I fear HAMR sounds like a variation on the idea of getting a coarser method to prepare the data to be written, just like on SMR. These kind of hard drives are good for slow predictable sequential storage, but they suck at writing more randomly. They're good for surveillance storage and things like that, but no good for daily use in a computer.
I mean, newer server-grade models with independent actuators can easily saturate a SATA 3 connection. As far as speeds go, a raid-5 or raid-6 setup or equivalent should be pretty damn fast, especially if they start rolling out those independent actuators into the consumer market.
As far as latency goes? Yeah, you should stick to solid state...but this breathes new life into the HDD market for sure.
The speed usually increases with capacity, but this drive uses HAMR instead of CMR, so it will be interesting to see what effect that has on the speed. The fastest HDDs available now can max out SATA 3 on sequential transfers, but they use dual actuators.
They seem to be very hit and miss in that there are some models with very low failure rates, but then there are some with very high.
That said, the 36 TB drive is most definitely not meant to be used as a single drive without any redundancy. I have no idea what the big guys at Backblaze for an example, are doing, but I'd want to be able to lose two drives in an array before I lose all my shit. So RAID 6 for me. Still, I'd likely be going with smaller drives because however much a 36 TB drive costs, I don't wanna feel like I'm spending 2x the cost of one of those just for redundancy lmao
I'd want to be able to lose two drives in an array before I lose all my shit. So RAID 6 for me.
Repeat after me: RAID is not a backup solution, RAID is a high-availability solution.
The point of RAID is not to safeguard your data, you need proper backups for that (3-2-1 rule of backups: 3 copies of the data on 2 different storage media, with 1 copy off-site). RAID will not protect your data from deletion from user error, malware, OS bugs, or anything like that.
The point of RAID is so everyone can keep working if there is a hardware failure. It’s there to prevent downtime.
I use mirrors, so RAID 1 right now and likely RAID 10 when I get more drives. That's the safest IMO, since you don't need the rest of the array to resilver your new drive, only the ones in its mirror pool, which reduces the likelihood of a cascading failure.
You couldn't afford this drive unless you are enterprise so there's nothing to worry about. They don't sell them by the 1. You have to buy enough for a rack at once.
I bought a seagate. Brand new. 250gb, back when 250gb on one hard drive cost a fuckton.
It sat in a box until I was done burning the files on my old 60gb hard drive onto dvd-r's.
Finally, like 2 months later, I open the box. Install the drive. Put all the files from dvds onto the hard drive.
And after I finished, 2 weeks later it totally dies. Outside of return window, but within the warranty period. Seagate refused to honor their warranty even though I still had the reciept.
That was like 2005. Western Digital has now gotten my business ever since. Multiple drives bought. Not because the drives die, but because datawise I outgrow them. My current setup is 18TB and a 12TB. I figure by 2027 I'll need to update that 12TB to a 30TB. Which I assume will still cost $400 at that point.
Return customer? No no. We'll hassle our customer and send bad vibes. Make him frustrated for ever shopping our brznd! Gotta protect that one time $400 purchase! It's totally worth losing 20 years of sales!