Holy... bejesus... First, I need these in my life. Second, that HDD casing looks like tank armor... Thirdly, uhh... did I mention I need these in my life? Finally... GIVE NOW.
Also, can't they just make a custom size and sell an enclosure to put it inside a 5.25 bay? Like... a 4.25" or hell, just make it a 5.25 size so we can have a 30TB drive and call it a day... lol.
Problem is that the datacenter market has a LOT of rather expensive gear dedicated to cramming a butt-ton of 3.5" drives into a small space. By not making them in 3.5, they lock themselves out of that market. They also lock themselves out of the laptop market(not that anyone is installing 14TBs of storage in a laptop) Heck, more and more often desktop cases don't even have 5.25" bays.
Also, larger disks are more difficult to spin up and stabilize. They also see a higher speed variation between tracks, and are limited to lower RPMs due to the distant outer tracks(spin a 12" and 5" disk at the same RPMs, and the larger one sees far higher stresses).
That is why performance and capacity went up even as disk sizes went down, from the original washing machine hard disks to the 5.25" units to the 3.5" and 2.5" devices we use now. Admittedly, we're currently banging on the doors of physical constraints, which IS an issue. But I'd wager the odds of a return to larger disks are pretty slim due to the established form-factors being, well, established.
Spot on. There were 5.25" consumer drives in the late 90s, Quantum Bigfoots. They were slow and crap, and not really that much larger in capacity (cheap though!!!)
Conversely, the WD Raptors (10k RPM SATA consumer drives) were excellent performance, but actually used 2.5" platters. Later versions were 2.5" drives in a sled.
Even at 3600rpm the last gen 5.25” drives were notoriously unreliable. Pay attention to the slides in this article. Disk flutter is not entirely corrected with helium. Rotational forces cause an inherent imbalance even on 3.5” drive platters. Media wear and head crashes are quickly guaranteed with 5” platters. This is why many nearline drives in data centers and JBOD’s, mobile drives, and high rpm drives like WD Velociraptors are 2.5” because they are more durable and rotationally balanced.
Time to upgrade the drives to be held in a liquid Xenon environment with a Heisenberg compensator and inertial dampeners... Star Trek "tech" in my HDDs, let's get busy! Thank you very much Toshiba!
Not making it 3.5" completely misses the target market of rackmount servers. Nobody is going to make custom enclosures for non-standard sized stuff, so it simply won't sell. It's not like some consumer shit where you have a single drive in an USB enclosure and don't care how big or small it is.
Plus a 5.25" drive would really suffer due to vibrations in a dense environment, beyond all the other mechanical stresses involved with such a massive drive. And much of the tech wouldn't trickle down to consumer drives. So it doesn't really make sense to go that route.
I used to have a couple of Seagate 9gb full height 5.25 inch SCSI drives. They were super cheap on the used market back when 20GB 3.5inch drives were "king" like 100 years ago or something
A larger HDD i.e. 5.25" enables a larger disk size. But this also means that the disk flutter increases significantly leading to more TMR errors. This may lead to having lower spindle speeds to meet the TMR. At this time 3.5" is the sweet spot for spindle speed vs TMR tradeoff.
The speed per TB will be dropping. For 14TB drive its below 20MB/s per 1TB, for 3TB drive its 60MB/s per 1TB. They should focus on making all the the heads do their own job.
Wow, Toshiba is really catching up. Now the recent (rather small, I admit) price drops in high capacity HDDs explain themselves. The cartel is being attacked.
Yeah, it's all great but prices need to drop for these high capacity drives. At consumer level we're still stuck at 3-4TB drives , anything higher has terrible price/gb. We were promised otherwise a while ago.
If it was early 2015, yes. And that is just one single 8 TB drive, the Archive one from Seagate. The other ones are still insanely priced. Imagine, that drive was released 2014, and is still only $50 below MSRP from 2014 - and April this year it was at MSRP of 2014 still. Before that it was above MSRP!
Those are heading to cloud storages/enterprises. What would be the best 7200 RPM 3-5TB HDD to get for average Joe for home PC? looking for quiet, fast and reliable options.
So what is the stats on how often a datacenter has to upgrade to more hard drive space? It would seem that it is a hard thing to measure right? Because data comes and goes constantly. Buy to much you waste lots of money (and power costs). Buy to little you can be screwed.
Do data centers have size they start out at to begin with in a new one?
Anandtech should do a whole article on the inter workings of one, and day-t0-day operations. With lots of sexy cable pictures :D
From the Cloud Vendor perspective, HDD capacity increase is too slow. And it seems there is no end in sight for our Data appetite. Western Digital's roadmap of MAMR is much interesting and I hope they have those out soon.
I seem to have ended up with 20tb of hdd which I dont really need 2x6 1x5 plus others maybe I should look into selling off my wd reds. but 4k and Blue Planet II .. so maybe not
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LordSojar - Thursday, December 7, 2017 - link
Holy... bejesus... First, I need these in my life. Second, that HDD casing looks like tank armor... Thirdly, uhh... did I mention I need these in my life? Finally... GIVE NOW.Also, can't they just make a custom size and sell an enclosure to put it inside a 5.25 bay? Like... a 4.25" or hell, just make it a 5.25 size so we can have a 30TB drive and call it a day... lol.
Lord of the Bored - Friday, December 8, 2017 - link
Problem is that the datacenter market has a LOT of rather expensive gear dedicated to cramming a butt-ton of 3.5" drives into a small space. By not making them in 3.5, they lock themselves out of that market. They also lock themselves out of the laptop market(not that anyone is installing 14TBs of storage in a laptop)Heck, more and more often desktop cases don't even have 5.25" bays.
Also, larger disks are more difficult to spin up and stabilize. They also see a higher speed variation between tracks, and are limited to lower RPMs due to the distant outer tracks(spin a 12" and 5" disk at the same RPMs, and the larger one sees far higher stresses).
That is why performance and capacity went up even as disk sizes went down, from the original washing machine hard disks to the 5.25" units to the 3.5" and 2.5" devices we use now.
Admittedly, we're currently banging on the doors of physical constraints, which IS an issue. But I'd wager the odds of a return to larger disks are pretty slim due to the established form-factors being, well, established.
rtho782 - Friday, December 8, 2017 - link
Spot on. There were 5.25" consumer drives in the late 90s, Quantum Bigfoots. They were slow and crap, and not really that much larger in capacity (cheap though!!!)Conversely, the WD Raptors (10k RPM SATA consumer drives) were excellent performance, but actually used 2.5" platters. Later versions were 2.5" drives in a sled.
Manch - Friday, December 8, 2017 - link
I still have hard drive platters the size of large Pizzas. I turned them into clocks.I tried to see what else I could use them for and found that use as a Frisbee is just dangerous.
If I can find a volunteer to test it, maybe use one as a Smart Car wheel......
Samus - Saturday, December 9, 2017 - link
Even at 3600rpm the last gen 5.25” drives were notoriously unreliable. Pay attention to the slides in this article. Disk flutter is not entirely corrected with helium. Rotational forces cause an inherent imbalance even on 3.5” drive platters. Media wear and head crashes are quickly guaranteed with 5” platters. This is why many nearline drives in data centers and JBOD’s, mobile drives, and high rpm drives like WD Velociraptors are 2.5” because they are more durable and rotationally balanced.LordSojar - Saturday, December 9, 2017 - link
Time to upgrade the drives to be held in a liquid Xenon environment with a Heisenberg compensator and inertial dampeners... Star Trek "tech" in my HDDs, let's get busy! Thank you very much Toshiba!LordSojar - Friday, December 8, 2017 - link
Oh yeah. I completely understand the physics behind not having 5.25" HDDs... but hey, a guy can still dream right? :)timecop1818 - Friday, December 8, 2017 - link
Not making it 3.5" completely misses the target market of rackmount servers. Nobody is going to make custom enclosures for non-standard sized stuff, so it simply won't sell. It's not like some consumer shit where you have a single drive in an USB enclosure and don't care how big or small it is.ddrіver - Friday, December 8, 2017 - link
Plus a 5.25" drive would really suffer due to vibrations in a dense environment, beyond all the other mechanical stresses involved with such a massive drive. And much of the tech wouldn't trickle down to consumer drives. So it doesn't really make sense to go that route.LordSojar - Saturday, December 9, 2017 - link
For sure timecop, agreed 100%. I'd still love to have a 5.25" 30TB variant, just for NAS storage, lol! It would be glorious.BurnItDwn - Friday, December 8, 2017 - link
I used to have a couple of Seagate 9gb full height 5.25 inch SCSI drives. They were super cheap on the used market back when 20GB 3.5inch drives were "king" like 100 years ago or somethingThis is how they actually sounded when they spun up ....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4L63dawczQ
LordanSS - Saturday, December 9, 2017 - link
That's almost like a jet plane starting it's turbines.... heh.vishnumrao - Friday, December 8, 2017 - link
A larger HDD i.e. 5.25" enables a larger disk size. But this also means that the disk flutter increases significantly leading to more TMR errors. This may lead to having lower spindle speeds to meet the TMR. At this time 3.5" is the sweet spot for spindle speed vs TMR tradeoff.DeepLake - Thursday, December 7, 2017 - link
The speed per TB will be dropping. For 14TB drive its below 20MB/s per 1TB, for 3TB drive its 60MB/s per 1TB. They should focus on making all the the heads do their own job.Beaver M. - Friday, December 8, 2017 - link
Wow, Toshiba is really catching up. Now the recent (rather small, I admit) price drops in high capacity HDDs explain themselves. The cartel is being attacked.sweeper765 - Friday, December 8, 2017 - link
Yeah, it's all great but prices need to drop for these high capacity drives. At consumer level we're still stuck at 3-4TB drives , anything higher has terrible price/gb. We were promised otherwise a while ago.nandnandnand - Friday, December 8, 2017 - link
8 TB has been sold at reasonable $/GB.Beaver M. - Saturday, December 9, 2017 - link
If it was early 2015, yes. And that is just one single 8 TB drive, the Archive one from Seagate. The other ones are still insanely priced. Imagine, that drive was released 2014, and is still only $50 below MSRP from 2014 - and April this year it was at MSRP of 2014 still. Before that it was above MSRP!milkod2001 - Friday, December 8, 2017 - link
Those are heading to cloud storages/enterprises. What would be the best 7200 RPM 3-5TB HDD to get for average Joe for home PC? looking for quiet, fast and reliable options.imaheadcase - Friday, December 8, 2017 - link
So what is the stats on how often a datacenter has to upgrade to more hard drive space? It would seem that it is a hard thing to measure right? Because data comes and goes constantly. Buy to much you waste lots of money (and power costs). Buy to little you can be screwed.Do data centers have size they start out at to begin with in a new one?
Anandtech should do a whole article on the inter workings of one, and day-t0-day operations. With lots of sexy cable pictures :D
nandnandnand - Friday, December 8, 2017 - link
2 TB PMR platters possible?MrSpadge - Friday, December 8, 2017 - link
With heat / microwave assist yes, otherwise it's borderline. Recently there was an article here on just that, the platter density.iwod - Sunday, December 10, 2017 - link
From the Cloud Vendor perspective, HDD capacity increase is too slow. And it seems there is no end in sight for our Data appetite. Western Digital's roadmap of MAMR is much interesting and I hope they have those out soon.dromoxen - Monday, December 11, 2017 - link
I seem to have ended up with 20tb of hdd which I dont really need 2x6 1x5 plus others maybe I should look into selling off my wd reds. but 4k and Blue Planet II .. so maybe not