Silicon Power Armor A66 2 TB & 5 TB

[W1zzard]

The Silicon Power Armor A66 is a line of portable HDDs available in capacities of up to 5 TB. The 5 TB version sells for a highly competitive $120. Thanks to an IPX4 rating, the drive is water-resistant, and MIL-STD bump testing ensures it will survive drops from reasonable heights.

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[Chrispy_]

Those write speeds aren't actually too bad for SMR. I've seen far worse implementations than that...

 

[bonehead123]

So why is taking an antique 2.5" HDD w/ a bridge chip & slapping a rubber case around it worthy of a press release/"news" post nowadays ?????

I'll give them credit for the roughneck exterior & cable storage though, it looks nice & durable, but as usual, NO C - NO BUY - NO EXCUSES !

 

[W1zzard]

So why is taking an antique 2.5" HDD w/ a bridge chip & slapping a rubber case around it worthy of a press release/"news" post nowadays ?????

While I feel I get your point, don't you agree that there is certainly an audience out there for this kind of product?

 

[bonehead123]

While I feel I get your point, don't you agree that there is certainly an audience out there for this kind of product?

Well, certainly there are those folks out there that don't mind holding onto outdated stuff, but I am obviously not one of them....

IF they had made this in 8TB or bigger sizes, perhaps they would garner a bigger audience, but 2-5TB drives are everywhere nowadays & are nuthin special IMHO...

And they surely could have made it ~10-15% cheaper if they had used an older USB chip instead of wasting a Gen 3.2 setup on such a painfully slow drive that will NEVA, EVA be able to utilize it in any useful manner...

 

[MarsM4N]

IF they had made this in 8TB or bigger sizes, perhaps they would garner a bigger audience, but 2-5TB drives are everywhere nowadays & are nuthin special IMHO...

If you want something "Special" with more than 5TB (which is the mainstream), then you also have to pay special prices. Which most won't.

I see only 10 2,5" drives with more than 5TB, ranging from 473€ to 8998€. Really bad price/performance ratio above 5TB.

 

[Exilarch]

They missed the chance of naming it T51b Power Armor.

 

[Readlight]

Clone smaller hard drive tool included yes or no

 

[bug]

I see you put

Mechanical parts in HDDs are more susceptible to damage than solid-state drives

in the cons, but you didn't put

Does not lose data if left unpowered for a few months[

in the pros section.

 

[W1zzard]

but you didn't put

Just for you I pulled out my "SSDTest 2018" SSD from a drawer, some old Toshiba THNSNH256GCST, the OS was installed Dec 14 2017, drive works perfectly fine.

You can't just store a mechanical HDD indefinitely either, the mechanical parts will clog together

 

[bug]

Just for you I pulled out my "SSDTest 2018" SSD from a drawer, some old Toshiba THNSNH256GCST, the OS was installed Dec 14 2017, drive works perfectly fine.

You can't just store a mechanical HDD indefinitely either, the mechanical parts will clog together

Of course the drive works, but SSDs have a habit of bit flipping if left unpowered. Perhaps a little counterintuitive, older SSDs fare batter in this regard. Newer SSDs, sporting TLC or QLC will bit flip faster.
HDDs also don't hold magnetization forever, but they're still good for years.

 

[The Von Matrices]

Of course the drive works, but SSDs have a habit of bit flipping if left unpowered. Perhaps a little counterintuitive, older SSDs fare batter in this regard. Newer SSDs, sporting TLC or QLC will bit flip faster.
HDDs also don't hold magnetization forever, but they're still good for years.

If you're concerned about every bit being correct, that will occur on hard drives too. They have an uncorrectable error rate of only 1 in 10^14 bits, so on a 10TB drive you have a 1 in 100 chance of a bad bit even on a hard drive operating within specifications. And of course, failing disks flip bits without warning.

You can't just put the drive in a drawer, take it out 5 years later, plug it in, and say "it's fine" unless you read every bit on the drive. Booting from the disk isn't enough. You only need to read a small fraction of the files to boot. You need to read the entire disk and compare it to another copy to prove that no bit flips occur.

The only way to avoid the issue is to have a RAID and do a periodic data scrub to find inconsistencies between the multiple copies of the data. Whether it is a SSD or a HDD, that is the only way to truly protect data from bit flips.

 

[bug]

If you're concerned about every bit being correct, that will occur on hard drives too. They have an uncorrectable error rate of only 1 in 10^14 bits, so on a 10TB drive you have a 1 in 100 chance of a bad bit even on a hard drive operating within specifications. And of course, failing disks flip bits without warning.

You can't just put the drive in a drawer, take it out 5 years later, plug it in, and say "it's fine" unless you read every bit on the drive. Booting from the disk isn't enough. You only need to read a small fraction of the files to boot. You need to read the entire disk and compare it to another copy to prove that no bit flips occur.

The only way to avoid the issue is to have a RAID and do a periodic data scrub to find inconsistencies between the multiple copies of the data. Whether it is a SSD or a HDD, that is the only way to truly protect data from bit flips.

Yeah, yeah, I know all that. The problem here, is HDDs use magnetism. That fades away much slower than SSDs cells lose charge when unpowered.

 

[The Von Matrices]

Yeah, yeah, I know all that. The problem here, is HDDs use magnetism. That fades away much slower than SSDs cells lose charge when unpowered.

My experience had been the opposite. I've found that SSDs are more reliable at storing data over a few years' time without bit flips. Maybe HDDs are better over decades of cold storage but I don't have a decades old SSD to compare it to. It also might be that the newest HDDs are just not as reliable in storing data properly as older disks because there are so few grains per bit. The only SSDs that were bad for longevity were the TLC SSDs from the mid-2010s before 3D NAND (and anything from OCZ).