WD 6TB Mobile Drive

[LunarMist]

Western Digital Unveils World’s Highest Capacity 2.5” Portable HDDs, Boosting Its Most Popular Product Portfolios | Western Digital

Western Digital today is introducing a portable HDD expansion across its WD, WD_BLACK and SanDisk Professional product lineups, boasting the world’s highest storage capacity in a 2.5” portable HDD.

www.westerndigital.com

So now you can get 6TB, probably slowly with the shingles.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm obviously not the target user for such a thing, but it does give me hope that they're offering a variety of different SKUs. Maybe the more expensive "Pro" models won't be SMR nonsense.

The Seagate 15mm 5TB drives are fine-ish as backup targets and they have been reliable in my experience. I haven't ever had one fail and I have a couple dozen of them. Other than sliding in to a 2.5" bay on a rack server, I can't imagine why else anyone would want one.

 

[LunarMist]

Since SSD prices are going crazy, I'm sure that the mobile drives are not dead yet.
One of the few HDDs I had that failed was a 4TB Passport around 2016, when that was considered large.
I'm willing to buy a 6TB if it is CMR, but not the painful shingles.

 

[Mercutio]

SSDs follow DRAM pricing patterns. We just happen to be on the high side of the seesaw at the moment.

(He said, having just coughed up $3k for 3TB of ECC DDR4).

 

[LunarMist]

Is that for your personal use?

It looks like the first 6TB I see is this: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...g_006t_gband_g_drive_armoratd_space_grey.html

 

[Mercutio]

The RAM is for my colo systems. I have a total of 3 SR630s and they're going to have 1TB RAM each.

 

[LunarMist]

That's more like an investment in your LLC than coughing up money.

 

[Mercutio]

I would rather have invested $1500, which is what that RAM cost in February.

 

[LunarMist]

I'm glad to have folks in supply chain that monitor such things. It was certainly a problem especially in 2021 when some products were super difficult to source (like the microcontrollers) and had insane prices or >80 weeks lead times for some custom items we needed in large quantity (not computer stuff). At least you are mainly using COTS components, right? Still there must be some software that you can use for notification when lead times or price are increasing at a threshold rate and tie that back to BOMs or whatever.

Anyways, the 6TB drive is <$250. I'm having mental flashbacks to the pain and suffering of shingles for about three days.

 

[LunarMist]

So they are SMR.

 

[Mercutio]

SMR drives have a place, especially as second-line backups and data hoarder media vaults. Hopefully, that $250 MSRP will get discounted to something realistic pretty quickly.

 

[LunarMist]

I would rather eat an 8TB QVO.

 

[Mercutio]

For ~$650, you can get a new 8TB u.2 Intel drive with TLC NAND, although I think the overlap between people looking for 8TB u.2 drives and people willing to accept a 6TB SMR drive in a 15mm 2.5" package is probably pretty small.