Not a bad Price for such storage.
It'll be my first Seagate HDD, keen to give it a shot.
Amazon seems to be price matching with free delivery for Prime users, for: $159.93 but with US plug
https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07CX8QBG4/ref=twister_B07QDZTN…
That bloke made it look a hell of alot more difficult than it actually is.
I think the hardest part of my shucking experience was opening up the drive casing. That bloke made it look easier than it actually is.
So so tempting.
I know that some smaller capacity Seagate drives may be SMR instead of PMR, so if you're not using it for archiving, it might be worth doing some investigating to make sure you get a decent model.
People keep saying that the drives inside these are SMR, but I haven't had any performance issues with these drives. Either they are not SMR drives or seagate has done a very good job of reducing the performance hit of SMR to the point where it is unnoticable.
Or you simply don't understand when SMR drives become really slow. Hint - it's not when you're writing large files to empty drive.
Can I ask what workloads you do, that you'd expect to notice?
4/8k editing perhaps?
Here's a decent explanation:
Shingling lets vendors cram more tracks in the same space, eliminating the guard bands that separate tracks on a more conventional disk. After data is written to track 1, the head moves a fraction of a track over and writes track 2.
Since the drive can read the narrow exposed portion of each track, shingled drives read data pretty much the same as conventional drives. The problem comes when an application tries to randomly write to a track that’s already been partially overwritten by the next shingled track. Where a conventional drive can just move the heads back to track 54 and rewrite sector 17, if you tried that on a shingled drive you’d wipe out sector 17 on tracks 55 and 56 as well.
So basically when you try overwrite anything data is held in cache or written to temporary area and then moved to original space where drive needs read and refresh all 3 overlapping tracks. When that happens performance of drive drops to abysmal single-digit MB/sec.
TL;DR - SMR drives are not good for any editing or torrents.
There's no investigation required, Seagate Barracuda Pro branded 8 and 10TB drives are PMR, Seagate Barracuda 8TB and less - SMR.
Unfortunately there's two 8TB Seagate models which are different only by one 0 in the name, ST8000DM004 is SMR and ST8000DM0004 is PMR.
Just received to 10TB expansions from Amazon yesterday. These are barra pros inside. They cost $300 shipped, at one stage they were $265 each. Well worth it to go the bigger size. Just scanning/testing the drives now prior to shucking.
Took 14 hours to do the 10TB write, conducting the read test now. The drive doesn't run hot in the USB case.
I managed to buy one at $265. Should have got more.
I did the test in the usb case and shucked it. It's running much cooler now.
A little digging around, lead me to this Reddit Page, where a person reported shucking this drive, came out as the model/specs below.
ST6000DM003
Seagate Barracuda 6TB Internal Hard Drive HDD
3.5 Inch SATA 6 Gb/s 5400 RPM 256MB Cache
for Computer Desktop PC (ST6000DM003)
Seagate Barracuda ST6000DM003
• TGMR recording technology provides the drives with increased areal density. ???????????????
Means it can fly.
I am looking for one but are these drives reliable? or should I pay for Google Drive (Cloud) yearly service.
How reliable is Google Cloud if you forget to pay?
Pretty bad. If you fill it up then let the storage lapse, they'll stop your gmail from working ;(
They are as reliable as other consumer grade HDDs, which means anything important should be backup up to at least one other (preferably off-site) location & media. If it's really important stuff you might want to consider following the 3-2-1 Backup Rule (google it)
I've got that "US Plug" version from Amazon US about a month ago. It came with 2xUS, 2xEU, 1xUK and 1xOz. Yours might be different. ST6000DM003 inside and yes, it's a SMR drive.
TGMR can still mean SMR unfortunately:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/9ludbz/how_is_…
Good for Xbox one or stick to portable?
Is the unit OS X compatible??
OS X by default can only read a NTFS partition (but can't write to it) which this hard drive comes with a NTFS partition as standard. You would either have to leave it as read only and write to it from a Windows PC, use a third party NTFS tool for OS X or reformat the drive to the native Apple OS X format. But doing that reformat to native OS X partition format you would lose the ability to use the hard dirve on a Windows PC or devices which can't read from an OS X partition. Which basically includes all media player devices that i know of.
This is a good third party NTFS driver for OS X from Pargaon but it's not freeware. But it would be worth it as it allows OS X to not only read from NTFS but write too.
Another option is to format it as exFAT for compatibility with both macOS and Windows.
Why is there such a huge difference in price between the 4TB and 6TB?. Considering that you can buy the 4TB for $99 at OW. There shouldn't be such a huge difference in price.
where? is that $99 full 3.5" drive or 2.5"?
OW and is 3.5"
i assume it will be SMR, right? hmm tempted
That's actually very good price
What huge difference? The price per TB is $25 vs $26.5.
Well people expect the bigger the size, the price per tb is significantly reduced so probably 6tb is around $130
Can also get 4TB from JB HiFi for $99.
https://www.jbhifi.com.au/products/seagate-expansion-desktop…
So I have two 1tb drives that are really old and I want to replace. One is for pictures/videos of the fam, the other for games that I rarely play. Would this be a worthwhile purchase to replace both of my 1tb drives? Thanks
Short answer: Yes
Long answer? I note that someone above linked a $99 4tb drive too, that may be more suitable/cost effective, yes? I have half a gb spare between the drives so 4tb should be plenty, and 6tb overkill.
4TB for $99 is more cost effective. Quality-wise they're not much different, so have backups.
@[Deactivated]: Thanks, think I'll for the 4tb, assuming it's also shuckable. I have a 3tb backup drive, though it's getting on in age too…
@mojadu: me too the smart test showing my old drive inside nas is not healthy anymore.
better to replace than sorry
@[Deactivated]: hmm… but i cant afford the high grade hdd…. i have WD green already like 5 years, still going alright.
now just wait till ebay does 15% off binglee or officeworks
@CyberMurning: All I can say is don't put shucked SMR drive with void warranty into RAID5-type array, you will regret it and lose money.
@[Deactivated]: but if my raid5 type is not for torrent, but just for storing movies or photos for example, should be better, right?
as it will be few write and many reads activities.
what i do on my NAS is:
1 small drive for torrent, no backup raid whatsoever, just single drive. once the movie completed i will manually move them to:
4 drives bind together into one volume with synology raid, this is my drive for media files and backup.
from below link:
SMR: Shingled Magnetic Recording
The downside occurs when data is deleted and that space is reused. If existing data overlaps the space you want to reuse, this can mean delays in writing the new data. These drives are great for archive storage (write once, read many) use cases, but if your files turn over with some regularity, stick with PMR drives.
edit:
hmm probably still not good as i will write to it every 2 days sometimes more often.
@mojadu: 4TB for $99 are shuckable. I grabbed 2 from officeworks over the weekend and they are now in my htpc/plex server being used for media storage.
Is this sort of drive meant to be plugged in 24/7? Or only on an adhoc basis when wanting to back up or transfer files?
Either works. It powers down when not in use automatically.
Thanks for that… good to know.
Got mine today, shucked it and put it in my server. Inside was a ST6000DM003 which is currently $259 at PCCG so not bad.
Anyone else get their order cancelled due to no stock?
These drives should be easily shuckable. Video instructions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0DevtBXP6A.