OT: WD 2TB HDDs

Just thought people might like to know the next stage in HDD capacity is here:

[www.westerndigital.com]



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...yikes. The bigger they are...

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Well I hope WD have tested these to death unlike Seagate!



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Though it's cool to have those big drives it does have one disadvantage - if in former days a 30 G HDD died and you lost 30 G of data, if now a 2 TB drives dies you loose 2TB of data.
So always think about backup.

Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]

And the backup's going to be another 2TB.

It's inevitable with uncompressed or lightly compressed HD material (those 2.5TB I've been working with for three weeks were just, well, porky -- and all of it is untimecoded animation clips from a video game). But it's cause all new problems for storage. And just the time it takes to backup that stuff...!

I'll trust those Western Digitals in six months, maybe, if they get a good rep.


www.derekmok.com

D? Explain...

2.5TB???

Seagate are promising those for this year - are you using pre-pro versions?

or have you been at the warm saki?



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> D? Explain...
> 2.5TB???

I don't know the specs of the storage this company uses, but I think it's a Fibre Channel RAID. The total space was 4TB. (This is one of those companies that actually has an IT department, so I was spared having to play tech guy)

The project was a video-game trailer with lots, lots, lots of media at HD quality. Three drives were sent to the company by the client, some from European sources -- needed power adaptors for the drives. Just the copying and transcoding took about four days total.

Oh yeah, and about 200 of those clips were "Untitled". With three or four duplicates of the same name but different content. Yippee. Thank goodness for R-Name.


www.derekmok.com

...the harder they fall.

Storage is getting too big IMHO. In order to back up these mammoth drives, you have to at the very least match the capacity. I would HATE to be around when someone's 2 TB drive goes down and they haven't saved in hours or backed up (happens every day).

There's that...oh, and WD drives are not dependable IMHO either.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Well I'm gonna bookmark this thread for next year when you 2 are complaining about the 4TB Hitachi SpinStars making no noise and so like electric cars feel like they aren't working!



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There's that...oh, and WD drives are not dependable IMHO either.

If drives could talk to each other the most often sentence said would be: "Stay cool"

Andreas

Where the drive capacity makes the most sense for security and performance is in a RAID.

If you have RAID 5 and server class drives then the drive can never be too big...

Chuck,

You're totally right.
And I think it's really tempting to replace all drives in my 5 drive RAIDs 3+ with 2TB drives so I can go up to 6TB per RAID.
But still one question is open - are these drives "server class drives" and how many spare drives I have to buy.

Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]

I think the best thing to do is to just wait for a few months...

A. until they have been tested

B. until production increases and price drops


I have an 8TB RAID with Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB and so far they have been very good and quieter than my 8 Hitachi DeskStars.

I also have 4 of the 1.5TB Seagates but am still waiting on the testing of the new firmware before I use them for anything serious.

The 2TB (or larger) drives will certainly be featuring in my RAID setup in the near future if they work as well they're supposed to.



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Unfortunately generally speaking if drives are inexpensive then they are probably not server class drives.

However, whether you need that level of drive depends in part on your controller card in the RAID. I have one 24 drive fiber channel RAID that requires server class drives. More expensive but the up-time reliability, which is really what your paying for, is very good. So this is the RAID that feeds the edit bays.

I have several four drive RAID5's that I put cheaper "consumer" drives in that I use to back up near-line storage that do the job just fine.

The difference is that if a drive fails in the on-line RAID I care how fast it can rebuild and what the performance level is while rebuilding. The additional cost for server class drives is cheap insurance against paying editors to sit around.

But if you are attaching the RAID to a single workstation [and not editing uncompressed HD] then the cheaper drives are probably fine. If you have to replace a drive because one failed then your going to experience slower performance while it rebuilds the new drive but you won't loose any data. Of coarse the bigger the individual drives the longer the rebuilding process takes. I had a 750GB drive fail recently and it took almost two days to rebuild but the editors didn't even know that there was a failure, they just kept on editing.

Even with less expensive and less reliable drives the odds against two drives failing at the same time are really high. I've been running the 24 drive RAID non stop for more than a year and I had one drive give me a bunch of error messages so I replaced it but even it never failed. I generally only keep one spare drive. By the way, I sent the suspect drive back to Seagate and they replaced it with a new one, no charge and no questions.

I don't know if the heat a drive gives off is related to its size, but probably at some point that might play a role in deciding how much drive capacity you want to have spinning. It is a constant challenge to keep our server room cool enough, well and not freeze the editors to death. But that says more about our crappy air conditioning...

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Unfortunately generally speaking if drives are inexpensive then they are probably not server class drives.

Of course you usually get what you pay for. I'm sure the 2TB will be available in Server Class SATA and SAS versions though.



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