How long did we have to wait for this? 20 years of vaporware. And now it comes when it is only half a match against the cheapest SSD's. At least 10 years to late.
This is going to be used primarily in backup devices on corporate scale. The added write speed is to keep up with the all flash SANs and cut down on time to write or restore. These will cost 1/10 that if the NVMe of the same capacity so it makes sense.
What is going on in the minds of these people? - Some sort of primitivist "if it's magic I don't understand it can't possibly work reliably?" - Some weird belief that being "contrarian" (just like every other idiot on the internet) makes them appear wise? - Some desperate attempt to manipulate stocks (like Samsung or Micron are going to fall because some brave internet soul finally called their bluff on SSDs)?
It's all very weird, the perpetual imperviousness to actual data, year after year after year.
MLC and SLC SSDs had decent lifespan. But from then on, life expectancy dropped in exchange for trying to lower the cost/GB and trying to keep up with HDDs, the only way so far is to increasingly reduce the life span by increasing the number of Bits/cell, another point is that in modern SSDs the complexity has also increased with more components and chips, bringing more items that can fail prematurely into the equation.
If an SSD dies you simply lose your data. If a HDD fails you still have chances of recovery. You have no point. :P
A data center level HDD like the WD Gold has a 550TB/year endurance rating. These are at 500TB/year. That gives us a 5 year total writes between 2500 & 2750TB. Even a lowly 1.92TB "read intensive" or 1DWPD enterprise SSD has a TBW of 3500TB.
Sure when an SSD fails you lose your data. If you are stupid enough to not have your data backed up that is your fault. However, SSDs fail at a much lower rate the HDD.
If you didn't go to school, you wouldn't have learned English properly and therefore understand that reliability has nothing to do with recoverability. Imagine having a HDD (note that I am NOT comparing to an SSD) that always fails in 3 months and you always have to replace them every 3 months, but the data is recoverable so its fine? I call that a pain in the butt. Go back to school and relearn your English language please.
Not everyone that comments here speaks English as their native language. Additionally, opening your post with a double negative doesn't really lend you much credibility when it comes to making an assessment of someone else's skill with a language.
SSD durability is still a real matter for enterprise. They'll gladly take the IOPS, but the pressure applied is entirely different than consumer use.
And just as pointedly - 20TB on SSD is still not cheap. (Waiting to see what this SAS drive costs) Getting SATA3 perf for that amount of storage is still a plus.
SSD durability is not a real matter for enterprise. With the current size of drives you get 10s of PB write endurance on mixed use drives. A 6.4TB mixed use, or 3DWPD, drive yields 30PB write endurance. Don't forget these will be in a SAN as well so writes are spread out over multiple drives. Servethehome switched all their storage to used enterprise SSD drives a few years ago. They went from an average fail rate of 5% with HDD to 0.5% on used SSD. Another thing is SSD in enterprise is designed to fail quickly instead of slowly like HDD. A drive dies and you swap out your cold spare and RMA the dead drive.
The interesting part from your link is they are using consumer SSDs for their boot drives. Typical consumer SSD has a 0.3DWPD endurance. For a 250GB drive that gives it a 137TB endurance. Your enterprise grade SSDs have 1-3DWPD endurance.
name99 must know more than every fortune 500 data center. SSD's have a role in data centers, it just isn't for storage; database caching, OS drives, imaging, etc.
SSDs are not used for COLD storage because they are more expensive. That's different from saying they are not used for storage, or not used for "critical" storage or whatever.
There are some places that use SSD for backup storage. For example it might be cheaper to use only 2U of rack space for your backup storage than 6U. Alternatively the added write speeds are nice if the network is fast enough.
Unfortunately we are at the inflection point of SSDs being too cheap, in that manufacturers are at the bottom and all NAND is just commodity. Reliability has all but disappeared now in the consumer market. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34648149 talks how even Samsung is fallen. I've heard from a lot of IT friends who manage large amount of systems and they are seeing TONs of SSD failures on new drives. These are under 3 years old. A lot of using well known consumer SSDs like Samsung and Crucual MX500 who used to outlast their actual usefulness in storage space, now just failing out of nowhere. Unfortunately Windows is just so bloated now, an HDD is just not an option. Want to do a little test? Try installing the first build of Win10 on a HDD, its actually usable, now update it to the latest build. Good luck booting in under 10 minutes.
You can. For example Geizhals.de lists Seagate Exos X – 2X18 from ~600€ with three offers. Tho it is currently sold out but was available last week. Also unlike what the article says the 2X18 is a 16TB drive, not 18TB (Seagate's weird naming leads everyone to assume 18TB).
Interesting that they present as two seperate drives. I guess that's a lot less complicated than building in logic to have the actuators reading/writing the same sequence of data together - that'd be what's required to make this beneficial to consumers.
I guess so. There appears to be a trend of providing hyperscale’s lower level access to hard drives compared to their normal product lines. For instance when the CMR drama was going down I remember reading the drive management that normally would take place in the drive was being controlled from the system. This enabled the system to control what gets placed when and where on the platter. Presumably this was to mitigate/manage the effects of tech like CRM among other things.
Presenting as one drive would remove this lower level access hyperscalers or at the very least add a little to the bom cost for a feature they don’t want.
I can't speak for other OS's, but on a Mac I would use Apple RAID to set this up as a striped pair that presents to the OS as a single drive. If WD eventually make this consumer (???) if they have any sense they will ship with a small "Mac format utility" app that would do this behind the scenes for naive consumers -- it's just a simple call to a command-line app.
Do Mac PCs have SAS controllers? I would think that would be more a rackmount storage scenario and not likely a feature buried in the average Facebook and e-mail fetcher Apple PC than Mom and Dad use to look trendy when they aren't using their iPad.
Well considering the lack of 3.5 inch bays in Macbook Pro laptops, there may still be a few fit and finish problems for that scenario. And anyway, consumer compute generally does not contain platter based storage so I don't think you'll have to be bothered worrying about it overly much.
JFC! Are you unaware that there's a whole world of CONSUMER storage that consists of USB external drives? And that pretty much every Mac user has at least one such drive for Time Machine storage, with the more advanced users having at least a second such drive for purposes like HTPC storage?
I had no idea that making a statement as banal as "the sky is blue" would generate complaints.
At first I was interested in Dual Actuators but I think this whole 2 LUN is complex for a normal consumer system, maybe a NAS but not for a desktop which Is what I have. Plus reduced endurance and too much mechanical influences, plus the technology from WD is fairly new.
Guess I will just stick with regular WD Gold OptiNAND, much better.
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Foeketijn - Wednesday, February 1, 2023 - link
How long did we have to wait for this? 20 years of vaporware. And now it comes when it is only half a match against the cheapest SSD's. At least 10 years to late.meacupla - Wednesday, February 1, 2023 - link
In 2013, HDDs just started SMR and helium2003 was when IBM was still making HDDs
schujj07 - Wednesday, February 1, 2023 - link
This is going to be used primarily in backup devices on corporate scale. The added write speed is to keep up with the all flash SANs and cut down on time to write or restore. These will cost 1/10 that if the NVMe of the same capacity so it makes sense.nandnandnand - Wednesday, February 1, 2023 - link
Datacenters were going to buy >=20 TB HDDs regardless. This just makes them slightly more tolerable if used right.Samus - Thursday, February 2, 2023 - link
20 years lolDante Verizon - Thursday, February 2, 2023 - link
Oh unless some magical nand technology improves the cost and durability of SSDs drastically, NEVER.name99 - Friday, February 3, 2023 - link
Oh yes, the lack of durability of SSDs. The myth that will never die...https://www.backblaze.com/blog/ssd-drive-stats-mid...
What is going on in the minds of these people?
- Some sort of primitivist "if it's magic I don't understand it can't possibly work reliably?"
- Some weird belief that being "contrarian" (just like every other idiot on the internet) makes them appear wise?
- Some desperate attempt to manipulate stocks (like Samsung or Micron are going to fall because some brave internet soul finally called their bluff on SSDs)?
It's all very weird, the perpetual imperviousness to actual data, year after year after year.
Dante Verizon - Friday, February 3, 2023 - link
MLC and SLC SSDs had decent lifespan. But from then on, life expectancy dropped in exchange for trying to lower the cost/GB and trying to keep up with HDDs, the only way so far is to increasingly reduce the life span by increasing the number of Bits/cell, another point is that in modern SSDs the complexity has also increased with more components and chips, bringing more items that can fail prematurely into the equation.If an SSD dies you simply lose your data. If a HDD fails you still have chances of recovery. You have no point. :P
schujj07 - Saturday, February 4, 2023 - link
A data center level HDD like the WD Gold has a 550TB/year endurance rating. These are at 500TB/year. That gives us a 5 year total writes between 2500 & 2750TB. Even a lowly 1.92TB "read intensive" or 1DWPD enterprise SSD has a TBW of 3500TB.Sure when an SSD fails you lose your data. If you are stupid enough to not have your data backed up that is your fault. However, SSDs fail at a much lower rate the HDD.
eriri-el - Sunday, February 5, 2023 - link
If you didn't go to school, you wouldn't have learned English properly and therefore understand that reliability has nothing to do with recoverability.Imagine having a HDD (note that I am NOT comparing to an SSD) that always fails in 3 months and you always have to replace them every 3 months, but the data is recoverable so its fine? I call that a pain in the butt.
Go back to school and relearn your English language please.
PeachNCream - Sunday, February 5, 2023 - link
Not everyone that comments here speaks English as their native language. Additionally, opening your post with a double negative doesn't really lend you much credibility when it comes to making an assessment of someone else's skill with a language.bsd228 - Friday, February 3, 2023 - link
SSD durability is still a real matter for enterprise. They'll gladly take the IOPS, but the pressure applied is entirely different than consumer use.And just as pointedly - 20TB on SSD is still not cheap. (Waiting to see what this SAS drive costs) Getting SATA3 perf for that amount of storage is still a plus.
schujj07 - Saturday, February 4, 2023 - link
SSD durability is not a real matter for enterprise. With the current size of drives you get 10s of PB write endurance on mixed use drives. A 6.4TB mixed use, or 3DWPD, drive yields 30PB write endurance. Don't forget these will be in a SAN as well so writes are spread out over multiple drives. Servethehome switched all their storage to used enterprise SSD drives a few years ago. They went from an average fail rate of 5% with HDD to 0.5% on used SSD. Another thing is SSD in enterprise is designed to fail quickly instead of slowly like HDD. A drive dies and you swap out your cold spare and RMA the dead drive.schujj07 - Saturday, February 4, 2023 - link
The interesting part from your link is they are using consumer SSDs for their boot drives. Typical consumer SSD has a 0.3DWPD endurance. For a 250GB drive that gives it a 137TB endurance. Your enterprise grade SSDs have 1-3DWPD endurance.Samus - Sunday, February 5, 2023 - link
name99 must know more than every fortune 500 data center. SSD's have a role in data centers, it just isn't for storage; database caching, OS drives, imaging, etc.name99 - Sunday, February 5, 2023 - link
uh, name99 is the one saying SSDs are RELIABLE...name99 - Sunday, February 5, 2023 - link
SSDs are not used for COLD storage because they are more expensive.That's different from saying they are not used for storage, or not used for "critical" storage or whatever.
schujj07 - Sunday, February 5, 2023 - link
There are some places that use SSD for backup storage. For example it might be cheaper to use only 2U of rack space for your backup storage than 6U. Alternatively the added write speeds are nice if the network is fast enough.Byte - Sunday, February 5, 2023 - link
Unfortunately we are at the inflection point of SSDs being too cheap, in that manufacturers are at the bottom and all NAND is just commodity. Reliability has all but disappeared now in the consumer market. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34648149 talks how even Samsung is fallen. I've heard from a lot of IT friends who manage large amount of systems and they are seeing TONs of SSD failures on new drives. These are under 3 years old. A lot of using well known consumer SSDs like Samsung and Crucual MX500 who used to outlast their actual usefulness in storage space, now just failing out of nowhere. Unfortunately Windows is just so bloated now, an HDD is just not an option. Want to do a little test? Try installing the first build of Win10 on a HDD, its actually usable, now update it to the latest build. Good luck booting in under 10 minutes.ballsystemlord - Wednesday, February 1, 2023 - link
Here I had been hoping that normal people could buy dual-actuator drives. I'm disappointed. WD and Seagate are really missing an opportunity.Dante Verizon - Friday, February 3, 2023 - link
Technically you can buy it..R7 - Saturday, February 4, 2023 - link
You can. For example Geizhals.de lists Seagate Exos X – 2X18 from ~600€ with three offers. Tho it is currently sold out but was available last week. Also unlike what the article says the 2X18 is a 16TB drive, not 18TB (Seagate's weird naming leads everyone to assume 18TB).Scott_T - Wednesday, February 1, 2023 - link
twice the chances of a head crashing into the disk too :)ballsystemlord - Saturday, February 4, 2023 - link
Cool! A dual click of death! ;)Kamen Rider Blade - Thursday, February 2, 2023 - link
WD / SeaGate.Please include built in RAID 0 so that I can easily get the Sustained Linear Throughput that I desire.
I don't want to have to use any of my CPU for Software RAID 0.
meacupla - Thursday, February 2, 2023 - link
Get a hardware RAID controller then?crimsonson - Friday, February 3, 2023 - link
RAID 0 CPU load is minimal, especially on modern CPUs.Wardrop - Thursday, February 2, 2023 - link
Interesting that they present as two seperate drives. I guess that's a lot less complicated than building in logic to have the actuators reading/writing the same sequence of data together - that'd be what's required to make this beneficial to consumers.Skeptical123 - Thursday, February 2, 2023 - link
I guess so. There appears to be a trend of providing hyperscale’s lower level access to hard drives compared to their normal product lines. For instance when the CMR drama was going down I remember reading the drive management that normally would take place in the drive was being controlled from the system. This enabled the system to control what gets placed when and where on the platter. Presumably this was to mitigate/manage the effects of tech like CRM among other things.Presenting as one drive would remove this lower level access hyperscalers or at the very least add a little to the bom cost for a feature they don’t want.
name99 - Friday, February 3, 2023 - link
I can't speak for other OS's, but on a Mac I would use Apple RAID to set this up as a striped pair that presents to the OS as a single drive.If WD eventually make this consumer (???) if they have any sense they will ship with a small "Mac format utility" app that would do this behind the scenes for naive consumers -- it's just a simple call to a command-line app.
PeachNCream - Saturday, February 4, 2023 - link
Do Mac PCs have SAS controllers? I would think that would be more a rackmount storage scenario and not likely a feature buried in the average Facebook and e-mail fetcher Apple PC than Mom and Dad use to look trendy when they aren't using their iPad.name99 - Saturday, February 4, 2023 - link
Which part of "If WD eventually *make this consumer (???)*" did you not understand?PeachNCream - Saturday, February 4, 2023 - link
Well considering the lack of 3.5 inch bays in Macbook Pro laptops, there may still be a few fit and finish problems for that scenario. And anyway, consumer compute generally does not contain platter based storage so I don't think you'll have to be bothered worrying about it overly much.name99 - Sunday, February 5, 2023 - link
JFC!Are you unaware that there's a whole world of CONSUMER storage that consists of USB external drives? And that pretty much every Mac user has at least one such drive for Time Machine storage, with the more advanced users having at least a second such drive for purposes like HTPC storage?
I had no idea that making a statement as banal as "the sky is blue" would generate complaints.
Silver5urfer - Friday, February 3, 2023 - link
At first I was interested in Dual Actuators but I think this whole 2 LUN is complex for a normal consumer system, maybe a NAS but not for a desktop which Is what I have. Plus reduced endurance and too much mechanical influences, plus the technology from WD is fairly new.Guess I will just stick with regular WD Gold OptiNAND, much better.