Exactly what I was thinking, but slightly less extreme. I was picking up 4TB MP34 drives for ~$150. That's TLC + DRAM + 2400TBW + 5 year warranty. Yes these 6TB drives have 50% more capacity, but the price for the performance, especially if they are SMR, is not inspiring.
That's a bit of a shame. I was rather hoping for continuing upgrades to laptop internal storage via new HDDs. As things currently stand, modern laptop offerings seem to top out at 2TB whether its SSD or HDD storage.
Laptop HDDs top out at 2 platters in standard configuration; unless Helium fill would allow adding a third that means a larger size would probably need a 50% increase in platter density to make a 3TB drive.
I think we're finally getting close though. 3.5" platters have about 2x the area, so a 10 platter 30TB 3.5" drive would theoretically have enough areal density to make a 2 platter 2.5" 3TB drive. Toshiba recently announced a 10 platter 32 TB HAMR SMR and 11 platter 31 TB MAMR SMR models with the expectation of a 2025 availability. A non-SMR version of the former would probably be 28 or 29TB in size.
External hard drives are still an effective means for SOHO and consumer sorts to maintain a local backup copy of data on a storage medium that is generally more "shelf-stable" than NAND flash. Random file corruption is less of a problem for a backup that isn't touched more than once or twice per year on a mechanical drive. Of course, it has its downsides - I wouldn't want to carry it alongside my computer when traveling due to reduced physical shock tolerance and a drive failure is more likely going to be catastrophic to the functionality of the drive, but they have a purpose especially in a time when QLC with it's ~300 or less per cell P/E cycling life expectancy poses a significant danger to long term information retention.
They probably had some extra 2.5" platters laying around they needed to get rid of. I can't for the life of me imagine this was a product someone at WD thought was important to release for any other reason.
I've dealt with a few 2.5" 5TB WD drives over the years. I came across a JBOD that had 4 shucked 5TB drives, and seen them in NAS's, where the 15mm height didn't matter. I even saw one in an HP Proliant 110 G8 that's 2.5" hot swap bays were intended for SAS (but naturally still worked with SATA) comically configured as a cold image of the entire array (5x900GB drives) running weekly. For years. The drive had who knows how many writes and I never stuck around to see how long this array image took (probably an entire day since it was configured to run Saturday night)
...but I've never seen one fail. These poor things with 5400RPM (some rumors indicate they are even 4800RPM?) spindles and SMR depending on a paltry 128MB cache and a write algorithm that causes erratic performance.
I don't know whether to call them a marvel of modern engineering or a bastardization of it.
"External drives, in turn, are the only place these even thicker 2.5-inch drives would fit." That's not remotely true. They may not fit in laptops, but I don't have a single case where they wouldn't fit in. I actually have a 4TB CMR 2.5" drive in my gaming PC.
It's worth mentioning what is happening to these drives when they bottom out is the consequence of the write algorithm. The drives I have interacted with must have some sort of OS write buffer in Windows 10\11 - even if you disable write caching and have quick removal enabled - that copies data at 500MB/sec up to about 1.2GB in size, then totally stalls down to <50MB/sec. You can hear the drive heads clanking away at what should be a smooth sequential write. I am guessing it is writing the buffer data and trying to write the remainder of the sequential file simultaneously, which as hard disks record linearly, is not ideal for performance or fragmentation. But it could have something to do with how SMR records\rearranges data...but it will do this on a brand new or freshly zeroed out (active@killdisk) or secure erased (these are SED's and support secure erase assuming you can send the command via USB I have only done it with them shucked.)
It's really too bad this market was ignored. The storage industry really missed an opportunity to provide portable\convenient backup storage to the masses. There is no reason these drives should be so slow when they could increase spindle speed, add NAND cache to schedule internal writes at idle, ditch SMR and make CMR drives with just slightly less capacity (SMR doesn't actually add that much more potential storage - depending who you want to believe it is either 10%, 20% or 25% as there are conflicting configurations delivering conflicting storage metrics.)
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meacupla - Thursday, May 16, 2024 - link
To think that 6~10 months ago, you could buy a budget 4TB NVMe drive for roughly the same price.Bob Todd - Friday, May 17, 2024 - link
Exactly what I was thinking, but slightly less extreme. I was picking up 4TB MP34 drives for ~$150. That's TLC + DRAM + 2400TBW + 5 year warranty. Yes these 6TB drives have 50% more capacity, but the price for the performance, especially if they are SMR, is not inspiring.deil - Friday, May 17, 2024 - link
I did buy two 2.5 sized 2TB external samsungs t7 touch for $99 each. I believe it would be another $10 cheaper if they were not pink.ballsystemlord - Thursday, May 16, 2024 - link
That's a bit of a shame. I was rather hoping for continuing upgrades to laptop internal storage via new HDDs. As things currently stand, modern laptop offerings seem to top out at 2TB whether its SSD or HDD storage.DanNeely - Thursday, May 16, 2024 - link
Laptop HDDs top out at 2 platters in standard configuration; unless Helium fill would allow adding a third that means a larger size would probably need a 50% increase in platter density to make a 3TB drive.I think we're finally getting close though. 3.5" platters have about 2x the area, so a 10 platter 30TB 3.5" drive would theoretically have enough areal density to make a 2 platter 2.5" 3TB drive. Toshiba recently announced a 10 platter 32 TB HAMR SMR and 11 platter 31 TB MAMR SMR models with the expectation of a 2025 availability. A non-SMR version of the former would probably be 28 or 29TB in size.
PeachNCream - Friday, May 17, 2024 - link
External hard drives are still an effective means for SOHO and consumer sorts to maintain a local backup copy of data on a storage medium that is generally more "shelf-stable" than NAND flash. Random file corruption is less of a problem for a backup that isn't touched more than once or twice per year on a mechanical drive. Of course, it has its downsides - I wouldn't want to carry it alongside my computer when traveling due to reduced physical shock tolerance and a drive failure is more likely going to be catastrophic to the functionality of the drive, but they have a purpose especially in a time when QLC with it's ~300 or less per cell P/E cycling life expectancy poses a significant danger to long term information retention.Desierz - Friday, May 17, 2024 - link
They probably had some extra 2.5" platters laying around they needed to get rid of. I can't for the life of me imagine this was a product someone at WD thought was important to release for any other reason.cbm80 - Friday, May 17, 2024 - link
WD/Seagate/Toshiba were all at 5TB so this makes the product stand out a little. That's all.DanaGoyette - Sunday, May 19, 2024 - link
I have a 2.5" 15mm drive that's 4TB, and holy hell is it slow at doing even simple things like making a Windows system-image backup.Samus - Tuesday, June 4, 2024 - link
I've dealt with a few 2.5" 5TB WD drives over the years. I came across a JBOD that had 4 shucked 5TB drives, and seen them in NAS's, where the 15mm height didn't matter. I even saw one in an HP Proliant 110 G8 that's 2.5" hot swap bays were intended for SAS (but naturally still worked with SATA) comically configured as a cold image of the entire array (5x900GB drives) running weekly. For years. The drive had who knows how many writes and I never stuck around to see how long this array image took (probably an entire day since it was configured to run Saturday night)...but I've never seen one fail. These poor things with 5400RPM (some rumors indicate they are even 4800RPM?) spindles and SMR depending on a paltry 128MB cache and a write algorithm that causes erratic performance.
I don't know whether to call them a marvel of modern engineering or a bastardization of it.
bananaforscale - Wednesday, May 29, 2024 - link
"External drives, in turn, are the only place these even thicker 2.5-inch drives would fit." That's not remotely true. They may not fit in laptops, but I don't have a single case where they wouldn't fit in. I actually have a 4TB CMR 2.5" drive in my gaming PC.Samus - Tuesday, June 4, 2024 - link
It's worth mentioning what is happening to these drives when they bottom out is the consequence of the write algorithm. The drives I have interacted with must have some sort of OS write buffer in Windows 10\11 - even if you disable write caching and have quick removal enabled - that copies data at 500MB/sec up to about 1.2GB in size, then totally stalls down to <50MB/sec. You can hear the drive heads clanking away at what should be a smooth sequential write. I am guessing it is writing the buffer data and trying to write the remainder of the sequential file simultaneously, which as hard disks record linearly, is not ideal for performance or fragmentation. But it could have something to do with how SMR records\rearranges data...but it will do this on a brand new or freshly zeroed out (active@killdisk) or secure erased (these are SED's and support secure erase assuming you can send the command via USB I have only done it with them shucked.)It's really too bad this market was ignored. The storage industry really missed an opportunity to provide portable\convenient backup storage to the masses. There is no reason these drives should be so slow when they could increase spindle speed, add NAND cache to schedule internal writes at idle, ditch SMR and make CMR drives with just slightly less capacity (SMR doesn't actually add that much more potential storage - depending who you want to believe it is either 10%, 20% or 25% as there are conflicting configurations delivering conflicting storage metrics.)
grant3 - Friday, June 7, 2024 - link
"USB Micro-B 3.0 connector" Wow WD must have a warehouse of inventory they're clearing out if they're still shipping that nonsense.