Is SATA II sufficient for HDD's?

[Panther_Seraphin]

Somehow the world's fastest hard drive can now rival SSD speeds | PC Gamer

New 14TB drive advertised by seagate as 525MB/s

That however is purely an enterprise drive at the moment and I can imagine that when it gets to consumers it will have a cool 20%+ extra in terms of cost.

It is interesting to see how HDDs will stay relevant for the near future, especially if they can get to say 4 actuators per drive (Imagine up to 1Gbps throughput on a spinner)


Regarding the USB thing. Depends on the number of drives. 1 Drive or 2 sure USB will be fine in most use cases for spinning rust, get beyond that however and you will probably hit a bottleneck with the controller vs the actual drives.

 

[Shrek]

Very clever how they finally start moving heads independently.

 

[Superzuber]

It seems that each head is limited to dedicated plotters > means performance gains could be limited in specific scenarios and eventually there will be bigger chance to lose data (if heads write each to different plotters it would work like raid0 internally)?
I was hoping for 2+ independent heads where both can access all plotters.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Is SATA II sufficient for HDD's?

Answering your original question, yes. SATA2 is a 3Gbps bus and that will provide up to 375MBps full duplex. There are no very few mechanical HDD's that can saturate that level of bandwidth. It may be older but it's still plenty fast for most drives. Even many SSD's would have a tough time filling that bandwidth.

Would a SATA III external eSATA or USB 3.0 enclosure make any noticeable difference in performance over a SATA II external eSATA or USB 2.0 enclosure for HDD's?

If you're using an HDD as a primary drive and your system is SATA2 based, you'll be fine. No need to buy a SATA3 card. You'll still be fine even if you buy and SSD because 375MBps is fast enough to make any OS feel snappy.

Somehow the world's fastest hard drive can now rival SSD speeds | PC Gamer

New 14TB drive advertised by seagate as 525MB/s

That drive is an extreme exception rather than the rule. Most consumer level HDD's are not going to get to that speed.

Very clever how they finally start moving heads independently.

Better late than never. I'm still waiting for drives that have multiple head arrays. For example two sets of heads, one set on each side of the platters.

 

[Shrek]

Better late than never. I'm still waiting for drives that have multiple head arrays. For example two sets of heads, one set on each side of the platters.

I seem to recall that has been tried in the past.

Exclusive: The Dual Actuator/Head Hard Drive | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)

 

[lexluthermiester]

I seem to recall that has been tried in the past.

Exclusive: The Dual Actuator/Head Hard Drive | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)

Cool! Patented in 1994? Why has this never been used? WTH?!?

 

[Shrek]

It drives the use of smaller platters which defeats the objective of faster transfer.

 

[lexluthermiester]

It drives the use of smaller platters which defeats the objective of faster transfer.

Maybe.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

Somehow the world's fastest hard drive can now rival SSD speeds | PC Gamer

New 14TB drive advertised by seagate as 525MB/s

Can't for access time/IOPS though.

 

[claylomax]

Very unlikely. This is the last WD Velociraptor from 2012, probably the fastest 10,000 rpm consumer drive there was:

View attachment 199911

I have the exact same drive and it does a bit more than 200MB/s

 

[Shrek]

I have the exact same drive and it does a bit more than 200MB/s

My 3.5" Firecuda does a bit less than 200 MB/s, probably a lot more when using its Solid State cache

 

[claylomax]

My 3.5" Firecuda does a bit less than 200 MB/s, probably more when using its Solid State cache

I mean his motherboard is holding that drive. When I first got mine I had the same issue.

I have a 4TB Seagate Barracuda that's faster than my Velocirapor, except in access time.

 

[R-T-B]

Cool! Patented in 1994? Why has this never been used? WTH?!?

the company that made it went bankrupt in spectacular fashion IIRC, complete with shipping out cement blocks to fill RMAs they could not fill.

 

[lexluthermiester]

the company that made it went bankrupt in spectacular fashion IIRC, complete with shipping out cement blocks to fill RMAs they could not fill.

Wouldn't that mean the patent would be open for purchase and licensing?

 

[Shrek]

Exclusive: The Dual Actuator/Head Hard Drive | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)

"Later on when Seagate acquired Conner, the intellectual property transferred to Seagate."

 

[lexluthermiester]

Exclusive: The Dual Actuator/Head Hard Drive | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)

"Later on when Seagate acquired Conner, the intellectual property transferred to Seagate."

So what the hell is Seagate waiting for?

 

[R-T-B]

Wouldn't that mean the patent would be open for purchase and licensing?

Looks like I had my companies confused.

Connor Periphreals made the DA design, and it was aquired by Seagate.

I was confusing them with miniscribe.

 

[Shrek]

They have started
Seagate’s new Mach.2 is the world’s fastest conventional hard drive | Ars Technica

 

[lexluthermiester]

They have started
Seagate’s new Mach.2 is the world’s fastest conventional hard drive | Ars Technica

That's not quite the same. An improvement sure, but that is just dividing one set of heads to actuate independently. I want to see two separate sets of heads in one drive.

 

[Tomgang]

Interesting that they still developing hdd technology. Even throw SSD is pretty much bound to overtake hdd completely as SSD pricing is dropping. All throw SSD taking over completely is still a few years away I would assume.

Any way I am curious of what my new pair of WD Gold enterprise-class 14 TB HDD'S can do of speeds. They are no match for my Samsung 980 pro 1 and 2 tb SSD's throw.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Even throw SSD is pretty much bound to overtake hdd completely as SSD pricing is dropping.

Not really. SSD's are hitting a wall for several reasons.
1. NAND yeilds have reached the ceiling of what can be reasonable to expect for 3D-TLC.
2. TLC is the upper limit of what can be expected to be reasonably durable because...
3. QLC is pathetically weak at less than 600 P/E cycles making it completely unsuitable for mainstream storage use.
4. There is only so many NAND chips that can be mounted on an M.2 form factor device, severely limiting drive capacities.
5. NAND in general is reaching the upper limits of how fast it can be expected to run.
6. Magnetic storage is continuing to make progress in both capacity and speed, keeping a reasonable pace with SSD tech.

They are no match for my Samsung 980 pro 1 and 2 tb SSD's

They are not meant to be. They are designed for mass storage at reasonable cost and speed. They can not compete with SSD's in raw speed any more than SSD's can compete in total storage capacity. Example;

Seagate Exos X16 14TB 7200 RPM Enterprise Hard Drive - Newegg.com

Buy Seagate Exos X16 14TB 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 3.5-Inch Enterprise Hard Drive (ST14000NM001G) with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

14TB SATA 3.5" HDD

Western Digital Blue 2.5" 4TB SATA III 3D NAND SSD - Newegg.com

Buy Western Digital Blue 2.5" 4TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) WDS400T2B0A with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

4TB SATA 2.5" SSD

XPG SPECTRIX RGB Gaming SSD S40G Series: 4TB Internal PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 NVME - Newegg.com

Buy XPG SPECTRIX RGB Gaming SSD S40G Series: 4TB Internal PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 NVME with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

4TB NVMe SSD

As you can see, SSD's are nowhere near HDD's in capacity at similar price-points.

 

[QuietBob]

I have the exact same drive and it does a bit more than 200MB/s

I mean his motherboard is holding that drive. When I first got mine I had the same issue.

Interesting, could you post your benchmark results with the same settings?

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

So what the hell is Seagate waiting for?

This kinda remind me someone saying often times it is patent and licensing taking a way innovation from the being sold to market. One example is 3D printing technology, the tech have existed since the 90s but it it only recently in mid 2010s that it was mass marketed due to licensing expiring being free up making cost plummet way down for the masses. I guess this is what happened with the tech I guess for HDD.
HDD is just soo in need of speed boost. It took like almost a day to write/delete my whole 18TB enterprise HDD even at its 280MB/s speed. It would be a nightmare going space larger than that.

For general layman consumers, SSD pretty much replaces HDD for them. As many don't use that much space and a 1TB ssd would be sufficient and with most people using things on the cloud or streaming. For datahoarder and preservation data oriented person like me HDD is here to stay. The most development for HDD nowadays is in the 3.5 inch format, 2.5 format have been stagnant for a many years now maxing out at 5TB. I wish 2.5 inch is develop further in the future but ssd have caught with it in terms of space but not price. This is like how the ipod 1.8 format was replace by flash.

As much as I hate the recent craze of the HDD crypto Chia which makes once cheap drives totally skyrocketing high, it would probably give HDD manufacturer more funding and incentive to push HDD tech faster now.

 

[lexluthermiester]

As much as I hate the recent craze of the HDD crypto Chia which makes once cheap drives totally skyrocketing high, it would probably give HDD manufacturer more funding and incentive to push HDD tech faster now.

That could happen, but with the Chinese gov banning it outright, there might be some difficulties with Chia taking hold..

 

[Hardcore Games]

I support banning Chia, Bitcoin et al