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> buy a competitor's drive Unfortunately... The competitor(s) you want, no longer exist! Here are some facts. * Seagate - WD's main competitor - historically

> buy a competitor's drive Unfortunately... The competitor(s) you want, no longer exist! Here are some facts. * Seagate - WD's main competitor - historically didn't have a reputation of high reliability in the industry [0][1]. Its ST3000DM001 [2] drive was terrible enough to have its own Wikipedia article, which is extremely unusual for a hard drive. In terms of reputation of reliability, WD was better, and HGST (Hitachi) had the best. * Then WD brought HGST. It was kept as an independent operation for a while, since it was required by the regulators. But now it has been fully merged into WD. As parts of the deal, Toshiba received some hard drive assets from WD, thus, Seagate, WD, and Toshiba are the only three hard drive manufacturers, forming a worldwide oligopoly. Wikipedia has a great diagram showing the process of corporate consolidation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diagram_of_Hard_Disk_Drive_Manufacturer_Consolidation.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diagram_of_Hard_Disk_Driv... * Toshiba, Seagate shipping slower SMR drives without disclosure, too [3]. So what can we do? Not much. Buy Toshiba exclusively to make WD and Seagate less powerful? Maybe. But none of them is honest in the SMR affair. Nevertheless, relatively speaking, I do find that WD's denial has made the other two more honest comparatively. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8355860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8355860 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11110902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11110902 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ST3000DM001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ST3000DM001 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22906959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22906959

wegs 7y ago
There are quite a few other competitors. They make SSDs. It's a different price/performance curve (lower on the low-end, higher on the high-end), but as I said, reliability trumps all. In the early days, I waited to adopt SSDs because of horror stories about wear leveling algorithm bugs causing early failures (because SSD makers wanted to eek out a little bit of extra speed). Speed is nice-to-have, but fast, unreliable storage has negative value to me. On the flip side, if I now can't trust HDDs, I won't buy them. 8TB is nice-to-have, but reliability is critical. 8TB of unreliable storage has negative value to me. I mean, I was pretty productive in the days of 133MHz computers, 32MB of RAM, and 1.6GB disk space. I prefer gigahertz of multicore performance, 32GB of RAM, and terabytes of disk space, but it's not worth sacrificing reliability for. A computer failure can cost me a week of time. If it all worked, I'd have a 1TB SSD RAID and an 8TB HDD RAID, each with two drives so if one fails, the other goes on. That's not just me. A random computer buyer might now know better, but if you buy a computer and something breaks, whoever makes it devalues their brand. If the HDD makers collude to give untrustworthy storage, they won't have a market left. I'll mention cloud storage is a competitor too.
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  > There are quite a few other competitors. They make SSDs. There are some overlaps, but it's a different market. If someone still buys HDDs, certainly it means SSDs are not suitable for the job, at least in term of cost. > I'll mention cloud storage is a competitor too. Maybe for cold storage, syncing data and object storage. But still, there is no replacement for a box of spinning hard drives in many applications.
  - myself248 7y ago
    > SSDs are not suitable for the job, at least in term of cost I think what just happened is that CMR drives just got more expensive, which may erase some of that cost advantage. Not all of it, not yet. But principle is worth something, too. I expect a few folks who are sortof on the border will be so soured on spinning rust by this whole ordeal, as to swear it off completely.
  - p1necone 7y ago
    I think the only difference for most use cases is cost. As soon as the $/byte ratio lines up between SSDs and HDDs the market for HDDs will basically be long term archival storage only I suspect.
- fmajid 7y ago
  Unfortunately NAND Flash is not an archival medium, as data can fade in as little as one year when powered off. I realize disk is the new tape, I didn't realize the hard drive makers would take it so literally... As far as I am concerned, SMR are unfit for any purpose other than hyperscale archival storage. If you work for AWS Glacier, good for you, but those drives should never ever be sold to consumers.
  - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
    > Unfortunately NAND Flash is not an archival medium, as data can fade in as little as one year when powered off. A marginally-related comment: Curiously, HDDs are not totally immune to this problem in the long run. Many types of EEPROMs (basically used by everything that has a CPU/MCU inside) only have an officially data retention duration of 10 years, beyond the date, there's no guarantee by the manufacturers that the firmware won't be lost. Yet surprisingly, most consumer electronics work fine after one or two decades, indeed it's because the EEPROM manufacturers are being conservative, not to mention that most electronics are stored room temperature. There is wild variations of rated lifetime in different microcontrollers, a most common rating is 10 years, but some are 40 years or even 100 years at 25 °C. It indicates that it's related to the semiconductor process, and it also implies EEPROMs have a lot of potential but it's expensive and/or there are too many uncertainties to make any guarantee. How long will today's technology last in the wild is still largely untested in practice. Long story short, I see EEPROMs as a time bomb of the digital (dark) age. Imagine when a future archeologist wants to download data from a HDD made in 2010, only to find that all firmware and parameters in the EEPROMs are gone, permanently bricking the electronics, even when the platters, motors and the head are good. Conclusion: In terms of data archiving, SSDs are bad, HDDs are much better and suitable for most people, but tape drives are still the real archival medium.
etiam 7y ago
For what it's worth the continued reporting on Blocks & Files at least left me with a better impression of Toshiba than the competition with respect to owning up to it. When we asked Seagate about the Barracudas and the Desktop HDD using SMR technology, a spokesperson told us: “I confirm all four products listed use SMR technology.” In a follow-up question, we asked why isn’t this information is not explicit in Seagate’s brochures, data sheets and product manuals – as it is for Exos and Archive disk drives? Seagate’s spokesperson said: “We provide technical information consistent with the positioning and intended workload for each drive.” ( https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/15/seagate-2-4-and-8tb-barracuda-and-desktop-hdd-smr/ https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/15/seagate-2-4-and-8tb-ba... ) Whereas Toshiba's representative at least cooperated and did not just spout further delusional corporate doublespeak when questioned about the lying. Blocks & Files asked Toshiba to confirm that the 4TB and 6TB P300 desktop drives use SMR and clarify which drives in its portfolio use SMR. A company spokesperson told us: “The Toshiba P300 Desktop PC Hard Drive Series includes the P300 4TB and 6TB, which utilise the drive-managed SMR (the base drives are DT02 generation 3.5-inch SMR desktop HDD). “Models based on our MQ04 2.5-inch mobile generation all utilise drive-managed SMR, and include the L200 Laptop PC Hard Drive Series, 9.5mm 2TB and 7mm 1TB branded models. “Models based on our DT02 3.5-inch desktop generation all utilise drive managed SMR, and include the 4/6TB models of the P300 Series branded consumer drives.” The company also told us which other desktop drives did and did not use SMR: MD07ACA – 7,200rm 12TB, 14TB CMR (base of X300 Performance Hard Drive Series branded models MD04 – 7,200rpm – 2, 4, 5, 6TB CMR (base for X300 Performance Hard Drive Series branded models DT02 – 5,400rpm – 4, 6 TB SMR (base for P300 Desktop PC Hard Drive Series 4TB and 6TB branded models) DT01 – 7, 200rpm – 500GB, 1,2,3 TB CMR (base for P300 Desktop PC Hard Drive Series 1/2/3TB branded models) ( https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/16/toshiba-desktop-disk-drives-undocumented-shingle-magnetic-recording/ https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/16/toshiba-desktop-disk-d... ) And while the use of inferior technology should certainly have been announced in all these cases, watering down the product seems slightly less unforgivable for the class of slow Desktop brand drives, in my perception, as the expectations there shouldn't clash quite as badly with the performance issues.
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  Good point.
freeAgent 7y ago
For what it's worth, I have had 5x Seagate ST3000NV000 drives in a Synology NAS since mid-2014 with zero failures. It's a different model drive (thankfully), but I wanted to put it out there that not all their drives are/have been terrible in my very anecdotal experience.
- thequux 7y ago
  I have a ST3000DM001 and a ST3000NV000 (and some random WD disk) that, together, make a btrfs filesystem. It's been working perfectly fine for the last four years, and the only problem reported by SMART is on the WD disk. It's always possibly to simply be lucky.
- numpad0 7y ago
  It’s specifically ST3000DM001 after Thai flooding where precision mechanical factories are located.

wegs 7y ago

There are quite a few other competitors. They make SSDs. It's a different price/performance curve (lower on the low-end, higher on the high-end), but as I said, reliability trumps all. In the early days, I waited to adopt SSDs because of horror stories about wear leveling algorithm bugs causing early failures (because SSD makers wanted to eek out a little bit of extra speed). Speed is nice-to-have, but fast, unreliable storage has negative value to me. On the flip side, if I now can't trust HDDs, I won't buy them. 8TB is nice-to-have, but reliability is critical. 8TB of unreliable storage has negative value to me. I mean, I was pretty productive in the days of 133MHz computers, 32MB of RAM, and 1.6GB disk space. I prefer gigahertz of multicore performance, 32GB of RAM, and terabytes of disk space, but it's not worth sacrificing reliability for. A computer failure can cost me a week of time. If it all worked, I'd have a 1TB SSD RAID and an 8TB HDD RAID, each with two drives so if one fails, the other goes on. That's not just me. A random computer buyer might now know better, but if you buy a computer and something breaks, whoever makes it devalues their brand. If the HDD makers collude to give untrustworthy storage, they won't have a market left. I'll mention cloud storage is a competitor too.

segfaultbuserr 7y ago
> There are quite a few other competitors. They make SSDs. There are some overlaps, but it's a different market. If someone still buys HDDs, certainly it means SSDs are not suitable for the job, at least in term of cost. > I'll mention cloud storage is a competitor too. Maybe for cold storage, syncing data and object storage. But still, there is no replacement for a box of spinning hard drives in many applications.
- myself248 7y ago
  > SSDs are not suitable for the job, at least in term of cost I think what just happened is that CMR drives just got more expensive, which may erase some of that cost advantage. Not all of it, not yet. But principle is worth something, too. I expect a few folks who are sortof on the border will be so soured on spinning rust by this whole ordeal, as to swear it off completely.
- p1necone 7y ago
  I think the only difference for most use cases is cost. As soon as the $/byte ratio lines up between SSDs and HDDs the market for HDDs will basically be long term archival storage only I suspect.
fmajid 7y ago
Unfortunately NAND Flash is not an archival medium, as data can fade in as little as one year when powered off. I realize disk is the new tape, I didn't realize the hard drive makers would take it so literally... As far as I am concerned, SMR are unfit for any purpose other than hyperscale archival storage. If you work for AWS Glacier, good for you, but those drives should never ever be sold to consumers.
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  > Unfortunately NAND Flash is not an archival medium, as data can fade in as little as one year when powered off. A marginally-related comment: Curiously, HDDs are not totally immune to this problem in the long run. Many types of EEPROMs (basically used by everything that has a CPU/MCU inside) only have an officially data retention duration of 10 years, beyond the date, there's no guarantee by the manufacturers that the firmware won't be lost. Yet surprisingly, most consumer electronics work fine after one or two decades, indeed it's because the EEPROM manufacturers are being conservative, not to mention that most electronics are stored room temperature. There is wild variations of rated lifetime in different microcontrollers, a most common rating is 10 years, but some are 40 years or even 100 years at 25 °C. It indicates that it's related to the semiconductor process, and it also implies EEPROMs have a lot of potential but it's expensive and/or there are too many uncertainties to make any guarantee. How long will today's technology last in the wild is still largely untested in practice. Long story short, I see EEPROMs as a time bomb of the digital (dark) age. Imagine when a future archeologist wants to download data from a HDD made in 2010, only to find that all firmware and parameters in the EEPROMs are gone, permanently bricking the electronics, even when the platters, motors and the head are good. Conclusion: In terms of data archiving, SSDs are bad, HDDs are much better and suitable for most people, but tape drives are still the real archival medium.

etiam 7y ago

For what it's worth the continued reporting on Blocks & Files at least left me with a better impression of Toshiba than the competition with respect to owning up to it. When we asked Seagate about the Barracudas and the Desktop HDD using SMR technology, a spokesperson told us: “I confirm all four products listed use SMR technology.” In a follow-up question, we asked why isn’t this information is not explicit in Seagate’s brochures, data sheets and product manuals – as it is for Exos and Archive disk drives? Seagate’s spokesperson said: “We provide technical information consistent with the positioning and intended workload for each drive.” ( https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/15/seagate-2-4-and-8tb-barracuda-and-desktop-hdd-smr/ https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/15/seagate-2-4-and-8tb-ba... ) Whereas Toshiba's representative at least cooperated and did not just spout further delusional corporate doublespeak when questioned about the lying. Blocks & Files asked Toshiba to confirm that the 4TB and 6TB P300 desktop drives use SMR and clarify which drives in its portfolio use SMR. A company spokesperson told us: “The Toshiba P300 Desktop PC Hard Drive Series includes the P300 4TB and 6TB, which utilise the drive-managed SMR (the base drives are DT02 generation 3.5-inch SMR desktop HDD). “Models based on our MQ04 2.5-inch mobile generation all utilise drive-managed SMR, and include the L200 Laptop PC Hard Drive Series, 9.5mm 2TB and 7mm 1TB branded models. “Models based on our DT02 3.5-inch desktop generation all utilise drive managed SMR, and include the 4/6TB models of the P300 Series branded consumer drives.” The company also told us which other desktop drives did and did not use SMR: MD07ACA – 7,200rm 12TB, 14TB CMR (base of X300 Performance Hard Drive Series branded models MD04 – 7,200rpm – 2, 4, 5, 6TB CMR (base for X300 Performance Hard Drive Series branded models DT02 – 5,400rpm – 4, 6 TB SMR (base for P300 Desktop PC Hard Drive Series 4TB and 6TB branded models) DT01 – 7, 200rpm – 500GB, 1,2,3 TB CMR (base for P300 Desktop PC Hard Drive Series 1/2/3TB branded models) ( https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/16/toshiba-desktop-disk-drives-undocumented-shingle-magnetic-recording/ https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/16/toshiba-desktop-disk-d... ) And while the use of inferior technology should certainly have been announced in all these cases, watering down the product seems slightly less unforgivable for the class of slow Desktop brand drives, in my perception, as the expectations there shouldn't clash quite as badly with the performance issues.

segfaultbuserr 7y ago
Good point.

freeAgent 7y ago

For what it's worth, I have had 5x Seagate ST3000NV000 drives in a Synology NAS since mid-2014 with zero failures. It's a different model drive (thankfully), but I wanted to put it out there that not all their drives are/have been terrible in my very anecdotal experience.

thequux 7y ago
I have a ST3000DM001 and a ST3000NV000 (and some random WD disk) that, together, make a btrfs filesystem. It's been working perfectly fine for the last four years, and the only problem reported by SMART is on the WD disk. It's always possibly to simply be lucky.
numpad0 7y ago
It’s specifically ST3000DM001 after Thai flooding where precision mechanical factories are located.