I've added a couple 10TB WD Reds (external shucks) to my server for $16/TB. The trick is buying at the right time. Just wait, the external 16TB drives will also drop under $200 soon enough.
HDD prices always seem like a reverse Gauß distribution, where somewhere in the middle of the capacity range (currently 5 to 6TB) is the lowest price/TB and then at either ends (500GB and 16TB or something) it's the highest. Apart from the flooding that happened some years back, I have not seen them reverse in pricing/TB on the scale of a few months. Sure, when you compare a black friday sale with prices immediately afterward, there might be a price hike. But that's not how you compare things.
HDD's are dead for most users. Not everybody wants to keep big NAS. the only place where HDD still is unrivalled is cheap NAS & cold storage. nands die way to fast without power to just plug out and keep years of your images away.
Hard drives will lose data also. Eventually. An SSD used for bulk storage and not heavily worn is going to keep data for years if stored at room temperature. The minimum JDEC spec IIRC, for TLC is around 9 months data retention at room temperature (20C) at maximum P/E cycles. A nearly new drive with only a few dozen P/E cycles on it at room temperature is likely to retain the data for a few years. Kept at 10C and fairly new and it could be more than a decade. MLC lasts even longer.
It is when heavily used and kept in a warm environment that problems occur when not used/cells refreshed. Keep it in a hot car and what was months to years of integrity on the data and at 60C it might be a few weeks. In the desert in a hot car, it might just be a week or two at 70C.
I'm sure there are times where you can find better deals, so I just try to use standard MSRP pricing when comparing between generations. I think I paid closer to $50/TB for my 12TB IronWolf.
(And yes, the original comment meant per TB not per GB)
16 TB under $200 soon enough? Maybe in 10 to 15 years. I tried to wait a long time, but I had to buy a 12 TB now for $450. I really tried not to, but I had to. And I waited 7+ years for the prices to come down. But 12 TB was the only one that made more or less sense in terms of price and capacity. Now I already notice hat 12 TB wasnt enough and I will have to get a 14 or 16 TB one in the next years. Exactly what I wanted to avoid. The prices are completely out of whack since the "flood". And many have analyzed this and came to the conclusion that the flood wasnt nearly as bad as claimed for HDD manufacturers and instead its a cartel that started back then. Toshiba made a little dent in it, but then obviously joined in after a short time, when they realized how it works.
The problem is nobody can prove it, since it works without documents or words shared between them. They simply know whats best for them and act like it seemingly in a classic conspiracy. But they never talk to each other. They just know.
Many countries have investigated it, since its really obvious. But they just couldnt do much.
Anyhoo, as it stands 3.8¢ per GB is still 1/8th the price of the cheapest SSD. Mind you, that number was 1/10th, and even 1/20th, not so long ago, so SSD is actually catching up, but it has some ways to go.
Actually, a pair of the Micron 5210 7.68 ION drives comes out to ~$1810, which would be 3x the price of the above 16TB drives. That's closing in on about 3x the price. That's not far away, though still a big distance from just getting two 8TB drives, which would come out to ~$300, a 6x difference.
But as you corrected, SSD price is rapidly approaching HDD price. It won't be a decade or more unless there are some massive advances in magnetic storage. It is more likely to be a year or two before the cheapest per GB SSD surpasses the most expensive per GB HDD. Give it another 3-4 years and the cheapest SSDs are likely to surpass the cheapest HDDs.
Let me know when you can buy any other form of storage media that holds 16TB for equivalent cost. You personally do not have a usage scenario for it, but these prices are dirt cheap to enterprise customers.
Part of the problem is the lack of competition because of consolidation in the hard drive industry. Lack of innovation plus the lack of motivation to lower prices for consumers.
Lol they are decreasing. Cost per TB is currently at $16 for 10TB disks and it has never been lower.
Eventually 12TB will come out mainstream and probably for a bit less per TB, or at least the same per T at a higher density which is saving money because a HDD slot has a cost. You need to have space, power plug and data plug for each HDD.
When you are connecting dozens of HDDs to a PC each slot has a real noticeable cost to it when you are spending money on SAS controllers and SAS expanders and backplanes.
I wouldn’t trust Seagate with 1TB of my data, let alone 16TB. You know what else reduces TCO? Fewer catastrophic drive failures. Seagate is by far the worse of the hard drive OEMs for reliability both from experience and Backblaze data.
At least on high capacity drives. Low capacity drives still seem the be trash from Seagate. Toshiba is also very good. I guess since they use Hitachi tech.
Why do people keep regurgitating those Backblaze stats from years ago? You do realise they update and release those quite often don't you? Every quarter to be exact.
Yes, the 4TB Seagates were a mess, but that was quite a few years ago already.
This shows that something is up with both Seagate's and HGST's 12TB lines, higher failure rates than normal in Q1.
Looking at their lifetime stats, you can see that the WD60EFRX had an even worse trackrecord than the ST4000DM000 from Seagate. Results made in the past don't garantuee future prospects, so don't regurgitate old statistics that don't hold water in new product-lines.
Look closely. Seagates failure rate on those 12 TB is more or less as it was before. The HGST one is just that. One drive. That could just be a rare exception. You will have to wait until you can say that theres something wrong with them. But safe to say, those drive have already existed for a long time, so you would see more fail if there really was a problem.
The HGST 12 TB drives are too new to say much; but if you scroll down to the lifetime stats the Seagate 12 TB drives have an average age of ~10 months; and a 1.65% annual failure rate; which is noticably higher than the ~1% that their 6-10TB models have shown. Backblaze themselves have noted that Seagate's numbers have been trending the wrong way for the last 9 months. The 12's aren't bad drives by any means; but the uptick there is noticeable enough that if I was going to build a raid today with Seagate drives I'd lean toward the precautionary route of going with 8 or 10s instead of 12s and not just because the marginal price/TB ticks up a fair amount for the larger size.
Yeesh, I remember the transition from the 6.4 GB drive to 8 and 10 GB and they didn't cost much less than this when accounting for inflation. (Or 20 MB to 40 MB...)
I wouldn't mind some sort of NAS setup with a you these new 10-16 TB drives to keep my digital packrat inside satisfied.
Until/unless they make a major revision to their firmware designs keeping the mode available for whatever handful of customers do need it has a very low marginal cost.
A 16TB HDD for ~$650 is reasonable but I wonder what they will cost in a year or two. We are getting closer to all SSD NAS solutions for prosumers but we are not there yet :)
These drives are excellent for cold storage and/or surveillance. I have the Exos x12TB in a custom server I built for my business that stores my surveillance camera footage. Now I’m thinking about taking up to 16TB.
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azfacea - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
hard drives are dead. the cost per GB is rising as they lose volume.vanilla_gorilla - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
Is it rising? The 16TB IronWolf is $38/GB. Seems like it's come down slightly from a year or two ago.nathanddrews - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
I've added a couple 10TB WD Reds (external shucks) to my server for $16/TB. The trick is buying at the right time. Just wait, the external 16TB drives will also drop under $200 soon enough.Death666Angel - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
HDD prices always seem like a reverse Gauß distribution, where somewhere in the middle of the capacity range (currently 5 to 6TB) is the lowest price/TB and then at either ends (500GB and 16TB or something) it's the highest. Apart from the flooding that happened some years back, I have not seen them reverse in pricing/TB on the scale of a few months. Sure, when you compare a black friday sale with prices immediately afterward, there might be a price hike. But that's not how you compare things.deil - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
HDD's are dead for most users. Not everybody wants to keep big NAS.the only place where HDD still is unrivalled is cheap NAS & cold storage.
nands die way to fast without power to just plug out and keep years of your images away.
Byte - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
More like i don't want to keep ticking time bombs around to lose my 16tb of data.azazel1024 - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
Hard drives will lose data also. Eventually. An SSD used for bulk storage and not heavily worn is going to keep data for years if stored at room temperature. The minimum JDEC spec IIRC, for TLC is around 9 months data retention at room temperature (20C) at maximum P/E cycles. A nearly new drive with only a few dozen P/E cycles on it at room temperature is likely to retain the data for a few years. Kept at 10C and fairly new and it could be more than a decade. MLC lasts even longer.It is when heavily used and kept in a warm environment that problems occur when not used/cells refreshed. Keep it in a hot car and what was months to years of integrity on the data and at 60C it might be a few weeks. In the desert in a hot car, it might just be a week or two at 70C.
vanilla_gorilla - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
I'm sure there are times where you can find better deals, so I just try to use standard MSRP pricing when comparing between generations. I think I paid closer to $50/TB for my 12TB IronWolf.(And yes, the original comment meant per TB not per GB)
Beaver M. - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
16 TB under $200 soon enough?Maybe in 10 to 15 years.
I tried to wait a long time, but I had to buy a 12 TB now for $450. I really tried not to, but I had to.
And I waited 7+ years for the prices to come down.
But 12 TB was the only one that made more or less sense in terms of price and capacity. Now I already notice hat 12 TB wasnt enough and I will have to get a 14 or 16 TB one in the next years. Exactly what I wanted to avoid.
The prices are completely out of whack since the "flood". And many have analyzed this and came to the conclusion that the flood wasnt nearly as bad as claimed for HDD manufacturers and instead its a cartel that started back then. Toshiba made a little dent in it, but then obviously joined in after a short time, when they realized how it works.
The problem is nobody can prove it, since it works without documents or words shared between them. They simply know whats best for them and act like it seemingly in a classic conspiracy. But they never talk to each other. They just know.
Many countries have investigated it, since its really obvious. But they just couldnt do much.
mukiex - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
I think you mean $38/TB?Anyhoo, as it stands 3.8¢ per GB is still 1/8th the price of the cheapest SSD. Mind you, that number was 1/10th, and even 1/20th, not so long ago, so SSD is actually catching up, but it has some ways to go.
mukiex - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
Actually, a pair of the Micron 5210 7.68 ION drives comes out to ~$1810, which would be 3x the price of the above 16TB drives. That's closing in on about 3x the price. That's not far away, though still a big distance from just getting two 8TB drives, which would come out to ~$300, a 6x difference.azazel1024 - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
Sure, still a lot more.But as you corrected, SSD price is rapidly approaching HDD price. It won't be a decade or more unless there are some massive advances in magnetic storage. It is more likely to be a year or two before the cheapest per GB SSD surpasses the most expensive per GB HDD. Give it another 3-4 years and the cheapest SSDs are likely to surpass the cheapest HDDs.
shadowx360 - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
Let me know when you can buy any other form of storage media that holds 16TB for equivalent cost. You personally do not have a usage scenario for it, but these prices are dirt cheap to enterprise customers.pugster - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
Part of the problem is the lack of competition because of consolidation in the hard drive industry. Lack of innovation plus the lack of motivation to lower prices for consumers.Beaver M. - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
There are 3 manufacturers who are all very good.Thats plenty of competition.
Its a cartel.
SirMaster - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
Lol they are decreasing. Cost per TB is currently at $16 for 10TB disks and it has never been lower.Eventually 12TB will come out mainstream and probably for a bit less per TB, or at least the same per T at a higher density which is saving money because a HDD slot has a cost. You need to have space, power plug and data plug for each HDD.
When you are connecting dozens of HDDs to a PC each slot has a real noticeable cost to it when you are spending money on SAS controllers and SAS expanders and backplanes.
ballsystemlord - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
10TB for $16 per TB!!! Where??? Newegg has them at $22 per TB refurbished, AM $28.4 new, frys $27 new, and ebay is $18.5 used.BMoon95 - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-10tb-ext...I've bought this one on sale and shucked it at 160. It regularly goes on sale for 160-180, making it 16gb/tb.
Beaver M. - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
That maybe works in NA, and not for everyone, since they are limited. In Europe you wont find such a loophole.piroroadkill - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
The trick is simply to Always Shuck™ and never buy bare drivesballsystemlord - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
Aw shucks (he he he).Sorry.
ballsystemlord - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
Thanks for the tips guys. I'll continue to watch this thread.shadowx360 - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
I wouldn’t trust Seagate with 1TB of my data, let alone 16TB. You know what else reduces TCO? Fewer catastrophic drive failures. Seagate is by far the worse of the hard drive OEMs for reliability both from experience and Backblaze data.r3loaded - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
Check the Backblaze data again, Seagate is coming out tops alongside Hitachi. It's WD you want to be wary of.Beaver M. - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
At least on high capacity drives. Low capacity drives still seem the be trash from Seagate.Toshiba is also very good. I guess since they use Hitachi tech.
iamafishiswear - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
Why do people keep regurgitating those Backblaze stats from years ago? You do realise they update and release those quite often don't you? Every quarter to be exact.Yes, the 4TB Seagates were a mess, but that was quite a few years ago already.
Like r3loaded says, check the data again, here's there latest for 2019 Q1: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-driv...
This shows that something is up with both Seagate's and HGST's 12TB lines, higher failure rates than normal in Q1.
Looking at their lifetime stats, you can see that the WD60EFRX had an even worse trackrecord than the ST4000DM000 from Seagate. Results made in the past don't garantuee future prospects, so don't regurgitate old statistics that don't hold water in new product-lines.
Beaver M. - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
Look closely.Seagates failure rate on those 12 TB is more or less as it was before. The HGST one is just that. One drive. That could just be a rare exception. You will have to wait until you can say that theres something wrong with them. But safe to say, those drive have already existed for a long time, so you would see more fail if there really was a problem.
DanNeely - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
The HGST 12 TB drives are too new to say much; but if you scroll down to the lifetime stats the Seagate 12 TB drives have an average age of ~10 months; and a 1.65% annual failure rate; which is noticably higher than the ~1% that their 6-10TB models have shown. Backblaze themselves have noted that Seagate's numbers have been trending the wrong way for the last 9 months. The 12's aren't bad drives by any means; but the uptick there is noticeable enough that if I was going to build a raid today with Seagate drives I'd lean toward the precautionary route of going with 8 or 10s instead of 12s and not just because the marginal price/TB ticks up a fair amount for the larger size.BikeDude - Sunday, July 7, 2019 - link
Some IronWolf drives struggle with write cache issues. See https://community.synology.com/enu/forum/6/post/12... and similar threads in that forum.evilspoons - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
Yeesh, I remember the transition from the 6.4 GB drive to 8 and 10 GB and they didn't cost much less than this when accounting for inflation. (Or 20 MB to 40 MB...)I wouldn't mind some sort of NAS setup with a you these new 10-16 TB drives to keep my digital packrat inside satisfied.
mooninite - Tuesday, June 4, 2019 - link
What's with the 512-byte sectors? What customers still need that crap? Everyone isn't running RHEL 7/8 or Windows 10/2019 DC? Ridiculous.DanNeely - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
Until/unless they make a major revision to their firmware designs keeping the mode available for whatever handful of customers do need it has a very low marginal cost.danwat1234 - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
Meanwhile, regular 9.5mm laptop hard drives are still stuck at 2 terabytes!Skeptical123 - Wednesday, June 5, 2019 - link
A 16TB HDD for ~$650 is reasonable but I wonder what they will cost in a year or two. We are getting closer to all SSD NAS solutions for prosumers but we are not there yet :)vailr - Friday, June 7, 2019 - link
Seagate now also offers IronWolf NAS SSD's: https://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/ssd/i...Sizes: 3.8 TB, 1.9 TB, 960 GB, 480 GB, 240 GB.
frowertr - Saturday, July 6, 2019 - link
These drives are excellent for cold storage and/or surveillance. I have the Exos x12TB in a custom server I built for my business that stores my surveillance camera footage. Now I’m thinking about taking up to 16TB.