Coming up next, the WD pink, targeting little girls, fairies and homosexuals.
Also, technically, there is an infinite amount of numbers between 0 and 1 too, but when it comes to colors, there is only so much resolution the the human eye has to distinguish color. And even then, most of the colors we can distinguish don't have memorable names.
With current drives reaching 4 TB I'd say GB/$ ratio is not of the utmost importance, reliability is important too. Losing 4 TB of data is a rare joy, and what is worse - RAID doesn't really help and sometimes complicates things and actually increases risk. That is why I generally don't raid for security, just backup data to multiple drives, so if one fails it is immediately accessible without any lengthy and risky rebuild procedures.
I've had excellent luck with HDDs over the last 25 years, but the low cost per GB, cloud backup, and software advances make reliability of little concern to me. I just always buy what's on sale and always have on site and off site backups.
We only like pink on Mondays, we only shoot rainbows out of our bum's on Fridays, and when we wan't your undivided attention and sympathy, we may then break a nail.
Also a fun fact, homosexuals can distinguish more shades of pink/purple than any other demographic and we also invented glitter.
They'll eventually run out of English words that represent colors. Those are definitely not infinite. I can't see them launching a WD Robin's Egg Blue.
With encoding the CPU is usually the bottleneck, so unless you are running a four socket workstation pretty much any HDD will do. And if you are not CPU limited, a black WD will actually be better in terms of performance, and MTTF is better too, but it is more expensive.
Looks like the purple series offers nothing dedicated to surveillance per se, it will just be cheaper so governments and corporations can build massive storage capacity to spy on people even more.
As the article mentions, you'd need host controller support to take advantage of the surveillance-specific features. For regular video editing (which probably doesn't involve accessing multiple/a lot of parallel HD streams, a standard drive would be cheaper and just as good, as windows or OSX most likely doesn't support these specific command extensions, and your video editing software probably wouldn't know how to take advantage of it even if your OS does have support...
If it's like the previous AV-discs, it will not be as accurate as normal discs. If a write error occours, the disc will continue writing, not trying to fix the error.
In a surveillance environment this will only result in one lost video-frame; it is more important to continue writing the next frames. However, in a more "normal" computing environment this will result in a corrupt file. You may think of it as the differense between an audio CD and a data CD.
This is getting stupid. Nothing like artificial segmentation and endless number of models to confuse the enemy/customers.
The only point I see is if these will come with 3+ years of warranty (assuming none of the other 5400rpms already come with 3 years) and have a equivalent street price.
For a moment I thought they would release something like an open source firmware so people can make sure their hard drives aren't backdoored. At least you'd think so after this revelation:
It is pretty much guaranteed that every device comes with some kind of backdoor, especially if product of the US industry. But as long as you keep a tight lock on your connectivity there isn't much use for any of those. Don't use dedicated hardware routers, don't use wireless, don't use windows, open a single port for communication, secure it completely and you are pretty much bulletproof.
Then again, trying to hack you and hitting rock might send government or private goons directly to your doorstep. Misuse of technology is a very bad thing...
What's the difference between "512e" and "512n" format? Does 512n mean that the hard drive "n"atively uses 512 byte sectors? If so, isn't that sort of a bad idea for a mission-critical drive? Among other benefits, 4k sectors allow for better ECC. Perhaps compatibility issues led to the choice.
512n (or 512B) drivers have real 512 byte sectors. 512e drivers have emulated 512 byte sectors, while real sector size typically is 4K.
For archiving, 4K drivers (or 512e, if you prefer) are perfectly fine, even in enterprise environment. However, when using virtual machine and/or database software (both issue many small sub-4K writes), 4K drivers have lower performance then their 512B cousins. A good battery-backupped RAID card can alleviate the performance differences, still 512B disks are the better choice for "live" vm/db enterprise environment.
Regarding the reliability, ECC alone say very little. For example, the 4K RED disk have a BER (Bit error rate) of about 1/10^14, the 4K SE have a BER of 1/10^15 and the 512B RE have a BER of 1/10^16. In other word, the RE bit error rate is 100 time lower then the RED BER.
Is the 60 TB/year workload rating good for all the drive capacities (1, 2, 3, & 4TB)?
If so, does that mean that the controller will be what most likely fails, rather than the platters or the write heads, or some weird magnetic sector corruption (I might have just made that up), etc.?
Also, does the drive log your total throughput (like SSDs) so that they can deny your warranty if you go over the workload limit?
What's really strange is that their marketing guys need to take a basic math course. A 32 camera HD (1080) H264 system would generate over 1,000 terabytes of data a year at 30 frames per second. Divide that by the maximum number of drives (8) and you end up writing 120 terabytes a year to each drive. Learn to math!!!
Did anyone tell Western Digital how stupid it was to have a product range called Red and a product range called Re?
I had to sniff through their website to differentiate between the two.
Or am I just an old school kinda guy who thinks that different products should have actual different names?
But then I thought the Ford Cougar/Kuga thing was stupid too. Because it is.
Just give us a drive capable of decent MTBF and let us choose the required firmware and apply it over a shell script we can run over a NAS-vendor-approved update (most of 'em run Linux) and leave it be.
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ddriver - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
Wonder what will WD do when they run out of colors.dgingeri - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
Ever been with a woman paint shopping or clothes shopping? There is no point "when they run out of colors." There are infinite variations.ddriver - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
Coming up next, the WD pink, targeting little girls, fairies and homosexuals.Also, technically, there is an infinite amount of numbers between 0 and 1 too, but when it comes to colors, there is only so much resolution the the human eye has to distinguish color. And even then, most of the colors we can distinguish don't have memorable names.
nathanddrews - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
I don't I'm still going to buy whatever is on sale for the best GB/$ ratio when I need it, no matter what color the drive is.ddriver - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
With current drives reaching 4 TB I'd say GB/$ ratio is not of the utmost importance, reliability is important too. Losing 4 TB of data is a rare joy, and what is worse - RAID doesn't really help and sometimes complicates things and actually increases risk. That is why I generally don't raid for security, just backup data to multiple drives, so if one fails it is immediately accessible without any lengthy and risky rebuild procedures.nathanddrews - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
I've had excellent luck with HDDs over the last 25 years, but the low cost per GB, cloud backup, and software advances make reliability of little concern to me. I just always buy what's on sale and always have on site and off site backups.sigmatau - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
"fairies and homosexuals"You sound like you have the intelligence of a 5 year old. Good luck with that.
ddriver - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
Let me guess, you find that offensive because you happen to be a fairy? :D Your perception of others' intelligence is like that of a 3 year old ;)sigmatau - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link
Sorry, but you are a pathetic piece of shit. Later.StevoLincolnite - Sunday, March 2, 2014 - link
I feel insulted by your portrayal of us fags.We only like pink on Mondays, we only shoot rainbows out of our bum's on Fridays, and when we wan't your undivided attention and sympathy, we may then break a nail.
Also a fun fact, homosexuals can distinguish more shades of pink/purple than any other demographic and we also invented glitter.
#Happilylimpwristedandnotfeminine
zata40 - Tuesday, March 4, 2014 - link
pink is a fabulous colour, why be such a hater?Flunk - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
They'll eventually run out of English words that represent colors. Those are definitely not infinite. I can't see them launching a WD Robin's Egg Blue.aegisofrime - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
Hmmm I wonder will this make a good video editing/encoding drive? My use case involves reading and writing 24/7, so it sounds a lot like surveillance.ddriver - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
With encoding the CPU is usually the bottleneck, so unless you are running a four socket workstation pretty much any HDD will do. And if you are not CPU limited, a black WD will actually be better in terms of performance, and MTTF is better too, but it is more expensive.Looks like the purple series offers nothing dedicated to surveillance per se, it will just be cheaper so governments and corporations can build massive storage capacity to spy on people even more.
FaaR - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
As the article mentions, you'd need host controller support to take advantage of the surveillance-specific features. For regular video editing (which probably doesn't involve accessing multiple/a lot of parallel HD streams, a standard drive would be cheaper and just as good, as windows or OSX most likely doesn't support these specific command extensions, and your video editing software probably wouldn't know how to take advantage of it even if your OS does have support...Kristian Pedersen - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
Don't do it!If it's like the previous AV-discs, it will not be as accurate as normal discs. If a write error occours, the disc will continue writing, not trying to fix the error.
In a surveillance environment this will only result in one lost video-frame; it is more important to continue writing the next frames. However, in a more "normal" computing environment this will result in a corrupt file. You may think of it as the differense between an audio CD and a data CD.
sheh - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
This is getting stupid. Nothing like artificial segmentation and endless number of models to confuse the enemy/customers.The only point I see is if these will come with 3+ years of warranty (assuming none of the other 5400rpms already come with 3 years) and have a equivalent street price.
ddriver - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
Well that happens when there is no more room for hardware improvements, minor software gimmicks serve to inspire more sales.Krysto - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
For a moment I thought they would release something like an open source firmware so people can make sure their hard drives aren't backdoored. At least you'd think so after this revelation:NSA's Backdoor Catalog Includes Juniper, Cisco, Huawei, Western Digital and Samsung:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/NSA-s-Backdoor-Cata...
But no, apparently that's not an issue for them.
ddriver - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
That's why I only trust IPTables :)It is pretty much guaranteed that every device comes with some kind of backdoor, especially if product of the US industry. But as long as you keep a tight lock on your connectivity there isn't much use for any of those. Don't use dedicated hardware routers, don't use wireless, don't use windows, open a single port for communication, secure it completely and you are pretty much bulletproof.
Then again, trying to hack you and hitting rock might send government or private goons directly to your doorstep. Misuse of technology is a very bad thing...
pixelstuff - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
Or even better release a generic drive, with maybe three build quality levels, and provide upgrade-able or swap-able firmware to fit the situation.Sivar - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
What's the difference between "512e" and "512n" format?Does 512n mean that the hard drive "n"atively uses 512 byte sectors? If so, isn't that sort of a bad idea for a mission-critical drive? Among other benefits, 4k sectors allow for better ECC.
Perhaps compatibility issues led to the choice.
shodanshok - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
512n (or 512B) drivers have real 512 byte sectors.512e drivers have emulated 512 byte sectors, while real sector size typically is 4K.
For archiving, 4K drivers (or 512e, if you prefer) are perfectly fine, even in enterprise environment. However, when using virtual machine and/or database software (both issue many small sub-4K writes), 4K drivers have lower performance then their 512B cousins. A good battery-backupped RAID card can alleviate the performance differences, still 512B disks are the better choice for "live" vm/db enterprise environment.
Regarding the reliability, ECC alone say very little. For example, the 4K RED disk have a BER (Bit error rate) of about 1/10^14, the 4K SE have a BER of 1/10^15 and the 512B RE have a BER of 1/10^16. In other word, the RE bit error rate is 100 time lower then the RED BER.
Regards.
douglaswilliams - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
Is the 60 TB/year workload rating good for all the drive capacities (1, 2, 3, & 4TB)?If so, does that mean that the controller will be what most likely fails, rather than the platters or the write heads, or some weird magnetic sector corruption (I might have just made that up), etc.?
Also, does the drive log your total throughput (like SSDs) so that they can deny your warranty if you go over the workload limit?
DanNeely - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
Like SSDs where the write limit is listed the same for all capacities, it just means they only tested them all to the same low standard.riggo49 - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link
What's really strange is that their marketing guys need to take a basic math course. A 32 camera HD (1080) H264 system would generate over 1,000 terabytes of data a year at 30 frames per second. Divide that by the maximum number of drives (8) and you end up writing 120 terabytes a year to each drive. Learn to math!!!Beany2013 - Tuesday, February 25, 2014 - link
Did anyone tell Western Digital how stupid it was to have a product range called Red and a product range called Re?I had to sniff through their website to differentiate between the two.
Or am I just an old school kinda guy who thinks that different products should have actual different names?
But then I thought the Ford Cougar/Kuga thing was stupid too. Because it is.
Just give us a drive capable of decent MTBF and let us choose the required firmware and apply it over a shell script we can run over a NAS-vendor-approved update (most of 'em run Linux) and leave it be.
iAPX - Saturday, March 1, 2014 - link
Happy to see that WD is investing into mass-surveillance, instead doing good hybrid drives :)zata40 - Tuesday, March 4, 2014 - link
Really they're just updating an existing line of drives and adding TLER for the NVR market.