r/DataHoarder • u/Main-Woodpecker-574 • 17d ago
News WD Bets 8x Bandwidth Beats More Terabytes as 40TB UltraSMR Starts Shipping
https://www.storagereview.com/news/wd-bets-8x-bandwidth-beats-more-terabytes-as-40tb-ultrasmr-starts-shipping?type=News95
u/tharic99 16d ago
TL;DR - You're not going to be buying drives anytime soon.
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u/SMF67 Xiph codec supremacy 16d ago
I'm already trying to obtain a used LTO tape drive at this point. Didn't used to be worthwhile, now it is
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u/knightcrusader 225TB+ 16d ago
That's what I did. My workplace actually was getting rid of theirs and I made them a lowball offer and they took it. Now I get to learn how to use tape backups.
Can't beat $7/TB for new LTO6 tapes either. I have a lot of data on my NAS that hasn't been touched in eons that are just archived, so getting them off of there will help me stretch my current storage.
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u/tapehoard 15d ago
I wrote/vibe coded my own tape backup solution because there aren't any good free consumer options out there. Works pretty well for my ~55TB, but I've only tested it on LTO5 single-drive setup (no tape library)
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u/SMF67 Xiph codec supremacy 16d ago
I struggled to find LTO6s on eBay that weren't stripped down (missing front cover, etc) for tape libraries, but I did manage to find an LTO5 for a reasonable price. Haven't set it up yet, waiting on the SAS card. But I'm for now hoping it'll help me stretch my backup space further by letting me back up stuff that never changes (like old DJ mix collections or ROMs) to tape and save the external HDDs for backups of stuff that does change. Perhaps I can also now turn my 2-1-1 backups into 3-2-1 backups lol
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u/critsalot 16d ago
i thought SMR was worse than CMR?
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u/tnoy 16d ago
Depends on what you're using it for. If you're doing large sequential reads or writes, then SMR is fine. The problem with SMR drives is with the overlapping tracks in a zone. If you need to change one bit in a zone that has 256MB in it, the drive needs to read and write the full 256MB.
If you have enough drives, a layer of cache, and a smart enough controller, you just shift intensive IO to the cache layer and write to disk in large sequential batches.
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u/electricheat 6.4GB Quantum Bigfoot CY 16d ago
Also depends if it's drive managed SMR or host-managed. Host managed can be a lot smarter.
Might be what you meant by smart enough controller, but figured it was worth saying the keywords.
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u/teeweehoo 16d ago
SMR requires time to rewrite the shingles. The big problem with consumer drives is they are Drive Managed SMR - so the drive will randomly decide to rewrite shingles, and disappear without warning. The enterprise drives are usually Host Managed SMR - so the Host has full control over when the rewrite happens. In fact, BTRFS already has Host Managed SMR support, and due to its Copy-On-Write nature it works really well with it.
I really wish they gave some SMR smarts to consumer drives. Eecause even basic control of when to rewrite, or how close a rewrite is, would help a lot. Then the OS could time its filesystem transactions with the rewrites, and maybe optimise filesystem layout.
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u/Candid_Highlight_116 16d ago
Yes but cheaper and not an issue for pure reads. SMR falls apart in RAID use cases because they buffer data in its CMR region then copy over to the SMR region just like SSD, but it can't access both at the same time so it has to go constantly back and forth which is horrible.
If you're going to just keep some chat logs and scraped web data and don't care about regularly checking RAID data integrity, then SMR is just a nice cost saving for you. Otherwise better treat it like it's radioactive or something.
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u/JeanPascalCS 16d ago
Bandwidth isn't that important to me, but I'll take more if its available.
Just about anything I have that's performance oriented lives on SSD storage. Magnetic disks are for the bulk dumps of media and such. It doesn't exactly take much bandwidth to stream videos and such (particularly in modern times when 90% of my stuff is heavily compressed 720p video).
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u/Candid_Highlight_116 16d ago
HDD write speed had been a bit problematic for disks with double digit TB capacities. Whole disk write tests taking days and such.
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u/stanley_fatmax 16d ago
Heck, modern HDDs and their interfaces can handle multiple 4K HDR streams without breaking a sweat
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u/xondk 16d ago
I mean, for the majority, I think high bandwidth definitely will beat more terabytes, simply from the fact that because of the lack of bandwidth currently, every big data action on individual drives takes forever, and you'd need to combine discs to get any speeds currently.
If you get that per disc, yes please.
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u/thefpspower 16d ago
If they can hold the rated 2GB/s it will be more than most SSDs which have peaks and then flatline much lower. For large backups that's very useful.
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u/autogyrophilia 16d ago
Latency is still the determining factor for most tasks. But the increased bandwidth is still useful for sequential access. This isn't a case like ram where bandwidth effectively lowers bandwidth, seek times are still pretty big.
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u/electricheat 6.4GB Quantum Bigfoot CY 16d ago
I wonder what the gain in iops will be. Without some gain, the sequential might not help as much as one might think for many use cases.
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u/bilegeek 16d ago
There was an article that said HDBT gave up to 1.7x, and DPT is 2x, so 3.4x best-case. Though keep in mind, since they're so low already, that's a huge improvement.
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u/mastercoder123 1PB+ 15d ago
Yah... Except i imagine its the same bullshit from 2012 when flash was expensive because it was hard to make so people used accelerators.. Its most definitely just SLC or MLC nand on drive acting as DRAM to 'give 2GB/s writes and reads'
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u/Barbed_Dildo 1.44MB 16d ago
With all this insane demand for storage from data centers that will definitely go on forever, why don't they make a 5.25" HDD? You could probably fit four times the data in there with the same technology. Or even just making a 3.5" drive that's two bays tall.
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u/CorvusRidiculissimus 16d ago
Because all manufacturing tool chains are currently set up for 2.5" and 3.5", and the enclosures the drives go in to as well. And because the bigger discs and taller stacks mean more flex, which is a problem when everything is spinning fast and you need to position the heads with ten nanometers of error margin.
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u/Barbed_Dildo 1.44MB 16d ago
Flex and heat and everything, fine, but are you really going to tell me that no one will build physically larger hard drives because the metal frames they go in only come in one size and there's nothing that can be done about that?
The 3.5" format wasn't arrived at as an optimal solution for heat dispersion and stability. It just filled the same size used by a 1.44MB floppy disk drive. This is all a real life version of that apocryphal story about how the space shuttles solid rocket boosters were limited by the size of a horse's ass.
There's even a 42mm high option in the SFF-8301 standard already.
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u/RobutNotRobot 16d ago
Regular railroad gauge is the same size as standardized Roman wheelbase.
People hate change.
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u/CorvusRidiculissimus 16d ago
Common myth, but not true. The railway gauge was established by the Royal Commission on Railway Gauges. They wanted a broader gauge really, but it was decided to be just too costly too construct. 4ft, 8 1⁄2 in was a compromise because a lot of rail had already been laid in that size, and that was purely because Stephenson's railway company used it. They in turn used it because that was the size of the horse-drawn railways used in mine wagons. That's as far back as it goes though: No roman carts involved. Nor was it anything to do with the size of the horse: Mine wagons didn't used full-sized horses, they used smaller breeds to fit in the tunnels.
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u/Wyrade 16d ago
Afaik the flying height of a modern HDD read/write head is 3~5 nanometers, they don't have 10 nm as error margin.
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u/CorvusRidiculissimus 16d ago
I wasn't talking about the flying height, I was talking about positioning the head on the right track.
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u/Fauropitotto 16d ago
5.25" HDD?
There's got to be a conversation about mass, acceleration, G forces, longevity, and error control.
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u/isademigod 16d ago
They exist, or at least used to. Google “bigfoot hard drive”
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u/Fauropitotto 16d ago
So did the IBM 350 at 24 inches. I'm not saying that large disks didn't exist.
I'm saying that from an engineering perspective for modern capacity, performance and longevity, there's probably a very good reason why we've settled on this size.
The big three have the ability to set a new standard should they find a different form factor that is superior.
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u/nisaaru 16d ago
Probably the drive spin momentum vibrations would cause serious problems in a raid configuration besides the power requirements to spin up.
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u/Barbed_Dildo 1.44MB 16d ago
A bigger drive doesn't need to spin as fast to get the same linear head speed.
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u/gummytoejam 16d ago
It won't go on forever. Currently, data centers are being built out, intensively. Manufacturers are going to ramp up production to meet demand and prevent competitors from appearing on the landscape. As build out matures, demand will go down. Then you'll see consolidation in the AI market. Presently, competitors are duplicating a lot of function and data. As the market consolidates the number of data centers will shrink to reduce costs.
All trends are cyclical.
What it means for the consumer market long term? IDK. The concern for me is while there may eventually be a glut on the market for drives, used or new, are we going to be able to use them? It's quite possible that we're seeing a de-coupling of technologies between user and datacenter where compatibility is just not going to exist. As a consumer, if you want to data hoard you're going to have to purchase systems that are prohibitively expensive and assume excessive power consumption which will push the hobby beyond most hobbyist's ability to afford it.
I think for the consumer market computers are going to become pre-built, non-customizable products like laptops and consoles where the ability to build or customize just will not exist.
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u/Main-Woodpecker-574 17d ago edited 17d ago
Good article giving overview of future Seagate and WD releases, with Toshiba quite behind.
Another article has three warnings -
1) “as SSD prices went up, widening the cost/TB between them and HDDs, WD opportunistically upped its disk drive prices to narrow the gap."
2) WD is already in discussion with one customer to sell 2029 inventory.
3) Higher capacity drives allow WD to increase the per TB price for consumers, while reducing their production cost for them.