
Seagate Announces 16TB HDD - rbanffy
https://nexthive.com/seagate-biggest-hdd-16-tb/
======
combatentropy
From the article: "In a world where SSDs have become more and more common, one
might ask what the point of even developing newer and bigger HDDs is."

Solid state drives still cost about 10 times more per gigabyte. I'm just a web
developer, but a spinning-disk drive looks 100 times more complicated to me to
manufacture. I know at the beginning that hard drives would be cheaper, simply
because SSDs were newer, and there was R & D to amortize. But by now I would
have thought that SSDs might have matched hard drives or even undercut them.
Not only has it been over a decade, but hard drives themselves are using new R
& D too. For example this article mentions that this new hard drive uses a new
technique, called HAMR. Can the old factory machinery from 2005 be used to
manufacture these new HAMR disks?

~~~
Brockenstein
>Solid state drives still cost about 10 times more per gigabyte

I think you should go shopping, because the time where SSDs cost 10x as much
as an HDD is over.

When a WD Blue 1TB SATA 6 Gb/s 7200 RPM 64MB is $46 on Amazon and a Crucial
MX500 1TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5 Inch is $134.

Unless you're comparing the cheapest 1TB HDD you can find to a Samsung 970 pro
1TB or something... which really isn't a reasonable comparison imo.

~~~
gruez
>When a WD Blue 1TB SATA 6 Gb/s 7200 RPM 64MB is $46 on Amazon and a Crucial
MX500 1TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5 Inch is $134.

those are cherrypicked numbers because 1TB is at the _very_ low end for HDD
sizes. compare with a more typical HDD size (3TB or 4TB) and you'll see the
differences become more obvious.

~~~
loeg
I don't know about you, but 500-1000 GB is more than enough for my SSD needs,
so the comparison at 1TB is much more relevant to me than at 4TB.

~~~
saltcured
Wasn't the parent discussion about a new high-capacity HDD and the per-
capacity cost of HDD vs SSD? I don't think that people satisfied with under
1TB are relevant to that topic.

In that market, people are comparing a pile of disks in an array to a pile of
solid state storage needed to replace its capacity. The bulk price of storage
inverts when it is cheaper to store hundreds of TB on huge SSDs rather than on
huge HDDs. That would be the death of HDD, since nobody really wants spinning
disks in their datacenter.

~~~
kalleboo
> a pile of disks in an array to a pile of solid state storage

It doesn't even need to be a pile of disks. Even for a PC the differences are
big.

My computer has a 1 TB SSD which is a decent size for an SSD. It's still a bit
tight for me, so I complement with a spinny rust NAS. If I had an HDD instead
it would have been like 8 TB and I wouldn't necessarily need the NAS. I think
that's what GP is hinting at when he says "me SSD needs". I think he's also
complementing with HDD somewhere for bulk storage (be it external drive, NAS
or even cloud storage)

~~~
loeg
If I'm GP, yeah; I use 250-500GB SSDs as primary disk and have a small NAS
with a RAID1 of two 5 TB disks for slow archival storage. For that slow
archive, though, I don't care what factor SSD price is to HDD price (as long
as it's still >1.0).

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wpietri
I don't quite recall when it happened, but at some point my reaction to
announcements like this changed from, "Yay, more space!" to "Good, the size I
need will be even cheaper when I upgrade 2-3 years from now."

~~~
veridies
I record and produce my own music as a hobby. Each project can easily reach
gigabytes in size, and my biggest projects are eight gigabytes or so (eight
drum mics, guitar, bass, vocals, and synthesizers, all uncompressed 24/96
audio, often with a number of different takes). I go through HDDs very
quickly. I know that for development and most uses bigger HDDs are
unnecessary, but for media production these improvements are really valuable.

~~~
randyrand
Why not use FLAC? It gets 50-70% compression and is lossless.

~~~
soundwave106
Offhand I actually don't know of too many DAW programs that can record the
individual tracks in FLAC format. Reaper does. Checking the Wiki
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hardware_and_software_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hardware_and_software_that_supports_FLAC)),
it looks like Cakewalk Sonar does as well. But that leaves a lot of major
players (Protools, Logic, Cubase, Ableton Live, FL Studio, etc.) that cannot.

It's not something I personally would do because (as others imply) IMHO the
CPU trade-off is not worth it. Usually I use a blend of plug-ins (which take
up no space) and recorded hardware, consequently the amount per track ends up
being more like 100-600MB and not gigabytes. This is rather manageable.

However, I will note that sample based software synthesizers and sample packs
can be _huge_ these days, even despite in many cases lossless compressing
being applied to the sample library. Omnisphere 2 for instance comes with a
60GB+ sample library (and that's before you add the add-ons like Moog
Tribute). At the current extreme end, orchestral sample company Spitfire
offers a string library ([https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/hans-zimmer-
strings/](https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/hans-zimmer-strings/)) that
is 183GB in size and a sampled piano that's a whopping 211GB _compressed_
([https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/hans-zimmer-
piano/](https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/hans-zimmer-piano/)).

~~~
veridies
And that's why when I use Omnisphere (which I love, BTW), I send my projects
to my best friend's computer; there's no way in hell I could fit that on my
computer's internal SSD.

Even the relatively small software instruments (I've been really into
Soniccoture's Glass/Works, for instance) use up like 8 GB apiece.

------
notacoward
As a professional storage-system developer, my reaction to every announcement
of larger disks is something close to horror. Capacity keeps increasing while
performance remains darn near constant, so the gap between the two keeps
getting wider. Yes, we can use flash to absorb the I/O demand, treat disk more
like tape, yadda yadda, but all of that takes significant effort. You do want
your storage system to be _correct_ despite the greater complexity of
heterogeneous hardware, don't you?

Looking on the bright side: infinite job security. Yay?

~~~
Aloha
The part that makes me recoil in horror is the potential damage wrought by one
failure - at what point does the rebuild time for your RAID Array start to
collide with the MTBF for the drives? ;-)

~~~
notacoward
This is why the really big storage systems use erasure coding. At scale,
RAID-5 and even RAID-6 are vulnerable to these kinds of overlapping failures.
Not theory; seen it happen.

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dlevine
I know that big disks are useful for a lot of people/applications. However, I
topped out at 500GB about 10 years ago. That gives me plenty of headroom.
Since then, I have gone from a 500GB HDD to a SSD, but my space usage hasn't
really gone up. The largest disk I own is a 1TB disk in my Time Capsule (which
I could probably stand to upgrade, but I don't feel like taking it apart).

I think this is probably because I stream everything, and don't download much
content. Even most of my applications are web-based these days. Granted, I'm
sure that a lot of storage in the cloud is required to service me...

~~~
merb
you also do not game a lot. if you look at [https://www.game-
debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=9339&game=R...](https://www.game-
debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=9339&game=Red%20Dead%20Redemption%202) you
will see that you need 100gb for just that single game.

I mean my own music library which is rather small has 250gb...

~~~
craftyguy
I game a lot, but none of the games I play even approach half that size. not
all games are bloated, disk space eating messes.

~~~
merb
it actually depends. you can either have a game with extremly fast loading,
which means that assets won't be compressed a lot or you can compress them and
go for file size, you can even reduce the quality. it always depends on your
target audience.

but still modern games for pc/mac are around ~10gb per game which would limit
your installed game base by a lot.

(also working with docker (pc, mac not linux) or vms in general will quickly
eat your 500gb hard disk)

~~~
loeg
I have a 200 GB or so SSD in my gaming computer. Yeah, I basically just
install one AAA game at a time.

------
izzydata
For general file storage spinning disk HDD are still better cost, but there is
a decreasing need for general file storage for the average person. For most
people one terabyte is more than enough and it may as well be an SSD that is
also their boot drive.

Personally I'd love to replace my multiple 2TB drives with 8TB drives if the
price comes down a bit.

~~~
pezdeath
Games are the only reason most people will need more.

Most new AAA games are approaching 100GB each. And on the extreme end Gears of
War 4 for example takes up over 250 GB.

~~~
baroffoos
Datacenters as well. Peoples data storage needs have gone up only now we put
all the data on someone elses computer.

------
linkmotif
As a person who doesn't know much about HDD technology, I always wonder: what
were the advances that allowed this particular bump to happen?

~~~
lightbyte
From TFA:

>The Exos 16 TB hard drive using HAMR technology is now the world’s biggest
HDD in terms of capacity overtaking the 14 TB Barracuda Pro.

>HAMR, which is the acronym for heat-assisted magnetic recording, to be
precise. This replaces the regular PMR, perpendicular magnetic recording,
found in most HDDs. To the average consumer, this doesn’t mean much at all.
However, Seagate believes that HAMR is the key to making significantly larger
capacities readily available shortly.

~~~
fallat
What is the theoretical realistic limits for HDD storage?

From the sounds of it this 16TB HAMR-enabled drive is just the first of many
we will see year-to-year to continue HDD sales.

~~~
selectodude
Seagate says they'll get up to 100 TB with HAMR. Curious at what point it's no
longer financially reasonable to keep researching ways to increase density.

~~~
SwellJoe
We produce and process more data in a few days than we did in a year even as
recently as a decade ago (and, by "we", I mostly mean companies that want to
store every detail of every human life for analysis in order to maximize
profits). So far, the increasing need for storage has kept pace with the
ability to store it.

------
baroffoos
I just checked out the price of that 14tb seagate drive and you can get 2 of
their 10tb drives for the same cost of 1 14tb drive. Who is buying this 14tb
drive right now if it costs that much?

~~~
Nadya
People who need mass storage and either have limited space or want to maximize
the space they do have. A thirty-two drive rack full of 14TB drives is 448TB
of storage space instead of 320TB (thirty-two 10TB drives). And if you only
need 320TB of storage you only need a rack that holds twenty-three drives - so
you might downsize to a twenty-four drive rack.

I updated a lot of my 4/6TB drives to 8TB drives for this reason: too much
physical space was being taken up on my desk by having so many 4TB drives.

------
ksec
The HDD industry, Basically Seagate, Toshiba, and WD together are milking it
for as long as possible. The Data created per year, or even growth per year
far out-weight the growth of HDD capacity.

At some point later, surely NAND will offer more storage in 4U than a 40U
Rack. Lower Energy, higher speed.

I have been asking this a lot, at what price point, will the TCO of NAND,
where it offer superior speed, higher density per Rack and its capacity cross
and it makes sense to store them all in NAND.

------
Skunkleton
The link doesn't work for me

[https://web.archive.org/web/20181205181735/https://nexthive....](https://web.archive.org/web/20181205181735/https://nexthive.com/seagate-
biggest-hdd-16-tb/)

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stretchwithme
The Library of Congress is only 10 terabytes.

~~~
anoncoward111
Disagree, I sold them tape cartridges by the PB

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donatj
If it's anything like their 8tb offerings it's unreliable rubbish.

~~~
zrav
Statistics with representative sample size disagree.
[https://www.backblaze.com/blog/2018-hard-drive-failure-
rates...](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/2018-hard-drive-failure-rates/)

~~~
donatj
I don't know if you're looking at the same list I am, because the large
Seagate disks on here have some of the highest failure rates outside WDC.

~~~
rb666
The Seagate 8TB has an AFR of around 1%, this is not only really good, but
also makes any anecdotal evidence from a consumer quite useless.

------
PHGamer
when are we getting 8 tb ssds. its been awhile. ssds should have caught up to
spinning rust by now in capacity

~~~
wmf
Enterprise 15 TB SSDs are already available. It would be easy to create 8 TB
consumer SSDs but they don't see demand. There's tons of empty space inside
2.5" SSDs:
[https://www.anandtech.com/Gallery/Album/6783#3](https://www.anandtech.com/Gallery/Album/6783#3)

~~~
StillBored
Right, but a huge part of the consumer SSD space has moved to m.2, where there
isn't a lot of space to just pack in another couple dies. While conceivably
you might be able to make a 8TB drive in m.2 its going to be easier in 2.5",
and people with the money to buy that large of a SSD probably don't want it on
SATA. Which is why, as you point out they exist, here is a 8TB u.2

[https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=1E4-006U-00...](https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=1E4-006U-00009)

for only $2600.

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mkirklions
Anyone have an opinion about Seagate? I had one of their HDD and it died on me
within a year.

Not sure if this was a 'one-off' or other people had issues with their
quality.

Similar issue with samsung on SSD.

~~~
djsumdog
I've had a drive from every major manufacturer fail at some point. Brands
don't matter, backups do. Buy hard drives in pairs and put an item on your
calendar to pop the other one in once a month, sync it, and put it back in a
fire-resistant safe.

~~~
votepaunchy
> Buy hard drives in pairs and put an item on your calendar to pop the other
> one in once a month, sync it, and put it back in a fire-resistant safe.

Alternatively, buy one hard drive and keep a copy in Amazon Glacier Deep
Archive for $1/TB-month.

~~~
anoncoward111
And then wait weeks and pay real money to pull it all back if you have 8TB :)

~~~
kalleboo
Yeah it's something like $700 to retrieve 8 TB

~~~
anoncoward111
Meanwhile for highly redundant tape cartridges, you can store that amount for
maybe $100-200, but the device to read it back is about 10x more expensive
used unless I am just struggling the find the real deals :/

