"The ST18000NE000 18TB Pro model is compatible with NAS units of up to 24 bays, and has a workload rating of 300TB/yr. It is a 7200 rpm 9-platter helium-filled drive, with a DRAM cache of 256MB (which seems to be half of what is offered by Western Digital in their Gold line of enterprise hard drives - the other 18TB choice in the retail market)."
Bad comparison, WD Gold drives are not sold or rated for use in a NAS.
They are meant for use in datacenter environments, similar to the Exos drives. They are an overkill for consumer / SMB / SME NAS units, but are more than good enough to use in such NAS boxes (they tick all the boxes for RV sensors, TLER etc.)
@mgutt, the Backblaze reference you provided was quite kind to the Seagate Exos-branded line...specifically, the 16TB unit that haunts your sleep (ST16000NM001G). Actually...since 2017, Blackblaze's AFR has been predictably stable for the Seagate high-capacity spinners; might wanna give that source of yours a double check!
## https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-driv... "3. Seagate: After a steady rise in AFR, the last two quarters have been kind to Seagate, with the most recent quarter (AFR = 0.90%) being the best we have ever seen from Seagate since we started keeping stats back in 2013. Good news and worthy of a deeper look over the coming months."
Your quick to write off an entire product line from seeing AFR%. Only 1 of 59 drives failed and it was their smallest drive count. The general likelihood is the AFR% falls back in line with the rest of the models as the sample size increases.
That 6.73% represents one single drive failure. One. That means that given their drive count, the failure rate for a given quarter is either 0% or some multiple of 6.73%, since they don't have enough drives to actually achieve better data than that.
I'd probably not put much stock in that data until they have a lot more of those drives. A sample size of 60 drives just isn't big enough to do much with.
The article states that the non-Pro IronWolf tops at 16TB, but that model (ST16000VNZ01) has been seemingly retired and the top one at Seagate’s website is now the 12TB model. Why? (Synology’s compatibility page for their DS1819+ NAS discourages activating hibernation for the Pro 16TB model but not so for the non-Pro, app that’s one reason to prefer the non-Pro model).
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Chaitanya - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
Curious about platter density of that 18TB drive.e36Jeff - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
it would be 2TB/platter. 18TB with 9 platters.LordConrad - Wednesday, September 2, 2020 - link
"The ST18000NE000 18TB Pro model is compatible with NAS units of up to 24 bays, and has a workload rating of 300TB/yr. It is a 7200 rpm 9-platter helium-filled drive, with a DRAM cache of 256MB (which seems to be half of what is offered by Western Digital in their Gold line of enterprise hard drives - the other 18TB choice in the retail market)."Bad comparison, WD Gold drives are not sold or rated for use in a NAS.
ganeshts - Wednesday, September 2, 2020 - link
They are meant for use in datacenter environments, similar to the Exos drives. They are an overkill for consumer / SMB / SME NAS units, but are more than good enough to use in such NAS boxes (they tick all the boxes for RV sensors, TLER etc.)m4063 - Saturday, December 11, 2021 - link
Be aware their IronWolf SSD does NOT have TLER! :-(cjl - Wednesday, September 2, 2020 - link
Enterprise drives (WD Gold or Seagate Exos) are a higher tier of qualification than NAS. They meet all NAS requirements and then some.mgutt - Wednesday, September 2, 2020 - link
After the high failure rate of the 16TB version (see Backblaze Q2 2020) I will wait how reliable those big drives are over time.manicmatviyko - Wednesday, September 2, 2020 - link
@mgutt, the Backblaze reference you provided was quite kind to the Seagate Exos-branded line...specifically, the 16TB unit that haunts your sleep (ST16000NM001G). Actually...since 2017, Blackblaze's AFR has been predictably stable for the Seagate high-capacity spinners; might wanna give that source of yours a double check!## https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-driv...
"3. Seagate: After a steady rise in AFR, the last two quarters have been kind to Seagate, with the most recent quarter (AFR = 0.90%) being the best we have ever seen from Seagate since we started keeping stats back in 2013. Good news and worthy of a deeper look over the coming months."
Zoolook - Friday, September 4, 2020 - link
Maybe you should have read the report in your link 6,73% AFR for the Seagate 16TB, that's horrible.OxygenVendor - Saturday, September 5, 2020 - link
Your quick to write off an entire product line from seeing AFR%. Only 1 of 59 drives failed and it was their smallest drive count. The general likelihood is the AFR% falls back in line with the rest of the models as the sample size increases.cjl - Tuesday, September 8, 2020 - link
That 6.73% represents one single drive failure. One. That means that given their drive count, the failure rate for a given quarter is either 0% or some multiple of 6.73%, since they don't have enough drives to actually achieve better data than that.I'd probably not put much stock in that data until they have a lot more of those drives. A sample size of 60 drives just isn't big enough to do much with.
Samus - Thursday, September 3, 2020 - link
As a life-long WD guy, I have been more impressed by Seagate drives lately. The only saving grace for WD has been the Hitachi heritage models.elmimmo - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link
The article states that the non-Pro IronWolf tops at 16TB, but that model (ST16000VNZ01) has been seemingly retired and the top one at Seagate’s website is now the 12TB model. Why? (Synology’s compatibility page for their DS1819+ NAS discourages activating hibernation for the Pro 16TB model but not so for the non-Pro, app that’s one reason to prefer the non-Pro model).