-grade SAS drives? Google papers are interesting, but don't really say good or bad brands in consumer drives, which is the stuff us mortals actually buy and use.

So, when Google publishes a study on drive failure rates, I'll be a lot more inclined to listen. I also tend to doubt, they'll be throwing the lowest class of home use HDDs into their server racks.
You can't compare the requirements of a cloud storage company (dealing with LARGE amounts of data that is accessed RARELY or BY VERY FEW USERS) to the requirements of a search engine/ads/whatever company that needs FAST access for BILLIONS of users at the same time to a relatively smaller amount of data (their databases are big, but not so damn big as to fill hundreds of thousands of drives).
Because that's exactly opposite in case you haven't noticed.
 
Get off my lawn, kid. They used consumer drives of 3 brands and have 25 thousand consumer hard drives in their study (and in their datacenters). Dunno about you, but that is a bunch of bigass datacenters, not a startup. And the number is indeed SIGNIFICANT.
Then they should be using SAS drives, start up or not, instead of using whatever crap they can their hands on. It's the old, "if you wanna run with the big dogs" thing.

They offer UNLIMITED storage for 5$/month, so they do need a buttload of cheap storage space. This is very likely a smart PR move (as now everyone that knows avbout had drives knows about them), but hey.
. I kind of already knew it was as much a PR stunt, as a study

Ever heard of data redundancy and RAID? It's not like they store your stuff on a single drive.
If a drive dies they have RAID and backups. And with the price difference between consumer and enterprise drives, it's not even hard to do it.
Yeah, and I've also heard of multiple computers and optical storage.

Do you buy enterprise-grade SAS drives? Google papers are interesting, but don't really say good or bad brands in consumer drives, which is the stuff us mortals actually buy and use.
I don't need to, since the consumer drives haven't broken on me, Seagate or otherwise.

You can't compare the requirements of a cloud storage company (dealing with LARGE amounts of data that is accessed RARELY or BY VERY FEW USERS) to the requirements of a search engine/ads/whatever company that needs FAST access for BILLIONS of users at the same time to a relatively smaller amount of data (their databases are big, but not so damn big as to fill hundreds of thousands of drives).
Because that's exactly opposite in case you haven't noticed.
I'd want to see numbers on that. They have to store almost as much data as the internet will provide. Google does have robots mining for more constantly. It's kinda why you can almost talk to the search engine in plain language. And even if they don't store all of it, they need to be able to point to in the blink of an eye.I would venture they have more data stored, and more drives at their disposal than "Back Blaze". For the purposes of this discussion, that's plenty.

Back Blaze has proved that Seagate consumer drives don't hold up in an enterprise environment. I'm not sure that actually needed proving. More or less, it is a statement of the patently obvious, laid over top of a big, fat old ad.
 
Then they should be using SAS drives, start up or not, instead of using whatever crap they can their hands on. It's the old, "if you wanna run with the big dogs" thing.
For cold storage at cheap prices for consumers it's *****ic to use high-speed high-reliability SAS drives.
They don't need to serve the data within nanoseconds, they need just to store it safely, and for that redundancy is enough.

A company does not need to use what "what big dogs use" to be successful. Otherwise Google would still be using Microsoft now.

Btw, backblaze is more than 3 years old now.

Yeah, and I've also heard of multiple computers and optical storage.
I'd never trust third parties on principle, but there are lots of people that have cloud services handle most of their data + system images just because they are cheaper and easier than running a decent NAS/Miniserver.

I don't need to, since the consumer drives haven't broken on me, Seagate or otherwise.
Not storing so much data aren't you? (also the reference to optical drives tends to lead to that)

They have to store almost as much data as the internet will provide. Google does have robots mining for more constantly. It's kinda why you can almost talk to the search engine in plain language. And even if they don't store all of it, they need to be able to point to in the blink of an eye.I would venture they have more data stored, and more drives at their disposal than "Back Blaze".
Google search engines work with a database of keywords and links. Ok, they cache most sites they index, but sites aren't horribly heavy by definition.

And as I said, Google does not use consumer drives because they need FAST and RELIABLE access to their databases.

Cold storage? Another fish entirely.
 
Btw, backblaze is more than 3 years old now.
Wow, three whole years! I guess in your computer crippled mind, that qualifies them as an, "institution".
Not storing so much data aren't you? (also the reference to optical drives tends to lead to that)
No, that means I'm not to lazy to push the "eject button", and swap a DVD from a collection of thousands, in lieu of spending money for "cloud" storage,. or spending a couple grand for home NAS. I mean really, a person has to get off their azz sometime. I'm sure you'll disagree, but I'm simply not as computer dependent or addicted as most. I even go to Redbox and rent DVDs. How pedestrian, I know, right? I should up my bandwidth and pay Amazon five bucks for the same thing.
Cold storage? Another fish entirely.
I would seem their "cold storage", isn't really cold, but rather "lukewarm", or they wouldn't be breaking so many drives.
 
Wow, three whole years! I guess in your computer crippled mind, that qualifies them as an, "institution".
well, if it is running 25 thousand drives inside datacenters for three years I tend to assume it is profitable enough to not be a startup anymore.
The costs are too damn high to last without making some kind of profit.

No, that means I'm not to lazy to push the "eject button", and swap a DVD from a collection of thousands, in lieu of spending money for "cloud" storage,. or spending a couple grand for home NAS.
Yeah, because DVDs are universally known for their long shelf life and flawless reliability.
Hope you have a cellar to store them in the optimum conditions (like fine wine lol, fun but true) and a bunch of those weird disk indexer and autoloader boxes that store hundreds of DVDs and can go and read them or spit out the disk you needed.

Pro long-term backup is still on magnetic tape systems, that do have their quirks but are actually reliable.

I'm simply not as computer dependent or addicted as most.
says the guy that comments the article of TechSpot, clearly a magazine about hunting and fishing, not about IT.

The same guy that claims he prefers to waste days to swap and burn thousands of DVDs instead of dropping a couple hundreds for a half-decent turnkey NAS that runs without human intervention.

I even go to Redbox and rent DVDs. How pedestrian, I know, right? I should up my bandwidth and pay Amazon five bucks for the same thing.
nah, streaming video quality is very meh and audio quality is meh. DVDs are still better than that (bluray much more).

I would seem their "cold storage", isn't really cold, but rather "lukewarm", or they wouldn't be breaking so many drives.
Considering that there is a brand that fares poorly (Seagate) and two that fare well, and everything is in the same conditions, I'm more inclined to think that the hard drives of brand that fares poorly are crappier. Not necessarily that the whole brand sucks, but that's something to think about.
 
Considering that there is a brand that fares poorly (Seagate) and two that fare well, and everything is in the same conditions, I'm more inclined to think that the hard drives of brand that fares poorly are crappier. Not necessarily that the whole brand sucks, but that's something to think about.
My only point here is this; even the drives that fail most readily for "Back Blaze", are unlikely to fail on me.

What you call, "cold storage" is anything but. My definition is, "you pull the drive when it's full, and put it in a safe place.

As far as tape storage goes, part of that is simply the amount of time effort and money it would require, to transfer it to different media. Heck, you can erase tape by running your vacuum cleaner too close to it, and there's also an issue of self erasure than is a concern in long term storage. Tape breaks, tape stretches, tape sheds its emulsion, and so forth.

DVD to me seems quite reliable, but with respect to certain brands, not so much. Oddly, "Fuji" who made wonderful camera film, has the worst track record of remaining playable in my experience The drive DVDs were created on also plays a big part in their survival. You can buy gold DVD media, if you're obsessively concerned with preservation: http://www.verbatim.com/subcat/optical-media/dvd/archival-grade-gold-dvd-r/ I've never had trouble with "Ritek" blank media, which is used by TDK and others, for their retail product.

As far as "my computer addiction" goes, yes, I'm here at an IT & news site, and no, you you will never find me in the "Field & Stream" magazine forum.

By the same token, I figure I'm as "computer addicted" as I'm willing to become. All my entertainment "devices", are old school, stand alone, technology.

Other than a need for witty repartee, what mostly drives me to the computer is digital photography. Which I am freely willing to admit, has come of age, and, (at least for me), there's no going back to film.
 
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My only point here is this; even the drives that fail most readily for "Back Blaze", are unlikely to fail on me.
Big news. If you don't use them they don't fail.

What you call, "cold storage" is anything but. My definition is, "you pull the drive when it's full, and put it in a safe place.
In cloud storage services that's data that is NOT instantly available nor has horribly huge bandwith (good enough for one or two users at a time), if you want to retrieve it you need to wait hours for it to be pulled up and being readied to be served. Backblaze does this.
 
Big news. If you don't use them they don't fail.
No, again not exactly my point. My drives are used, but certainly not as frequently as a cloud service, and not in as hostile environment as that which I expect exists at Backblaze. Given that the Seagate 1.5GB was the highest failure rate, it's also the silliest capacity Seagate sells. Given that 1TB single platters are the new norm in high capacity, I figure buy the 1TB model, then bypass the 1.5 TB model altogether and go straight to the 2 TB

In cloud storage services that's data that is NOT instantly available nor has horribly huge bandwith (good enough for one or two users at a time), if you want to retrieve it you need to wait hours for it to be pulled up and being readied to be served. Backblaze does this.
Since any of us could slap in a HDD in a few minutes, and then open it almost instantly thereafter, Backblaze makes even less sense if it tracks with the story you're telling.

The only point in favor of cloud storage then, is that it's in a different physical location, a selling point as protection against catastrophic loss of data, due to destruction of the original location, (fire, flood, hurricane, lightning strikes, or perhaps a nuclear meltdown). Now you name a few.

What's always been a pet superstition of mine, is that platter data density is increasing to the point where mechanical manufacturing tolerances could get to be larger than the data points which need to be read.

Given that I have a couple of drives which are used daily, one of which is 10 years old, leads me to the obvious, (correct or otherwise ), conclusion, "they sure don't build 'em that way they used to", or, I'm one really lucky son of a gun. Hence, I ascribe the most heinous customer reviews on Newegg or another etailer, as either histrionic, or simply the work of a perennial malcontents. Like I said before, I even bought a large Seagate HDD during the height of Seagate's "bricking scandal", and it worked well also.

The only type thread here at Techspot which turns out to be more contentious than HDD reliabily, is" what's the best free AV product".

Once a single computer becomes your sole provider of media, shopping, games, and social interaction, it really does become, "the god you pray to:, and that's really scary (at least to me).

I find the current obsession with "smart phones", to be well, "deviant behaviour".:D
 
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People like you make me sick. Decades of data have proven that failure rates between Seagate and Western Digital are almost identical. In fact WD's is actually slightly higher. Stop reading NewEgg and Best Buy reviews (the majority of which are written by the competition) and do some actual research for once. A bad shipment of drives in 2012 does not make up the entire company.
while im excited about Seagate's 8tb hdd, I recall that I have lost two 3tb Seagate hdd out of the three 3tb I purchased at different times.
I lost one 3tb when my thermaltake 630w smart psu failed. (I don't know if its just wrong timing or it's due to TT)
I lost the other 3tb during the Philippine quake last year.

my psu now: 1 antec hcg 620w, 1 seasonic 650w m12 II, 1 generic 700, and 1 generic 500w.
hopefully I can travel to Cebu city to purchase seasonic psu (out of stock for more than 6 months?) and the rumored gtx 870 or 860 soon.
 
No, again not exactly my point. My drives are used, but certainly not as frequently as a cloud service, and not in as hostile environment as that which I expect exists at Backblaze.
Yeah, but price differences between the models don't justify the risk anyway. I can get a WD red with 1 TB capacity for 60 euros or so (also in 2.5 inch size, which is amusing), unless they start throwing seagates at me for 10 or so euros I don't see the point of risking.

Since any of us could slap in a HDD in a few minutes, and then open it almost instantly thereafter, Backblaze makes even less sense if it tracks with the story you're telling.
well, apart from the fact that most people won't dare doing something like that, that's an off-site storage place that is babysitted by actual sysadmins and locked behind a password and a time wait.
Safer than the average hard drive with usb 3.0 laying around.
It's mostly for backups though.

The only point in favor of cloud storage then, is that it's in a different physical location, a selling point as protection against catastrophic loss of data, due to destruction of the original location, (fire, flood, hurricane, lightning strikes, or perhaps a nuclear meltdown). Now you name a few.
Thiefs are much more common. IT equipment (especially apple) is very interesting for a thief. Easy to grab away with you, clean and resell as "used" for a good profit on anyone's favourite website.

What's always been a pet superstition of mine, is that platter data density is increasing to the point where mechanical manufacturing tolerances could get to be larger than the data points which need to be read.
Yeah, to go further (in the future designs) they are already throwing tech gimmicks at the problem like HAMR from WD and Seagate (lasers heat platter to somehow increase data density while writing, somehow.)
Still, flash storage is catching up fast (SSDs) and can take over if hard drives hit brick walls somewhere along the road.

Given that I have a couple of drives which are used daily, one of which is 10 years old, leads me to the obvious, (correct or otherwise ), conclusion, "they sure don't build 'em that way they used to", or, I'm one really lucky son of a gun.
Well, the failure rates are called "high" but we are still talking of 10% failure rate over three years or so. If I have not failed hard at math it means that 90% of the drives are still alive after three years.

90% is still the overwhelming majority, and if you aren't very unlucky you are one of them.
It's just that the competitors require you to be MORE unlucky to see a drive die on you.

Once a single computer becomes your sole provider of media, shopping, games, and social interaction, it really does become, "the god you pray to:, and that's really scary (at least to me).
"single point of failure" is more appropriate imho.
As long as we aren't talking of Apple or Linux fanboys anyway.

I find the current obsession with "smart phones", to be well, "deviant behaviour".:D
I'm curious about what will happen in the next generations, as this is the beginning of man-machine integration.
Of course it's just for constant access to pr0n, games and chat about the same old things, but at least it's a start.
 
No, again not exactly my point. My drives are used, but certainly not as frequently as a cloud service, and not in as hostile environment as that which I expect exists at Backblaze.
Yeah, but price differences between the models don't justify the risk anyway. I can get a WD red with 1 TB capacity for 60 euros or so (also in 2.5 inch size, which is amusing), unless they start throwing seagates at me for 10 or so euros I don't see the point of risking.

Since any of us could slap in a HDD in a few minutes, and then open it almost instantly thereafter, Backblaze makes even less sense if it tracks with the story you're telling.
well, apart from the fact that most people won't dare doing something like that, that's an off-site storage place that is babysitted by actual sysadmins and locked behind a password and a time wait.
Safer than the average hard drive with usb 3.0 laying around.
It's mostly for backups though.

The only point in favor of cloud storage then, is that it's in a different physical location, a selling point as protection against catastrophic loss of data, due to destruction of the original location, (fire, flood, hurricane, lightning strikes, or perhaps a nuclear meltdown). Now you name a few.
Thiefs are much more common. IT equipment (especially apple) is very interesting for a thief. Easy to grab away with you, clean and resell as "used" for a good profit on anyone's favourite website.

What's always been a pet superstition of mine, is that platter data density is increasing to the point where mechanical manufacturing tolerances could get to be larger than the data points which need to be read.
Yeah, to go further (in the future designs) they are already throwing tech gimmicks at the problem like HAMR from WD and Seagate (lasers heat platter to somehow increase data density while writing, somehow.)
Still, flash storage is catching up fast (SSDs) and can take over if hard drives hit brick walls somewhere along the road.

Given that I have a couple of drives which are used daily, one of which is 10 years old, leads me to the obvious, (correct or otherwise ), conclusion, "they sure don't build 'em that way they used to", or, I'm one really lucky son of a gun.
Well, the failure rates are called "high" but we are still talking of 10% failure rate over three years or so. If I have not failed hard at math it means that 90% of the drives are still alive after three years.

90% is still the overwhelming majority, and if you aren't very unlucky you are one of them.
It's just that the competitors require you to be MORE unlucky to see a drive die on you.

Once a single computer becomes your sole provider of media, shopping, games, and social interaction, it really does become, "the god you pray to:, and that's really scary (at least to me).
"single point of failure" is more appropriate imho.
As long as we aren't talking of Apple or Linux fanboys anyway.

I find the current obsession with "smart phones", to be well, "deviant behaviour".:D
I'm curious about what will happen in the next generations, as this is the beginning of man-machine integration.
Of course it's just for constant access to pr0n, games and chat about the same old things, but at least it's a start.[/QUOTE]
 
Update: just had another Seagate fail on me today, the last one I own. This was a 1TB Backup Plus external. Seagate - never again.
 
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