Rich Freeman wrote: > On Sun, May 10, 2020 at 2:11 PM Dale <rdalek1...@gmail.com> wrote: >> I did find a WD Red 8TB drive. It costs a good bit more. It's a good >> deal but still costs more. I'm going to keep looking. Eventually I'll >> either spend the money on the drive or find a really good deal. My home >> directory is at 69% so I got some time left. Of course, my collection >> is still growing. o_O > In theory the 8TB reds are SMR-free.
That was my thinking. It appears to be a highly durable drive. These color codes can sometimes be confusing since there is so many of them. It appears they are similar across makers tho. Well, mostly. I'm sure there is some differences. ;-) > > You should take a look at /r/datahoarder and its wiki for tips on > cheap drives. I've been shucking 10-12TB external drives lately. You > can get a 12TB drive for $180 which is $15/TB. It is REALLY hard to > top those sorts of prices in bare 3.5" drives of any kind. > > The main problem with shucking is that it isn't the intended use of > the drive. First you have to actually shuck them. Then you get to > deal with the 3.3V pin issue depending on your power supply. Then if > you ever want warranty replacement you need to restore the drive to > original condition. And finally you have no guarantee as to what is > in the box, which means you have to follow various online sources like > that sub to see what others are seeing in these drives. Indications > are that a lot of these drives are surplus enterprise drives of very > high quality - often having SMART data for Helium-filled drives. But > for all we know next week they could start sticking SMR on them and > not tell anybody. > > Depending on your use case you could probably even consider just > leaving these drives in their enclosures. USB3 performs really well > in general, though obviously if you try to stack 8 drives on a single > USB3 bus you're probably not going to get the same performance as an > 8x PCIe LSI HBA with 8 SATA ports. If you're just using them for bulk > storage of multimedia that might not be a big deal, but if you're > trying to run a cluster of VMs off of them it could be a problem. > > I think the drive manufacturers are basically trying to segment the > market. They're selling essentially the same drive for either $180, > $220, or $320+ depending on whether you're willing to wait for a sale, > buy the external drive at full price, or you want the 3.5" drive > labeled for actual RAID use. They know that small businesses without > volume deals will end up paying $320, and then enthusiasts will shuck > drives, and with any luck not bother asking for RMAs if they fail a > year later. Large companies pay substantially lower prices for 3.5" > drives using volume discounts so they get the best of all worlds. > > Oh, the other thing is that the larger external drives often have > semi-exclusive deals with stores like Best Buy. They're becoming > easier to find, but usually you're going to end up with the best deals > waiting for a sale and getting them at a place like Best Buy, and not > your usual PC part dealer. It is crazy, but that is how it works, and > it is a real bummer to go into Microcenter and see nothing but > overpriced low-capacity 3.5" drives (many of which ended up turning > out to be secretly SMR - not Microcenter's fault of course). > Ultimately this just reflects that drive manufacturers have > consolidated down into what amounts to a cartel with a lot of leverage > over anybody who isn't buying drives by the pallet. > I've read about doing that before and you are right, you can save some bucks but you may not get what you want every time. Most likely you will but the risk is there. Then there's the warranty deal as well. The 3.3v thing, I think they sell adapters for that now. That said, you do get a decent enclosure and those aren't cheap either, good ones anyway. I like fans on mine. What I'm doing is replacing a 6TB SMR drive that is part of /home. I think you helped discover that in a previous thread a while back. Right now /home is a 6TB and a 3TB drive with LVM. I plan to replace the 6 with a 8 which will give me a PMR drive and 2TBs of additional space. Later on I'll replace the 3TB with either a 6 or another 8TB drive. That should hold me a while. That's either 14TBs or 16TBs. That's a lot of videos and such. I check in several places but am not opposed to buying from someone a open box or a drive pulled from a machine but barely or even not used at all if the person is willing to stand behind it while I test it or selling those types of things is their business. It's a bit of a judgment call. Price affects it too. New would be great but deals on those aren't as often. Still keeping a eye out for a deal tho. Most are pushing $200 pretty hard. I just bought a new window A/C so gotta pay off that card, again. It was on sale plus free shipping. Plus, I still want speakers for my TV. Computer speakers are doing really well. They are a lot better than those store bought things. Dale :-) :-)
