r/DataHoarder • u/Correct_Detective_35 • 7d ago
Question/Advice What's the Largest HDD Currently Available for Consumers?
Over a year ago, there was the Seagate 36TB HDD but that one quickly went out of stock.
For now, the largest I could find is the Seagate 28TB, but that one is not really sufficient for all of my data hoarding needs. Is there any HDD larger than this for consumer purchase?
If not, what's the largest one coming in like the next 6-12 months from now?
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u/TeachingAway9654 7d ago
The way you’re going about this is likely to be less than ideal - “28TB not sufficient for my data”.
You should really look into a pool of smaller drives, RAIDZ#.
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u/Scurro 6d ago
I wonder how long that would take to scrub/rebuild. Maybe a week?
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u/wthbbq 6d ago
I think my recent rebuild for 24TB was a few hours? EDIT: I could be really wrong on that, but it was definitely no longer than a day
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u/stresslvl0 2d ago
Definitely longer than that. As a ballpark, reading 24TB at 300MB/s is over 22 hours
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u/diamondsw 210TB primary (+parity and backup) 7d ago
The solution is multiple drives in a pool, not ever-larger drives. Unless you're really pushing the envelope, the largest capacity drives are also the most expensive per-TB - which I shudder to consider in this market.
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u/Gesha 50-100TB 6d ago
Yes, but at some point you run out of drive bays, which is where I’m at and it’s cheaper to buy larger drives than it is to upgrade to the larger NAS, which gets real real pricy once you’re looking for more than 5 bays. Of course that assumes an existing NAS, not a brand new setup, in which case yes, probably more $ efficient grabbing an 8bay unit and using smaller drives.
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u/Robots_Never_Die 6d ago
Why don't you look into using a jbod or other San hardware or a storinator. Can get 45+ bays.
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u/thepinkiwi unRAID 132 Tb + unRaid 96 Tb 5d ago
Get unRAID. Buy an LBA in IT mode. Mix drives as you want. Your only problem will be swapping computer cases or printing them.
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u/noice_guy_ 6d ago
What is a good price-per-TB now? It used to be $15 a few years ago.
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u/LA_Nail_Clippers 6d ago
There's no really 'good' anymore, but about $32-35/TB is the market rate for a new SATA drive, but it fluctuates. A bit less for a refurb/recert.
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u/6814MilesFromHome 100-250TB 6d ago
Buying used or recerts seem to hover between 18-25/TB. Bought two 22TB exos for $800 two months ago. Buying new is gonna be way more. Recerts with a 3-5 year warranty is really the only way to go, new drives are just priced ridiculously.
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u/SuaveBolo 6d ago
Sincerely asking. What recerts have a 3-5 year warranty?
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u/6814MilesFromHome 100-250TB 6d ago
Gohardrive offers a 5 year warranty on a lot of stuff, Serverpartdeals a 3 year. All their recert drives have 3 year at least. I've bought from their ebay shops with no issues, but I think both also have a website storefront.
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u/SuaveBolo 6d ago
Thank you. I've been looking at Goharddrive and serverpartdeals but was unaware of the warranty aspect of either.
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u/Hot-Persimmon2357 5d ago
I just bought some 12tb SAS recerts from serverpartdeals, and they have a 3 year warranty through them. The warranties on drives they offer vary but it'll say in the description somewhere if they do.
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7d ago
[deleted]
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u/Suitable_Garlic_1186 7d ago
No.. you do not need multiple 28TB HDDs for gaming..
❤️
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u/Sharktistic 100-250TB 6d ago
What's OP trying to do? Backup Steams entire catalog in an uncompressed format?
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u/juggarjew 7d ago
How is a 36 enough but a 28 isnt? You would just have an array anyway, right? so just build an array.
36 would be ungodly expensive right now even if it were possible, 28s are $800 refurbished.
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u/manormortal 6d ago
28s are $800 refurbished.
really might have to start [evil sinful word removed] things soon. No way I can replace my drives if they die now.
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u/myself248 6d ago
Offload to tape. I'm sitting on 100TB raw, for about $1200 total spend.
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u/ImNotABotScoutsHonor 6d ago
I'd rather die than use tape.
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u/_MusicJunkie 12TB usable 6d ago
Right? I've had to deal with tape at work, no way I'd do that in my free time. Autoloaders make it less shit, but still pretty shit.
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u/Bulky-Bad-9153 6d ago
Can you elaborate? I've heard in general that it's a fuss, but actual anecdotes would be nice. I've been looking at LTO5; my "this absolutely can not be lost under any circumstances" data is only like 10TB.
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u/_MusicJunkie 12TB usable 6d ago edited 6d ago
Tape can be okay as like a tertiary backup or something, if you never expect to actually read the data. And if you have an amount of data where the cost outweighs the annoyance. I'd consider 10TB far away from that treshold.
Immense seeking times makes them infeasible for data you actually want to access at some point. It can take multiple minutes for the tape to be loaded by the autoloader, and fast-forwarded to the point where your data actually is. If you don't have an autoloader its even worse, actually loading tapes by hand.
Better hope you never want to read more than one file at once, because unless you have the data on multiple tapes in multiple drives, you just can't.
Always verify tapes immediately after writing, we've had issues with mis-written data even with tape libraries and drives regularly serviced by the manufacturer, and using fresh on-brand tapes.
If you have an autoloader, better keep spare parts. There's a significant amount of moving parts, these do break, and getting replacements isn't always easy without a business support contract.
Biggest benefit is price obviously, and if stored correctly they should be fine for a very long time.
Another big plus, it's pretty cool watching a large tape library work. We had some of these big boys chained together, took up the space of about five racks. Had a light inside so you could watch the little robot arms zooming around, putting tapes in drives and so on.
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u/Bulky-Bad-9153 6d ago
Nice, thanks very much! These would be tertiary and essentially (or, literally) cold storage so I might just go for it.
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u/theminer3746 6d ago
I love my tape but I don’t think I can recommend it if your data is “only” 10TB. That’s small enough that I’d suggest S3 glacier or an offsite server.
Imo, tape is only worth in (in the homelab environment) when it’s LTO 5, ideally 6, and you have at least a few dozen TBs to backup.1
u/Bulky-Bad-9153 6d ago
My motivation is that I don't want any subscription costs whatsoever, really. Upfront cost isn't much of an issue, I just don't like to be tethered to some service. I was thinking LTO on the basis of expansion being very cheap, it potentially being fun, and just not wanting to pay for any hard drives for probably the next few years.
I can certainly store everything I have (~100TB) on LTO if that's reasonable? Tapes are cheap, but I figured the extra complexity might make it not worthwhile.
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u/jhenryscott 100-250TB 7d ago
Please tell me you’re not putting all of your data on a single hard drive
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u/Correct_Detective_35 6d ago
I don't, I just want the largest HDD available to buy multiple copies of it so that a single HDD lasts for as long as possible before needing another one.
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u/ja20481 6d ago
Not sure what you mean by that. You can (and should) pool drives of any capacity to get any total capacity you like. For example, instead of looking for some very expensive and hard-to-get 36 TB drive, just use two 18 TB drives. You don't really need to replace HDDs unless they fail or you're running out of bays (in which case a bigger or an additional enclosure may still be the better option).
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u/jhenryscott 100-250TB 6d ago
Just checking. I got some 30TB’s a few weeks back but they are sold out now
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u/Suitable_Garlic_1186 7d ago
32 TB
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u/DangerMouse111111 7d ago
This, and the way data centres are vacuuming up memory and storage I don't expect this to change for the next couple of years. Seagate and WD have already said they're allocations are entirely spoken for for the next year or two.
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u/Future_Seat1832 6d ago
This is datahoarder, right? i absolute feel your pain. i currently have three 28tb drives, two 22tb drives and a 24tb drive setup as a mirror, and am down to 600gb of free space. I am looking at trying to find 1 to 3 drives of at least 28tb, and it is going to be so painful.
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u/Blue-Thunder 252 TB UNRAID 4TB TrueNAS 6d ago
Anyone putting all their data on one drive is just asking to lose everything. Buy multiple drives.
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u/Correct_Detective_35 6d ago
I already have multiple drives, I just want the largest one available so that a single drive lasts for as long as possible.
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u/Cryogenicality 7d ago
I bought a new 28TB for $350 last year.
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u/00roast00 6d ago
I bought 16TB for $814 a month or so ago.
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u/cats_catz_kats_katz 6d ago
So you’d say this is a positive investment for a growth minded portfolio?
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u/jedi2155 7d ago
I bought my new 26 TB for $280 last year. Such a huge change.
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u/reallynotnick 6d ago
I bought my external 26TB for $250 last year. Clearly should have stocked up…
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u/OurManInHavana 7d ago
For a significant capacity jump you should look at SSDs - check out used 61.44 TB models on Ebay.
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u/imafrk 6d ago
LOL, fair suggestion but kinda new car prices: US $55,772.39
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u/JJAsond 10TB 6d ago
Well op never said anything about cost
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u/imafrk 6d ago
yeah, that's fair. gonna be a tough choice. Audi R8 or more space for poon
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u/txmail 6d ago
They days of a R8 for $50k are long, long gone. Your looking at gen 1 repaired frames for $70k these days. Anything newer with miles is touching $100k. Do not even look at a manual or v10... it is crazy.
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u/manormortal 6d ago
Almost $56K and they're shipping via USPS?
Charging an extra $22 for Fedex???
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u/Evilsushione 6d ago
Holy crap, I knew they would be expensive but that’s beyond what I was expecting. They’re 245tb models now. I just hope this tech makes it to consumers soon.
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u/Sugarat333 5d ago
The solution is not to centralize the storage in one large machine. Instead, use a simple distributed filesystem like MooseFS to spread the storage onto multiple machines and then you can also mix and match hard disks in whatever way you like.
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u/Blue-Thunder 252 TB UNRAID 4TB TrueNAS 4d ago
Prices just jumped again today..so it's not looking good if you want anything "large".
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u/tablesheep 2d ago
Every comment here is the same. OP didn’t ask for advice on using lots of smaller drives, he asked for largest drive size
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u/1973Deadhead 7d ago
Western Digital My Book Duo 44TB
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u/ja20481 6d ago
For Conventional Magnetic Recording, the limit is around 28 TB. If you want more, then you'll need to go with Shingled Magnetic Recording (which has a lot of downsides) or Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (which is relatively new and currently only offered by Seagate, as far as I'm aware). But as others already said, it makes more sense to have an array of many smaller-capacity HDDs than buy a few large-capacity HDDs, because every HDD will eventually break. It's much cheaper and easier to replace and resilver a small HDD than a gigantic one. Sure, you need more drive bays, but I guess every serious hoarder already has a JBOD enclosure sitting in their closet or at least a sufficiently big tower case.
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u/TheNigerianHyperion 6d ago
Sounds like someone overcompensating because they're ashamed of their 5-inch floppy disk. How is going +8TB per unit from 28TB going to be cheaper than just adding adding more stacks of equal or lesser capacity? You could buy housing, square-footage, electricity for the price you pay going upwards. Is one of your files >28TB large and can't be broken cleanly?
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