5TB Drive

[Snowhog]

Geez!!

Seagate Expansion 5TB External Desktop HDD - 3.5" Form Factor, USB 3.0 - STBV5000100 -- $129.99!! until 02/06/2015 while supplies last.

[dibl]

That must be the shortest list of specs I've ever seen for a hard drive.

[Snowhog]

Yeah, and the specs for it on Seagate's site are no better. No 'technical specs' at all.

[vsreeser]

Looking at the link, wondering why internal drives cost more than external

[oshunluvr]

Personally, I wouldn't buy a drive with only a one year warranty unless it's use was going to be very casual.

[oshunluvr]

Looking at the link, wondering why internal drives cost more than external

Just guessing due to lack of specs, but I suspect since it's inside an enclosure they used cheaper parts for the interface, etc. Only half the mobo would be needed if it didn't need compatibility with a multitude of devices - only one, the USB case. The case itself looks devoid of style or complexity. Probably cost pennies each.

Besides, never under estimate the desire of a manufacturer to clear out a warehouse full of electronics about to become obsolete. Sales like these are sometimes the best way to upgrade somewhat for a non-critical user like most of us. Heavy-duty or commercial users aren't buying this product so it's priced to sell to a thrifty consumer. A system admin looking to build redundant high availability servers isn't going to shop at the low end, so they can sell those drives at a higher price-point.

I did see the 5TB Western Digital "Green" drive is $229 on Tiger so this drive really is a good deal if the storage need wasn't too critical. For example; it would make a great backup device for your media - rarely accessed, low priority, and the likelihood of it failing simultaneously with your primary storage is extremely low.

[Feathers McGraw]

this drive really is a good deal if the storage need wasn't too critical. For example; it would make a great backup device for your media - rarely accessed, low priority, and the likelihood of it failing simultaneously with your primary storage is extremely low.

At this price you could even use it as part of a RAID setup.

[oshunluvr]

RAID + 4 cheap USB drives = Recipe for disaster

ROFL...

[Feathers McGraw]

Is it? I thought the point of RAID was that it doesn't matter if your drives break.

[oshunluvr]

Mirroring = yes, striping =no.

RAID0 = one dead drive equals all data lost
RAID5/6 = one dead drive equals some data lost
RAID 1/10 = No data lost, but half the storage capacity of total devices.

Basic rule of thumb: 2 drives = twice as likely to have a failure, 4 drives = 4 times, etc.

In an unlimited world, you would populate your computer with as many drives as possible in an even number, then set up RAID10 (aka 1+0). Then you would have total redundancy and massively increased performance - as long as you didn't have a failure in both sets on the same day...

Back when large drives were still expensive, I picked up 4x500GB WD "Blue" drives and ran a 4 drive RAID0 (striping) array. Man, it was fast!

[Feathers McGraw]

I see, thanks!

[oshunluvr]

Since we're on the topic: Interesting difference between RAID1 (mirroring) and making a backup. RAID1 does not protect you from yourself, i.e. a delete instruction deletes both copies of a file. Whereas, a good, current backup will protect you from that accidental delete, but can't help you if you don't backup often.

So RAID1 is meant to protect you from downtime in the event of a hardware failure - zero down time - but a backup will prevent unintended consequences.

[andystmartin]

RAID5/6 = one dead drive equals some data lost

Can you explain this? I thought RAID 5 had parity information so that data can be reconstructed in the event of one drive failure. RAID 6 has double parity information so that it can withstand 2 drive failures.

[oshunluvr]

Can you explain this? I thought RAID 5 had parity information so that data can be reconstructed in the event of one drive failure. RAID 6 has double parity information so that it can withstand 2 drive failures.

No you're right; Supposedly one drive failure under RAID5 (2 under RAID6) would be recoverable assuming all commits were complete. I've never had to do it, so I didn't want to make a guarantee.

My personal thoughts: most data would be safe because if you were in the midst of an operation, you'd still lose data because the commit wouldn't be complete. Where as in RAID1 there are two copies of everything so a mid-operation failure would only occur on one drive. I could be totally wrong.

[oshunluvr]

http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-rai...rking-in-2019/

RAID5:

You have a 62% chance of data loss due to an uncorrectable read error on a 7 drive RAID with one failed disk, assuming a 10^14 read error rate and ~23 billion sectors in 12 TB. Feeling lucky?

The likelihood of data loss goes up exponentially with array size, so as disks get bigger, up goes the rate of likely loss.

The author above says as of 2009 RAID5 no longer is able to provide safe parity and 2019 will be the end of RAID6. I think it's mostly because disc size is going up at a much greater rate than reliability. He goes on to point out that rebuild times at the sizes we have today are too long to be useful. Many, many. many hours.

Bottom line is: No reason for a home user to use RAID5/6. Either use RAID0 with excellent backups (speed), RAID1 with moderate backups (zero down time), or RAID1+0 speed and redundancy.