Best 8TB Drive

timwhit

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One of my 2TB Samsung drives is failing. I got everything off of it, but I'd like to replace it with something larger. What 8TB drive is good right now?
 

LunarMist

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Good for what? I have 17 of the WD helium 8TB NAS drives. They are only 5400RPM though.
 

LunarMist

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Why not PMR? Do you mean no SMR?

I'd get a 7200 rpm NAS drive, HGST or Seagate.
 

DrunkenBastard

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The Seagate Enterprise Capacity drive would be best from a performance and reliability perspective, you will pay a premium thpugh.
 

LunarMist

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I use the 10TB helium Seagate Enterprise Capacity drives. The 8TB did not have helium gas at the time. Now they even have a 12TB, but it has more platters and requires somewhat more power than the usual helium drives.
 

timwhit

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I use the 10TB helium Seagate Enterprise Capacity drives. The 8TB did not have helium gas at the time. Now they even have a 12TB, but it has more platters and requires somewhat more power than the usual helium drives.

Do you have a link?
 

Newtun

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I have bunch of these. I think they were nearly $600 16 months ago. The prices are much lower now.
I probably would not buy drives from the Amazon, but that is another issue.
One of the Amazon reviewers from that link makes an interesting point:
P. Luo said:
This ST10000NM0016 is of the legacy 512e layout, i.e., 512 bytes per sector, as most consumer grade drives. Pick ST10000NM0146 (or ST10000NM0156, ST10000NM0176 if you want native encryption) instead if you want the native 4KiB (4096 bytes) layout. 4K native is more reliable and performant, as it has more ECC bytes in each sector to perform advanced error correction, and gets rid of the inefficient 512/4K emulation by directly exposing 4KiB physical sectors to the operating systems.
 

LunarMist

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One of the Amazon reviewers from that link makes an interesting point:

I'm not sure about that ECC part being different for the 512e. I thought it was before the emulation since the drives all have the same capacity. They all have the same 10^15 UER and 2.5M hours MTBF.

Anyway I know that the types cannot be mixed in my NAS array and I already had 3 of the ST10000NM0016. The others are less available and more expensive as well.
The Hitachi 10TB He10 has both 4Kn and 512e types and again they have exactly the same specs.
 

Handruin

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I only recently purchased two 8TB HGST NAS drives. So far they're fine. We discussed them a little bit over in this thread. B&H had them on sale which is why I picked up a couple. One thing to note is that the bottom srew hole mounting location has changed in these drives and also in some other WD varieties so just be aware in case this causes you an issue.

Otherwise I haven't spent much time with the drive and two samples is hardly any kind of statistic. I did do full drive scans on the before putting them into workstations and both had no issues so far. Depending on what you want to do, it might be worth googling about how people are buying the 8TB external drives and shucking the drive out of them. They are typically less expensive but I'd guess this voids the warranty.
 

LunarMist

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I think he means mixing 512n, 512e and 4Kn drives in the same array... If it's software based RAID or something like ZFS/BTRFS, then it shouldn't matter... If it's hardware RAID, well that'll be up to the firmware of the controller to decide.

I read something on the Synology or QNAP sites. Perhaps it changed recently and is no longer an issue.
 

sechs

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I think he means mixing 512n, 512e and 4Kn drives in the same array... If it's software based RAID or something like ZFS/BTRFS, then it shouldn't matter... If it's hardware RAID, well that'll be up to the firmware of the controller to decide.
Sounds like a great reason to avoid hardware RAID in anything but big-iron enterprise settings.
 

LunarMist

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Is the newer version worth the $120 premium?

My guess is that the new one is worse in that it uses a cheaper drive than a WD RED, but there may be other reasons for a different SKU.
H3.H0A83 is the firmware for the RED so you can check it without opening the enclosure.
 

LunarMist

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The new one was on sale, but not in stores. There should be some reports from owners soon if not already. I've not been searching for them.
 

LunarMist

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Is the configuration 6 platters on air rather than helium?
 

Handruin

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This drive does not containing helium. I don't know the platter count.
 

DrunkenBastard

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Not related to the 8tb drives but prob an appropriate place for discussion:

"It is interesting to note that Seagate has been talking about 14 TB models for a while, without any concrete public details. Meanwhile, the company’s 14 TB HDD will be more than just a capacity bump. With the 12 TB Enterprise Capacity (Exos) model, Seagate began to use TDMR (two-dimensional magnetic recording) technology to boost the read performance of the drives. The 14 TB HDD will take advantage of Seagate’s 2nd gen TDMR implementation. We can expect an increase in performance and/or other refinements."

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1206...h-gen-pmr-tech-enables-14-tb-pmr-hdds-in-2018

Anyone seen performance numbers for the 12 TB Enterprise Capacity?
 

LunarMist

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Just to clarify, the $200 drive has the better HDD than the $300 one?

Wants vs Needs Lunar. I want it, but don't really need it. Plus my car needs to be replaced soon.

Probably, but I was referring to the HGST 8TB 7200 RPM NAS drive, which should be a good one. I have no need now, but would certainly buy a half dozen.
 

snowhiker

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Price dropped down to $140. I ordered with same/day in-store pickup. $151.89 out-the-door w/tax.

Back up to $200. Flurry of activity on the Hardocp forums with people grabbing them at the $140 price. Seems people are still getting the 256MB cache 'RED' drives in these units.
 

LunarMist

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Back up to $200. Flurry of activity on the Hardocp forums with people grabbing them at the $140 price. Seems people are still getting the 256MB cache 'RED' drives in these units.

So I opened one of the enclosures from last year and it contains the WD80EMAZ (white label) drive rather than the REDs previously used.
The EMAZ has the same 83.H0A83 firmware as the EFAX REDs. I was checking the drives prior to running the full disc test and breaking open the cases in case WD pulled a switch.
Since the FW is the same I suspect the drives are the same and WD is doing this to prevent any diversions.
 
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