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5TB?

S

Soundtweaker

n00b
Joined
Nov 5, 2009
Messages
20
Looks like Newegg is out of 4TB drives except for enterprise class drive.
Could they be clearing room for 5 TB drives soon?
 
It's more likely that Newegg just ran out of stock. I've heard no rumors of 5TB drives on the horizon, and even if I had, I'd not take Newegg's stock as an indicator of their arrival. Things like that only work when you're Apple ;)
 
I'm not genius when it comes to HDD density or platters, but I sort of doubt that 5TB will come into existence. Probably skip directly to 6.
 
Newegg is out of stock because the only internal 4TB drive that wasn't the Ultrastar was the 5K4000 (and it is eol). 5TB and larger drives haven't even been announced let alone shipped and with things the way they are I don't see any reason they will trot them out any time soon.
 
mwroobel said:
Newegg is out of stock because the only internal 4TB drive that wasn't the Ultrastar was the 5K4000 (and it is eol). 5TB and larger drives haven't even been announced let alone shipped and with things the way they are I don't see any reason they will trot them out any time soon.
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There's also a 7K4000 Deskstar that was slightly easier to find. Never saw it on NewEgg, but Best Buy (of all places) carried it in store for a while.
 
LhasaCM said:
There's also a 7K4000 Deskstar that was slightly easier to find. Never saw it on NewEgg, but Best Buy (of all places) carried it in store for a while.
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Personally, I believe that when they saw Seagate not shipping ANY 4TB internals that they pulled the Deskstar 7k4000s and figured that anyone that NEEDED a 4TB internal FF would pay through the nose for the Ultrastars. From what I remember about the availability, the DS 7K4000s shipped (Retail pack I believe) for about 3 months and then dried up.
 
mwroobel said:
Personally, I believe that when they saw Seagate not shipping ANY 4TB internals that they pulled the Deskstar 7k4000s and figured that anyone that NEEDED a 4TB internal FF would pay through the nose for the Ultrastars. From what I remember about the availability, the DS 7K4000s shipped (Retail pack I believe) for about 3 months and then dried up.
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Looks that way, though some US retailers have some stock (retail packaging is all I've seen) at around $300 or so.
 
mwroobel said:
Newegg is out of stock because the only internal 4TB drive that wasn't the Ultrastar was the 5K4000 (and it is eol). 5TB and larger drives haven't even been announced let alone shipped and with things the way they are I don't see any reason they will trot them out any time soon.
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Yep. If anything the market has regressed back to 2TB and 3TB in terms of what's being mass produced for desktop segment. The best hope we had for a 5TB drive was Hitachi since they had the lock on the 5-platter design, and they had 1TB platters. And I'd bet the farm they already had working 5TB prototypes internally before selling out to The Man.

LhasaCM said:
Looks that way, though some US retailers have some stock (retail packaging is all I've seen) at around $300 or so.
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That only means a few retailers are simply sitting on old stock at the panic pricepoint they'd hoped to cash in on (and no one's buying), but distro channels have been dead a few months.
 
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There's all these tech sites saying that 5TB drives were supposed to be out last year.
Was it the floods that set everything back?
 
Soundtweaker said:
There's all these tech sites saying that 5TB drives were supposed to be out last year.
Was it the floods that set everything back?
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They said in the 50's that we would have flying cars way before today. The tech sites can speculate all they want, that doesn't mean it is going to come true. While the floods certainly didn't help, there is no great push for larger drives right now. Seagate doesn't even offer a non-external 4TB drive, and WDC is happy for you to pay through the nose for the Ultrastar 4TB if you NEED a 4TB LFF drive.
 
5TB is probably possible. It's just a question of whether it's profitable. Seagate has 1GB platters and WD got them from Hitachi. 5 platter drives have been made plenty of times in the past. A lot of the first 1TB drives had 5 platters, and they weren't the first and probably weren't the last either. I have to figure cramming 5 platters into a 3.5" drive makes things a wee bit tight and runs up costs, so it seems quite likely that while they might be able to make one they might not be able to sell enough of them to make it profitable.
 
mwroobel said:
Newegg is out of stock because the only internal 4TB drive that wasn't the Ultrastar was the 5K4000 (and it is eol). 5TB and larger drives haven't even been announced let alone shipped and with things the way they are I don't see any reason they will trot them out any time soon.
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eol?
 
zandor said:
5TB is probably possible. It's just a question of whether it's profitable. Seagate has 1GB platters and WD got them from Hitachi. 5 platter drives have been made plenty of times in the past. A lot of the first 1TB drives had 5 platters, and they weren't the first and probably weren't the last either. I have to figure cramming 5 platters into a 3.5" drive makes things a wee bit tight and runs up costs, so it seems quite likely that while they might be able to make one they might not be able to sell enough of them to make it profitable.
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I don't personally expect there to be any 5TB 5 platter drives. I believe that if the drive companies see the market for it, more 4TB drives will be trotted out. TDK has already announced working HAMR heads and platters and I would expect the next jump to be 3 Platter 6TB drives by 4Q 2013/1Q 2014. I would expect them still to be available in very small quantities initially, as they will want to offer 1 and 2 platter (2TB, 3TB and 4TB) drives first before 3 and 4 platter drives.
I also expect HAMR to be a big hit in enterprise 10k and 15k 2.5" drives, allowing reliable densities of up to 3TB in a 2.5" FF.
 
4TB is still fairly new, I give it at least a year before they come up with something higher. Then again, the speed at which hard drive space has increased never ceases to amaze me, so I could be wrong...

I'm still running on 1TB drives at home. I have 3 slots left in my server, I will either buy 3 1TB drives on sale at some point, or just start upgrading the whole array to 2 or 3TB drives. Faster to just add more drives though. Only need one rebuild that way. :p

With the availability of high density server enclosures, I would rather see continuous improvement in current gen drives speed and reliability while prices continue to trickle down, than higher capacity, though. On the other hand higher capacity drives that come out also drive the prices down for lower capacity drives.
 
I just think they could do it (make 5TB drives) if they wanted to and probably would if there was money in it. Other than that I agree with the nay-sayers because I don't think there's enough money in it yet and the drive makers will be better off milking 3 and 4TB models for a while.
 
mwroobel said:
End Of Life - No longer in production.. Some stock is still out there in the tertiary market but primary and secondary distribution is out of stock.
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why is it eol already? what's replacing it?
 
WD seems to be happy selling 4 platters 3TB, so I don't see why they wouldn't sell 4 platters 4TB and then 5TB when density allows.
 
I don't see why you all need all this drive space...

I'm still rockin a 40MB IDE from 1993 :D

But yeah, I think honestly there are some reliability issues to be worked out with the current 3/4TB drives before they try to make another jump in capacity.
 
Blue Falcon said:
But yeah, I think honestly there are some reliability issues to be worked out with the current 3/4TB drives before they try to make another jump in capacity.
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What reliability issues have you read about w/ 3TB & 4TB? I'm curious because for example the Hitachi 3TB and 4TB are flawless.
 
mwroobel said:
I don't personally expect there to be any 5TB 5 platter drives. I believe that if the drive companies see the market for it, more 4TB drives will be trotted out. TDK has already announced working HAMR heads and platters and I would expect the next jump to be 3 Platter 6TB drives by 4Q 2013/1Q 2014. I would expect them still to be available in very small quantities initially, as they will want to offer 1 and 2 platter (2TB, 3TB and 4TB) drives first before 3 and 4 platter drives.
I also expect HAMR to be a big hit in enterprise 10k and 15k 2.5" drives, allowing reliable densities of up to 3TB in a 2.5" FF.
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And don't forget the salt. HAMR + Salt = 30TB drives
 
i think seagate was selling 4TB externals for $150 a week ago. not sure if that was a price mistake or not. im content with 3TB for $130 though. i think thats a fair regular price point.
 
Just hold out for 5TB SSDs to come out. They have 1TB on 2.5" size already. 10TB is around the corner. If you can fit 7-8 1TB drives physically inside of a 3.5" drive, then you can imagine how easily they could release an 8TB right now if they wanted. Won't be long before we start seeing them.
 
Nocens said:
Just hold out for 5TB SSDs to come out. They have 1TB on 2.5" size already. 10TB is around the corner. If you can fit 7-8 1TB drives physically inside of a 3.5" drive, then you can imagine how easily they could release an 8TB right now if they wanted. Won't be long before we start seeing them.
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The price for that would be redic though.
 
Soundtweaker said:
The price for that would be redic though.
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Well, they control the price. It is just a matter of smaller less known companies coming out with much cheaper drives at non inflated prices. Unlike normal hard drives, SSDs can be made by many more companies. I am hoping some generics can push down prices of brand names.
 
There are still only a handful of companies that make the NAND and similar a handful of companies that make the ssd controllers. Although that is much better than just 2.
 
Nocens said:
Well, they control the price. It is just a matter of smaller less known companies coming out with much cheaper drives at non inflated prices. Unlike normal hard drives, SSDs can be made by many more companies. I am hoping some generics can push down prices of brand names.
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You clearly have no idea of what you're talking about. NAND founders are few and getting fewer with the bigger buying out the smaller ones. Prices have come down quite suddenly and may make you dream about even lower ones, but at current prices the founders are losing money, so they have started to reduce production. Overproduction is why the prices dropped.

And there's no escaping the limits of physics which are quickly being approached by NAND manufacturers.
 
Aesma said:
And there's no escaping the limits of physics which are quickly being approached by NAND manufacturers.
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You're beating a dead horse. There's nothing the Hard rabble loves more than refuting the realities of nand flash scaling. They fantasize of 10TB $100 ssd's in five years and they aren't about to let inconsequential things like physics and economics get in the way. ;)
 
kristof said:
You're beating a dead horse. There's nothing the Hard rabble loves more than refuting the realities of nand flash scaling. They fantasize of 10TB $100 ssd's in five years and they aren't about to let inconsequential things like physics and economics get in the way. ;)
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This post is so full of win my eyes moistened a little. If only this place had a +rep button.
 
Well, until we figure out how to make electrons smaller :) then we will always be bound by the laws of physics.
 
Maybe we could make hydrogen based hard drives. Those are the smallest possible atom that we know of. :p

But really it's not bigger drives that we need at this moment, it's simply improvements on existing designs. More speed, more reliability, etc... SSDs have their place, but they will (hopefully) not replace HDDs completely when it comes to high I/O mass storage where tweaking to reduce writes is out of the question. (ex: VM server, SAN etc). My fear is that consumer HDDs get replaced and the only HDDs being made will be the reduculously inflated enterprise ones. I plan to alway suse HDDs for my home mass storage needs, and SSDs for OS drive or other applications where I can control the IO to some extent.
 
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