Seagate finally offering a down to earth priced internal 4TB HDD.

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Godmachine

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So Seagate is releasing the Seagate ST4000DM000 5900 rpm drive within the next few days and its being priced at some sites for just $209.

Who's thinking about grabbing one or two ..or more? Or is everyone sticking with WD Red's?
 
Price sounds good. Might be time to upgrade from 2tb drives in my media server.
 
fXK said:
that still quite high

expecting around 180 for 4Tb
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Seriously? The Hitachi 4TB internal drives are $384 on Amazon and like $439 on Newegg.

$209 is dirt cheap for an internal 4TB drive. It may not be 7200 RPM but it doesn't get any better at the moment when it comes to most bang for your buck. You could buy an external 4TB drive and rip it out of the casing , voiding its warranty which is what has been keeping me from doing so.
 
If you are close to a Costco they are selling Seagate 4TB externals for $160. Pull out the drive and you're also left with a USB 3.0 drive dock.
 
Superjoe said:
If you are close to a Costco they are selling Seagate 4TB externals for $160. Pull out the drive and you're also left with a USB 3.0 drive dock.
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But no warranty since you violated the terms by ripping it out of the casing. If you pull the drive and it dies a day later , you're fucked.
 
You could be right, I don't know. There is a thread In the hot deals section. I was under the impression from what others were posting that the drive itself carried its own warranty that was valid.
 
Superjoe said:
You could be right, I don't know. There is a thread In the hot deals section. I was under the impression from what others were posting that the drive itself carried its own warranty that was valid.
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From what I've personally experienced over the years from actually ripping the casing out from a Western Digital external drive , they do not warranty it in anything other than the original state.

Its a gamble since no one in that thread has proof that Hitachi will honor the warranty even if the drive is not in its original state. I personally hate gambling with my data , the loss of a single 4TB worth of data would quite devastating for most people.

So by just paying the difference (in this case its not much) you are given certainty versus a gamble.
 
Godmachine said:
But no warranty since you violated the terms by ripping it out of the casing. If you pull the drive and it dies a day later , you're fucked.
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Maybe not. Look up the hot deals thread, some people have pulled them up and looked up the serial numbers and the drives have warranties on them. Actually the earlier ones came with 7200rpm drives and the warranty on the drive itself was longer than the warranty on the drive still in dock. But yeah I was at Costco ready to buy 4 or 8 but ended up deciding to just wait 6 months - year or whatever it takes for the internal 4GB drives to get down to 150.
 
bexamous said:
Maybe not. Look up the hot deals thread, some people have pulled them up and looked up the serial numbers and the drives have warranties on them. Actually the earlier ones came with 7200rpm drives and the warranty on the drive itself was longer than the warranty on the drive still in dock. But yeah I was at Costco ready to buy 4 or 8 but ended up deciding to just wait 6 months - year or whatever it takes for the internal 4GB drives to get down to 150.
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Right but no one has actually executed an RMA and gone through the process to verify that they will service it in fact. So until someone does then its not a certainty. And again I gotta state that if it isn't a certainty you are risking A LOT of data on that "maybe".

Personally I hate gambling with my data.
 
JoeComp said:
You are looking in the wrong places. HGST 4TB HDDs are available for a little over $200. For example:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/835055-REG/Hitachi_0S03359_4TB_Internal_Hard_Drive.html
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32MB cache versus 64MB cache (it helps with smaller writes for sure and I'm sure for seek timing) and 5400 RPM versus 5900 RPM. Under most circumstances the differences aren't huge but if your doing lots of file transfers often enough (like on a NAS) every little bit of performance helps. Since Western Digital also has stated they will not be making a 4TB version of the Red drive then you are not left with a ton of options.

The specs of the Seagate are better and I have had good luck them for over a decade and since I have yet to use a current generation Hitachi drive (they are Toshiba correct?) I can't state its actual reliability.
 
Godmachine said:
From what I've personally experienced over the years from actually ripping the casing out from a Western Digital external drive , they do not warranty it in anything other than the original state.

Its a gamble since no one in that thread has proof that Hitachi will honor the warranty even if the drive is not in its original state. I personally hate gambling with my data , the loss of a single 4TB worth of data would quite devastating for most people.

So by just paying the difference (in this case its not much) you are given certainty versus a gamble.
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Having a warranty won't do anything to protect your data. Backups is what you need.
 
Godmachine said:
32MB cache versus 64MB cache (it helps with smaller writes for sure and I'm sure for seek timing) and 5400 RPM versus 5900 RPM. Under most circumstances the differences aren't huge but if your doing lots of file transfers often enough (like on a NAS) every little bit of performance helps. Since Western Digital also has stated they will not be making a 4TB version of the Red drive then you are not left with a ton of options.

The specs of the Seagate are better and I have had good luck them for over a decade and since I have yet to use a current generation Hitachi drive (they are Toshiba correct?) I can't state its actual reliability.
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This is the same 4TB HDD HGST has been selling for a while. Ownership has changed, but the drives are the same.

It is crazy to worry about small file performance when buying a cheap 4TB storage drive. Sequential performance may be a reasonable consideration, and the Seagate will win on that (more because of density than angular velocity).

If quality is your concern, note that the HGST drive has a 3 year warranty, while the Seagate only has 2 years.
 
Godmachine said:
Right but no one has actually executed an RMA and gone through the process to verify that they will service it in fact. So until someone does then its not a certainty. And again I gotta state that if it isn't a certainty you are risking A LOT of data on that "maybe".

Personally I hate gambling with my data.
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This may be a noob question. Let's say you take the drive out of the manufacturer's case, use the case for something else. Then your Seagate/Hitachi/WD "external" drive fails. So what's to stop you from putting that failed drive back in the original case and doing an RMA on the drive+case?

Like I said, maybe a noob question, since I buy only internal drives and empty external drive cases as needed.
 
x509 said:
This may be a noob question. Let's say you take the drive out of the manufacturer's case, use the case for something else. Then your Seagate/Hitachi/WD "external" drive fails. So what's to stop you from putting that failed drive back in the original case and doing an RMA on the drive+case?

Like I said, maybe a noob question, since I buy only internal drives and empty external drive cases as needed.
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The last external drive I had from Seagate (also acquired on a Costco deal) was cased in a way that was not intended to be put back together after it had been opened. If there was a way to get that case apart without permanently damaging/marking it ... it beat me ... and I take everything apart ...

I also had a WD 2.5 Passport that I cracked open (it was very cheap and I planned to stick it into an old laptop) only to find it was not a standard SATA connector - the drive board itself was basically directly USB.
 
x509 said:
This may be a noob question. Let's say you take the drive out of the manufacturer's case, use the case for something else. Then your Seagate/Hitachi/WD "external" drive fails. So what's to stop you from putting that failed drive back in the original case and doing an RMA on the drive+case?

Like I said, maybe a noob question, since I buy only internal drives and empty external drive cases as needed.
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The case is not designed to be taken back apart, its not like remove a screw and drive comes out. They snap together need bit of prying and force to get open again:
http://thisdoesnotcompute.org/2012/12/31/how-to-disassemble-seagate-backup-plus-drives/

Doing so you're almost certainly going to break a couple clips and most likely scratch up the plastic where you put in tool to pry with. Maybe they won't notice this but its a bit of a risk.
 
I thought the ST4000DM000 was the 7200 RPM drive and STBD4000400 the 5900 RPM drive. Am I mistaken? All the stores here (Sweden) list it as 7200 RPM.

Either way, according to Seagate's specifications of the disk it's more energy efficient than the 3TB WD Red on a per TB basis.

I'm thinking about picking up a bunch of these drives when they become available. Either this or the Toshiba PA4293E (3TB) which is lower power than the WD Green.
 
Aesma said:
Having a warranty won't do anything to protect your data. Backups is what you need.
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Not everyone has spare drives hanging around to replace dead drives in their ZFS array. Some people (like me) have a budget they have to stick to and want good warranty for the products I buy with my hard earned money.

Regardless you are correct but sometimes the worst can happen and you can lose it "all". Drives go bad , cloud services are in their infancy and we have yet to know exactly how that will play out. I do use Crashplan though just to mention it.

But a good warranty is really important these days. I've had a couple of drives repaired before and the outcome was that I didn't have to buy a replacement drive.
 
tocket said:
I thought the ST4000DM000 was the 7200 RPM drive and STBD4000400 the 5900 RPM drive. Am I mistaken? All the stores here (Sweden) list it as 7200 RPM.

Either way, according to Seagate's specifications of the disk it's more energy efficient than the 3TB WD Red on a per TB basis.

I'm thinking about picking up a bunch of these drives when they become available. Either this or the Toshiba PA4293E (3TB) which is lower power than the WD Green.
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The ST4000DM000's specs are not properly listed. The STBD4000400 is a 5900 RPM drive , it has 64MB of DDR2 and ERC so its perfectly fine for NAS setups or any kind of back up solution.

The site that shall not be named is currently selling them with tons in stock (of the STBD4000400) for $204. So if you want a solid NAS drive that's bigger than 3TB's this might be a pretty hot drive in the coming months.
 
What is the warranty period on the ST4000DM000 and this line of drives, apparently being branded as "Desktop HDD" (seriously?). There's no information that I can find on either Seagate's web site or on any of the sites that sell the drive. Hopefully it's not another 1 year drive.

(I thought someone recently insisted that Seagate was moving to producing nothing but 7200 RPM drives? Which is another spec missing from the Seagate web site for these drives.)

http://www.seagate.com/files/static...sc/barracuda-desktop-hdd-ds-1770-1-1212us.pdf
 
Godmachine said:
The ST4000DM000's specs are not properly listed. The STBD4000400 is a 5900 RPM drive , it has 64MB of DDR2 and ERC so its perfectly fine for NAS setups or any kind of back up solution.

The site that shall not be named is currently selling them with tons in stock (of the STBD4000400) for $204. So if you want a solid NAS drive that's bigger than 3TB's this might be a pretty hot drive in the coming months.
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Great! I just ordered 5 ST4000DM000s. The estimated delivery date is 2 weeks away though, so availability on these disks seems to be rather poor.

I use ZFS, so that ERC is not a primary concern.

I get a 2 year warranty on the ST4000DM000 from where I bought it, but many shops offer only 1 year.
 
tocket said:
Great! I just ordered 5 ST4000DM000s. The estimated delivery date is 2 weeks away though, so availability on these disks seems to be rather poor.

I use ZFS, so that ERC is not a primary concern.

I get a 2 year warranty on the ST4000DM000 from where I bought it, but many shops offer only 1 year.
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That's odd the place I got it from has an order limit of 100 per account. Either way I'll be posting my experience with the drive. Please also post your experiences with them since your getting 5 and if that pans out well for you than I'm going to order 3 more in the coming weeks for my new array.
 
I've been buying my 3TB Seagates for $119 so it's going to take $159 4TB drives to match that price. Currently a $50 premium to move up in density. Not terrible at all though.
 
JJ Johnson said:
It's a manufacturer's warranty. Doesn't matter where you buy the drive.
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I'm pretty sure the store has to give whatever warranty they write on their site here. It may be different in other countries, but in Sweden we have pretty strong consumer protection.

Godmachine said:
That's odd the place I got it from has an order limit of 100 per account. Either way I'll be posting my experience with the drive. Please also post your experiences with them since your getting 5 and if that pans out well for you than I'm going to order 3 more in the coming weeks for my new array.
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Yeah, but we're a little behind here in Sweden. Another store had today as the expected delivery date, but is showing March 21 now. I'm not sure if it was delayed or if the first shipment sold out though. I will let you know how they work when/if I get them though!

SirMaster said:
I've been buying my 3TB Seagates for $119 so it's going to take $159 4TB drives to match that price. Currently a $50 premium to move up in density. Not terrible at all though.
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The premium is really not that bad when you consider the cost of electricity and the other hardware required to run the disks though. Backblaze explains that it takes them only 5 months to recover the extra cost of using more expensive 4TB disks instead of 3TB. Slightly larger scale than found in your average home, but still an interesting read: http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/02/20/180tb-of-good-vibrations-storage-pod-3-0/. They do write that the ST3000DM001 disks have slightly higher failure rates, which does not bode too well for the ST4000DM001. Time will tell though.
 
Godmachine said:
From what I've personally experienced over the years from actually ripping the casing out from a Western Digital external drive , they do not warranty it in anything other than the original state.
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That's because Western Digital. One of many reasons I avoid them like plague. Seagate aren't a-holes about it and the warranty tends to follow the drive in the case, not the case.
 
tocket said:
The premium is really not that bad when you consider the cost of electricity and the other hardware required to run the disks though. Backblaze explains that it takes them only 5 months to recover the extra cost of using more expensive 4TB disks instead of 3TB. Slightly larger scale than found in your average home, but still an interesting read: http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/02/20/180tb-of-good-vibrations-storage-pod-3-0/.
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In an environment where you're spinning down the drives, the electricity cost savings are going to be minimal. I have a 24TB server in my home with an SSD system disk that has no spinning drives for at least 20 hours a day.
 
So I received it today and its pretty damn decent. No errors or anything. The actual shipping box was damaged so I was worried that the drive might have taken a huge impact or something to that effect but I was relieved that it was perfectly fine.

Of course only long term use will show if it has any legs for storage but so far I'm happy.
 
I was under the impression (having read it somewhere) that Seagate were moving out of the "green" drive market. Have they changed their minds?
 
parityboy said:
I was under the impression (having read it somewhere) that Seagate were moving out of the "green" drive market. Have they changed their minds?
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Seagate literally killed the Barracuda Green model line/name, but they certainly still have 5900rpm drives (obviously :p).
 
parityboy said:
I was under the impression (having read it somewhere) that Seagate were moving out of the "green" drive market. Have they changed their minds?
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Well this drive is 5900 RPM and on the front its listed as "Barracuda" so it seems that they've changed there minds because honestly I would rate this drive as a "green" drive. However unlike other green drives its listed as having ERC so perhaps its just its something that is more "jack of all trades".
 
[Strike=Option]The egg is now limiting drives to 5 per customer and[/s] Amazon is OOS.

Picked up 5 of the Seagates and recently picked up 5 of the Reds. It'll be interesting to see how well they fare through a DBAN cycle burnin

edit: Looks like the egg is limiting the bulk drives to 5 per customer, while the cheaper retail kit is limited to 100 per.
 
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I have significant distaste for consumer-grade hard drives, especially when the size is now up to 4TB. It's a lot of data to risk losing to a lower quality drive. I firmly believe that getting the Enterprise Grade version (Constellation ES.3), while being a fair bit more expensive is the safer way to go, as they're built to a much higher standard.

It all boils down to how much you value the data contained on the drive, I guess...;)
 
lutjens said:
I have significant distaste for consumer-grade hard drives, especially when the size is now up to 4TB. It's a lot of data to risk losing to a lower quality drive. I firmly believe that getting the Enterprise Grade version (Constellation ES.3), while being a fair bit more expensive is the safer way to go, as they're built to a much higher standard.

It all boils down to how much you value the data contained on the drive, I guess...;)
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The risk is mitigated if you design your system around the fact that they're consumer-grade drives. I also believe that burn-in testing is mandatory for consumer drives, it weeds out a lot of early deaths.
 
Neb said:
The risk is mitigated if you design your system around the fact that they're consumer-grade drives. I also believe that burn-in testing is mandatory for consumer drives, it weeds out a lot of early deaths.
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You can mitigate to a point with things like cooling, but the consumer-grade drive will always be likely to fail, as the enterprise drives are manufactured to much tighter tolerances with higher quality components. I remember comparing a consumer-grade WD20EARS to the enterprise-grade WD2002FYPS. The WD2002FYPS was much quieter and seemed to have less vibration than its consumer grade counterpart. Doing certain things like creating a RAID array with a consumer grade drive is foolish, IMHO and is asking for trouble.
 
I also believe that burn-in testing is mandatory for consumer drives, it weeds out a lot of early deaths.
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I even burn in "enterprise" drives. 30+ hours of bad blocks before I put a single byte of important data on a drive.

as the enterprise drives are manufactured to much tighter tolerances with higher quality components.
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I have seen quite a few enterprise SAS drive failures in a few Dell servers that we use. These are ones that I do not provide maintenance so I do not know what drive model or even manufacturer has failed but I do see the failures..
 
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