What size of file transfer triggers write speed drops on Seagate Archive drives?

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Skipper007

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 28, 2004
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185
Hello,

So I've been looking at the 8TB Seagate Archive drives because I need some big, cheap storage for photos and video, and I was noticing that many reviewers found the write speed would eventually drop to 30MB/s or so during long, sustained file transfers. Can anyone here give me a clear picture of how big a transfer will trigger this drop in write speed?
 
I am interested in this as well, was looking at the next iteration of my SFF NAS with 10 of these in Z2 :)
 
I have 8 of these archive drives. They are in one large drivepool. And all I can say is I copy large files, 8GB range, and I hit in the 50MB per second with write speed.

So I just a copy and do something else while it copies. Great drives. No failures. I like them.
 
awesome -- looks like that's high enough for 29.97fps H.264 4k content :)
 
ya 30-50MB/s is more than enough for H264 4k

I am more curious to see their failure rate after a while...
 
I bought 4 when they first were released, and then bought 1 a month for a total of 8. Great drives. Quiet, and no issues. I guess we shall see on the longevity.
 
SomeGuy133 said:
thats the true winner here. An extra 2 TB is not much good if these really do drop like flies.
Click to expand...

I'm not happy about entrusting so much data to new tech either, but then I think about it and realize that it's not like most PMR designs have that long a track record either because they keep upping the areal density. That, and they market these drives to enterprises (ie. people who would actually notice a high failure rate) and not just consumers, which to me suggests that at least the internal testing went okay.

The write speed is a potential issue though. Among other things, I want to keep one of these at my parents' place and deposit data when I visit. 30MB/s could be rough on the rare occasions when I have a LOT of new stuff to back up.
 
Skipper007 said:
I'm not happy about entrusting so much data to new tech either, but then I think about it and realize that it's not like most PMR designs have that long a track record either because they keep upping the areal density. That, and they market these drives to enterprises (ie. people who would actually notice a high failure rate) and not just consumers, which to me suggests that at least the internal testing went okay.

The write speed is a potential issue though. Among other things, I want to keep one of these at my parents' place and deposit data when I visit. 30MB/s could be rough on the rare occasions when I have a LOT of new stuff to back up.
Click to expand...

yea but these were never advertised as regular NAS/backup drives IIRC. They had like some really small write limit. Assuming I am not getting two drives mixed up. I thought there was only 1 8TB archive drive for sale so correct me if i am wrong.
 
I'm sure it depends on the composition of what you are writing, ie large sequential vs many small.

I've transferred 6TB to them on several occasions (I have 3), consists of no file under 1GB, it has never dipped below 110MB/s
 
staticlag said:
I'm sure it depends on the composition of what you are writing, ie large sequential vs many small.

I've transferred 6TB to them on several occasions (I have 3), consists of no file under 1GB, it has never dipped below 110MB/s
Click to expand...

I would assume those archive drives would perform better with larger default sectors or whatever? Like 64K?
 
staticlag said:
I'm sure it depends on the composition of what you are writing, ie large sequential vs many small.

I've transferred 6TB to them on several occasions (I have 3), consists of no file under 1GB, it has never dipped below 110MB/s
Click to expand...

and for doing backups that's fine, most of the time your backup files are going to exceed the gig mark anyway

if you put 16 of these in a RAID6 thats >100TB in 3U... pretty impressive

I have really been considering getting some to backup my arrays when funds allow
 
It's not that simple as a set size will trigger a write speed drop.

It all depends on how much data was deleted and needs to be re-shingled.

You can sequentially fill the whole disk at close to 150MB/s if you just keep sequentially writing (like you would a tape drive) and aren't deleting data and needing rewrite old sectors that have been covered by another layer.
 
Wouldn't a garbage-collection style control scheme help hide the reshingling process?
 
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