Seagate announces first 3 TB drive. However...

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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Eunos
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Seagate announces first 3 TB drive. However...

Post by Eunos » Sat May 15, 2010 10:24 pm

"Seagate today announced the first 3TB drive, but it's not the Enterprise drive everyone was expecting. Instead, it's popped up in an external drive."

Cnet article

No doubt an internal version will follow suit. It is apparently 7200 rpm so probably not ideal for silencing, unless replacing an array of smaller drives perhaps.

Cheers.

Eunos
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Post by Eunos » Mon May 17, 2010 6:32 pm

I've done a bit more reading. There will be some dramas with older BIOSes recognising the drive, and it won't be compatible with 32 bit OSes either. It would take some stuffing around to make it a boot drive, explaining why the initial release will be external. Then again, presumably only cashed-up, knowledgable enthusiasts would want such a drive anyway when it comes out later this year.

bradc
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Post by bradc » Mon May 17, 2010 10:30 pm

Of course there will be problems with hdd's above 2tb. That isn't seagates fault. I would argue that noone should have 'just buy' a 3TB drive. If you don't know of those limitations you shouldn't have that much data just sitting on a single drive! If you are smart enough to know about the limitations you'll probably have your data backed up!

There is also of course a chance that it uses 2x 1.5tb drives internally. If you go to the seagate press release here:

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?l ... 48090aRCRD

You can see 3 sizes of drives. Strangely though they don't talk about the 3TB drives at all!

Eunos
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Post by Eunos » Tue May 18, 2010 2:00 am

I think the reason for that is that the drives in that link are available now, whereas the 3 TB version is expected later in the year.

JazzJackRabbit
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Post by JazzJackRabbit » Tue May 18, 2010 5:06 am

Good news, hopefully other manufacturers will follow as well with 5400rpm versions and hopefull by the time my RAID5 runs out of disc space these will be priced low enough to buy cheaply (relatively speaking).

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Post by Kaleid » Wed May 19, 2010 12:22 pm

Seagate will likely make a 5900RPM version of it... the platter size is not known yet but I hope for a 2x750GB platter drive.

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Post by NeilBlanchard » Thu May 20, 2010 4:40 am

What is the platter density of these 3TB drives? It would seem to be at least 600GB per platter (if they are using 5 per unit)? Or, is it 750GB per platter (if they are using 4 per unit)?

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Post by dhanson865 » Thu May 20, 2010 8:22 am

I got the impression from the slashdot discussion that it would be 4 x 750GB platters.

Unfortunately someone in that thread got modded up for suggesting we didn't understand double sided platters and suggesting it was really 2 platters see /. and search for some portion of this quote
I'm guessing what Seagate really did was come out with a 750GB platter, that can be used to produce a 3GB drive with 4 of those platters.
Minor nitpick but that would be a 6TB drive. Probably 2 dual sided platters at 0.750TB per side.
It's scary to me how misinformation gets modded up so often.

Eunos
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Post by Eunos » Wed Jun 30, 2010 7:39 pm

Bit of a bump, it seems that the (external) beast is now available.

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Post by mkk » Thu Jul 01, 2010 4:21 pm

I can't help wondering why anyone would want 3TB of data standing upright on a desk. I assume one can simply lay it down, but when all promo pictures has it standing...

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Post by Cryoburner » Fri Jul 02, 2010 7:31 am

I've heard that the drive has 5 platters, each at 600 GB, spinning at 7200 RPM. So you have 10 read-write heads racing across the surface of five high density platters, balancing precariously on edge, using untested Seagate firmware. Sounds exciting! And probably not all that quiet.

I saw another post in the comments section of an article where someone suggested it might be using two 1.5 TB platters, and no one questioned their hypothesis. Apparently drive capacities can suddenly triple without notice. : P
This drive is most likely a single drive with either 2x 1.5TB platter or 3x 1TB platters.
Amazing!

Eunos
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Post by Eunos » Fri Jul 02, 2010 8:31 am

Another informative article here:
http://www.itproportal.com/storage/news ... isk-drive/

Read speeds of 130 MB/s is not bad. A shame it isn't a new standard in terms of density though. Not too much for the average punter to get excited about.
Cryoburner wrote:And probably not all that quiet.
Compared to what, a pair of 1.5 TB 7200rpm drives with a total of 6 platters?

Scoop
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Post by Scoop » Fri Jul 02, 2010 8:40 am

Who in the world has so much porn that they need a 3TB drive?

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Post by bozar » Fri Jul 16, 2010 2:12 pm

Scoop wrote:Who in the world has so much porn that they need a 3TB drive?
Quite a few here I guess :). Seriously though, I do hope for 750 GB platters, we need em for internal desktop drives.

Eunos
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Post by Eunos » Fri Jul 16, 2010 4:51 pm

For anyone that does, I'm only aware of one, short review thus far.

http://gizmodo.com/5585387/lightning-re ... hard-drive

They seem to feel that quietness is actually one of its strong suits.

bradc
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Post by bradc » Wed Aug 25, 2010 9:24 pm

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3858/the- ... 3tb-review

Short version: It has 5x 600gb platters and runs extremely hot.

Eunos
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Post by Eunos » Wed Aug 25, 2010 11:04 pm

Keep in mind having that many platters will likely mean a reduced lifespan even without the heat issue. I'd only recommend this drive for archiving purposes, not daily heavy usage.

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Post by JazzJackRabbit » Fri Aug 27, 2010 5:06 am

bradc wrote:http://www.anandtech.com/show/3858/the- ... 3tb-review

Short version: It has 5x 600gb platters and runs extremely hot.
What a disappointment. Lame, lame, lame... No way I'd buy a 5 platter drive. I would rather take upcoming 2TB Samsung F4 with 3x666GB platters, and best of all new F4 is supposed to retail at $120 I believe.

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