back to article Seagate brings out 6TB HDD, did not need NO STEENKIN' shingles

Seagate sub LaCie has pre-announced a 6TB near line disk drive from its parent and it doesn't appear to use the slow write shingled magnetic recording technology. LaCie's news came out with the NAB event in Las Vegas, which opened on Friday. There are details of the drive on Seagate's website, although the drive has not been …

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  1. CAPS LOCK

    This is all very nice but...

    ...BRING BACK QUANTUM BIGFOOT. What's that? 'No one makes 5.25 inch drive bays any more', they will if Bigfoot comes back.

    1. stucs201

      Re: This is all very nice but...

      Er, my case has 7 5.25" drive bays.

      1. Michael Thibault

        Re: This is all very nice but...

        Doubtless, 5 of the 7 5.25" bays are empty...

        1. stucs201

          Re: Doubtless, 5 of the 7 5.25" bays are empty...

          Actually no. From the top:

          1: Card reader (OK, thats 3.5" device in an adaptor)

          2: Blu-ray re-writer

          3: Drawer. Yes, a drawer. Its a handy place to keep SD cards and USB sticks.

          4: Empty

          5,6,7: Additional fan

          I think they're quite often filled on gaming rigs, either with water-cooling reservoirs or relocated hard disk racks. 5.25" drives themselves might be nearly extinct (optical drives seem to be just about hanging in there), but the bay itself isn't going away for some markets - its handy to have a largish, standard sized hole to put things, even if its not holding the thing it was originally designed for.

          1. Martin-73 Silver badge
            Pint

            Re: Doubtless, 5 of the 7 5.25" bays are empty...

            The drawer for SD cards and USB sticks is the most awesome idea. Also spare camera batteries would fit. *heads for various IT component sellers' sites*

            1. Suricou Raven

              Re: Doubtless, 5 of the 7 5.25" bays are empty...

              Or a battery charger!

          2. Michael Thibault

            Re: Doubtless, 5 of the 7 5.25" bays are empty...

            Technically, I was correct: 5/7 bays are empty of drives. In fact, if the card reader is seen as (a) steam-punked USB port(s), arguably 6 are empty of drives. Otherwise, you could say 'they're not empty; they're storing some extra air--you know, for later'.

    2. Nigel 11

      Re: This is all very nice but...

      Actually the physics works better as the platters get smaller. I doubt you could get this areal density working on a 5.25inch platter, because it would flex by more (vertically) in response to any external vibration source (even if all internal vibration modes could be tamed). Then you'd have to get the head "flying" right over a greater range of platter-surface velocities, including considerably faster velocities towards the edges of the larger platters. That, or drop the spin rate and suffer greater latency. In fact latency would almost certainly increase anyway, because of the larger head arm needed and (again) the greater time taken for vibrations to damp down after it's moved.

      If it were possible to pack the tracks closer, there would be considerable benefits from moving everything to 2.5 inch drives spinning at 10,000 rpm or faster. Perhaps when HAMR arrives?

      1. Banananas

        Re: This is all very nice but...

        Then 6, or 8 2.5" spindles (depending on overlap and length) in a 5.25" chassis? Probably have stinking reliability but could be great while it lasted :)

        1. Captain Scarlet Silver badge

          Re: This is all very nice but...

          5.25 has .25 available, slap heatpipes on em!

          1. Michael Thibault

            Re: This is all very nice but...

            Staggered and stepped within the footprint, possibly also physically interlaced to make the most of volume available? At a guess, you could likely get 15-18 2.5" platters into that footprint.

        2. phuzz Silver badge
          Thumb Up

          Re: This is all very nice but...

          If you're going to go that way, why not get one of these hotswap drivebays about stick four 2.5" disks in yoursef?

          http://www.scan.co.uk/products/akasa-lokstor-m22-525-mobile-rack-for-4-x-25-sata-hdd

    3. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: This is all very nice but...

      Bigfoot drives were hellaciously slow and quite fragile. Are you sure you want to entrust _that_ much data to them?

  2. Bastard Operator From Hull

    The Bigfoot was an abomination!

    ....Sill sure I have one in my spare parts bin somewhere though

    1. joeW

      I have a 2GB Bigfoot lying around somewhere. The damned things are as close to indestructible as HDDs can be.

      Given my age and the last time I used that drive, I reckon it's probably mostly low-resolution JPG porn on there. A nice present for future archaeologists?

    2. Jan 0 Silver badge

      Re: The Bigfoot was an abomination!

      We don't need no steenkin' Quanta, just revive the Seagate Wren 5

  3. TheProf
    Headmaster

    That's a new one.

    " pre-announced"? What, so they didn't actually 'announce' a new drive?

    I hope that they soon pre-announce the availability to place a pre-order for the pre-production product.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I want a 3TB MacBook or Windows notebook now. At once! This instant!

    are you in "centralised surveillance" business?

    1. Lusty

      Re: I want a 3TB MacBook or Windows notebook now. At once! This instant!

      Well you're SOL with a MacBook since they all use PCI flash now as far as I can tell, a form factor which isn't even big enough to fit the platter in :)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Big YAY, at last seagate maybe moving away from the stupid shingling tech... if they do i will consider moving back from WD blues and blacks... until then FORGET IT..!

    It suggests at how much faith seagate put in the shingling tech when the dropped the warranty period back to 12 months only...!

  6. xpusostomos

    No Mac

    You won't get the 3TB macbook because they went to all SSD solid state.

    1. jonathanb Silver badge

      Re: No Mac

      The £999 model on here - http://store.apple.com/uk/buy-mac/macbook-pro has a 2.5" hard drive.

  7. Teiwaz

    Have they changed those plastic external cases yet?

    Had a 1TB USB external drive from seagate, shoddy case,

    WD cases are much more solid plastic, case has never cracked due to being dropped or lost the usb socket inside the case forcing, me to crack it open and convert it to internal drive (not sure I could crack open a WD drive case

    1. Justin Stringfellow
      Mushroom

      Re: Have they changed those plastic external cases yet?

      If your hard drive case cracks when you drop it, the problem is that you've dropped it, not that the plastic is too flimsy. FFS, treat them with a bit more respect!

    2. sam bo

      Re: Have they changed those plastic external cases yet?

      "me to crack it open and convert it to internal drive (not sure I could crack open a WD drive case"

      Only if you want to connect via usb not sata. The last time I cracked the case open on a WD drive to do that - it had an extended logic board that included the usb socket - no sata connector to be seen.

      The case never quite fitted back together properly either after opening it, but a little dab of superglue soon fixed it.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Have they changed those plastic external cases yet?

      I wouldn't trust my data on any dropped harddrives, even if they had nice casing that hadn't cracked.

  8. d3rrial

    Next thing they'll come up with is gonna be a "drive" that has an RJ-45 connector on one end, S-ATA on the other and they'll offer "Cloud-HardDrive" where all data is directly streamed from the cloud. They'll go with 10TB and above at 50+ quid per month + 10 quid per month if you want the WiFi variant.

    1. Tezfair
      Facepalm

      like the....

      the wd mycloud nas?

      its close enough to your description

    2. Alan Brown Silver badge

      They're already offering ethernet-connected drives and have been since late last year.

      Check their website.

  9. Rich 2 Silver badge

    So close....

    Seagate says its neat new drive can be used for:

    hyperscale applications,.........bla bla......

    Centralised surveillance.

    DAMN! I wanted to use it for keeping some Word documents and MP3s on - guess I'll have to look elsewhere :(

    1. Jedit Silver badge
      Joke

      "I wanted to use it for keeping some Word documents and MP3s on"

      Just DOCs and MP3s, huh? Don't worry, you won't have to suffer through any more messages like this one I remotely accessed from your system:

      "Your attempt to download allthepornontheinternet.zip has failed at 99% due to insufficient disk space. Free additional disk space and try again."

  10. Lusty

    Capacity

    At 5.46 TiB there are bound to be loads of amateur nerds moaning about "formatting losses" on these 6TB drives :) Still, over 5 TiB in a single case is pretty cool nonetheless.

    1. jason 7

      Re: Capacity

      Yes but how long until they release say a 8TB drive...but it actually only has purely 7TB available?

      They could get away with it in the olden days when you got 77GB of a 80GB HDD or 113GB of a 120GB but now the old measuring system is starting to look downright stupid when in fact you arent getting the storage of what would have been a large HDD a few years ago.

      When 8TB+ drives arrive are they going to give you a free 1TB drive to make up or have to wait till they can make a 9TB drive and label it as a 8?

      I really don't think they can get away with it for much longer. We need a new size system. Just tell it what it is. Usable size only please.

      1. Tim Bates

        Re: Capacity

        "but now the old measuring system is starting to look downright stupid"

        You know what would look stupider? Marketing drives as 3725GiB instead of just keeping it a nice round 4000GB.

        And does anyone really look at their free space on a blank HDD anymore? Most people just start shovelling in the pirated movies, TV shows and porn these days and only worry about free space when their OS starts hinting about it.

        1. jason 7

          Re: Capacity

          @Tim Bates

          Well 3725GB and 4000GB would look silly. Most would put 3.7TB or 4TB on the box...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Capacity

        But aren't these reduced sizes based on formatting. The amount of decrease would depend on the filesystem, and the options for that filesystem when created (block size/inode count/what have you).

        If someone wrote a highly inefficient filesystem that just sticks files one after another, then you might get much closer to the manufacturer's capacity.

        1. Lusty

          Re: Capacity

          Aw bless you AC. No, that was exactly my point, formatting losses are what people call the non existent capacity difference when they don't understand the difference between TB and TiB. The numbers I posted actually represent the same capacity in different units (one 1024 based binary and one 1000 based decimal). OSX actually correctly displays using the decimal units while Windows uses binary measurement but wrongly uses decimal notation.

      3. Lusty

        Re: Capacity

        "Yes but how long until they release say a 8TB drive...but it actually only has purely 7TB available?"

        They never will, drive manufacturers have always supplied the capacity stated. As I said, a 6TB drive gives you 6TB or 5.46 TiB of capacity. An 8TB drive will supply 8TB or 7.28TiB of capacity.

        They aren't getting away with anything, they do tell you what it is, and it's not their fault you don't understand. They are using standard SI units quite correctly :)

        1. jason 7

          Re: Capacity

          I know all about it. I understand exactly. Been toying with hard drives for over 20 years.

          But how long will enough of dumb ol' Joe Public take it before they take out another class action asking where their missing 1000GB went and the Judge thinks that actually that is a fair point. Before it may have been a forgivable 5GB...

          Like buying a 800 gram jar of coffee and finding 100grams is jammed solid at the bottom.

          I dont see the problem with stating the actual average formatted size instead of the unobtainable. If only 5.5TB is ever usable its classed as a 5.5TB drive. Simple. Either that or as mentioned come up with a more efficient formatting solution.

          I didnt mind when the amounts were within reason but give it a few years and you'll be looking at 20% or more of stated capacity.

          1. Lusty

            Re: Capacity

            You don't seem to understand it though since you're insisting that some space is missing:

            "I dont see the problem with stating the actual average formatted size instead of the unobtainable. If only 5.5TB is ever usable its classed as a 5.5TB drive."

            I have said several times that a 6TB drive gives you 6TB of USABLE space. You seem to be ignoring the i in the binary measurements.

            "I didnt mind when the amounts were within reason but give it a few years and you'll be looking at 20% or more of stated capacity."

            As I said, the stated capacity is EXACTLY the usable capacity with no losses whatsoever.

  11. Visual Echo
    Thumb Down

    Crap lifespan?

    Does it go titsup at 8k hours? I do not care for Seagate drives because of their incredibly short lifespan, but hey, fanbois who only use a drive for a year usually don't care. Report on the MTBF, *AND THE METHODS USED TO DETERMINE IT*, please!

  12. Alan Brown Silver badge

    FWIW my current 2Gb seacrates are at 20k hours with no problems (YET)

    Treat the drives like eggs, plus use decent vibration isolation and they last quite a while.

    It may come as a surprise but some of the most significant drive impulse damage events happen when putting the screws in and/or tightneing them. Don't let that screwdriver slip.

    1. Visual Echo

      Another 30K hours to go before half of their rated lifetime!

    2. phuzz Silver badge

      It's surprising how many times you can drop a modern harddrive from above head hight and for it to be unscathed.

  13. hopkinse

    RE:Re: The Bigfoot was an abomination

    I think you'll find that many of the 'Seagate' SCSI / ESDI Wren drives were actually re-badged CDC/Imprimis drives - in 1990 we had a 4766E full height 5.25 with a massive 660MB formatted that came in at a couple of grand: the CDC model number was 94196-766 and Seagate ST4766N. Nothing much has changed over the years. Latterly came in useful for keeping your coffee warm :-)

  14. Christoph
    Coat

    Actual usage

    "Seagate says its neat new drive can be used for:"

    Porn collections

    1. DNTP

      Re: Actual usage

      MMMM ohh yeah soo big fit all the things in

      I'm talking about the 6TB drive of course.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Actual usage

      As the NSA are already hosting copies of all the world's p***n collections, perhaps they could just de-dupe the whole lot and make the resultant mongo collection available as a free global resource, a bit like the CIA World Factbook, thus freeing up I guess around a zettabyte of storage. Subject to concurrent serving capabilities they could reduce storage requirements sufficiently to resolve the energy crisis overnight, charge a modest membership fee for all access (so putting pirates out of business, but guaranteeing higher revenues for the "content generation" side). Obviously Mumsnet wouldn't like it, but they're just another hypocritical fundamentalist pressure group who could be monitored to make sure they aren't buying too much bleach.

      Obviously the NSA would need a more catchy name, I believe Grumblebook isn't taken. Or Grumblr.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    6TB

    No one needs that much

    1. stucs201

      Re: 6TB

      I suppose you subscribed to the theory that noone would ever need more 640K of RAM too...

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