Seagate BarraCuda SSD 500 GB

[newtekie1]

Personal experience. I've owned both drive brands, Western Digital drives have been more reliable to me. Hell, I still have an old 2 TB Western Digital Black drive that's way out of warranty and it's still working to this day.

Personal experience is not a reliable source. if it was, the pile of dead WD drives sitting on my desk would count for something, but it doesn't. With hard drives, brand doesn't matter, model does.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I had to double take why W1zzard reviewed a 500 GB Barracuda

I did the same thing. Then I looked at the photo..

Personal experience is not a reliable source. if it was, the pile of dead WD drives sitting on my desk would count for something, but it doesn't. With hard drives, brand doesn't matter, model does.

Professional experience does matter. Seagate drives do generally fail more than WD.

 

[newtekie1]

Professional experience does matter. Seagate drives do generally fail more than WD.

Not in my professional experience.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Not in my professional experience.

Not that either of our experiences matter much, this is SSD tech. Different rules apply and the numbers will invariably change.

 

[Assimilator]

For those complaining why the HDD manufacturers are using the same model name for their SSDs as for their HDDs: they're very obviously seen that spinning disks are dead and are repurposing the model names known and trusted by the market for decades, to remain relevant in an SSD-only future.

They really shouldn't have branded it Barracuda. I had to double take why W1zzard reviewed a 500 GB Barracuda 57 minutes ago. Last time I checked, it was 2018, not 2008. Then it clicked: "SSD." Ah! Bravo Seagate!

Nonono, you see it's BarraCuda, not Barracuda. Totally not the same! /s

 

[StrayKAT]

More interested in Seagate's Nytro drives (fairly affordable enterprise.. I think maybe Micron based?). I might hold out for one of those..

Besides, it's a whole new product name (no, I don't really care about this).

 

[lexluthermiester]

SSDs as for their HDDs: they're very obviously seen that spinning disks are dead

Nothing could be further from reality. SSD's, unless a ginormous capacity breakthrough happens, will not replace HDD's for mass storage. They will for the foreseeable future continue to exist side by side to compliment each other's advantages.

 

[Assimilator]

Nothing could be further from reality. SSD's, unless a ginormous capacity breakthrough happens, will not replace HDD's for mass storage. They will for the foreseeable future continue to exist side by side to compliment each other's advantages.

The cloud is already replacing on-site physical mass storage for many consumers and businesses, and this trend is only going to increase. Meanwhile SSDs are getting bigger, faster and cheaper every year while HDD cost/gigabyte is flattening out due to the fundamental limitations of spinning disks and the research costs involved in wringing more density out of them. So a 14TB HDD is nice for bragging rights, but the vast majority of consumers don't need anything that big and never will because as their data grows, it will grow in the cloud, not on their home PCs.

HDDs are already in a death spiral in the consumer space, and I expect that consumers are actually going to see their cost/GB increase to the point they become a niche item - much like tape drives before them.

 

[StrayKAT]

The cloud is already replacing on-site physical mass storage for many consumers and businesses, and this trend is only going to increase. Meanwhile SSDs are getting bigger, faster and cheaper every year while HDD cost/gigabyte is flattening out due to the fundamental limitations of spinning disks and the research costs involved in wringing more density out of them. So a 14TB HDD is nice for bragging rights, but the vast majority of consumers don't need anything that big and never will because as their data grows, it will grow in the cloud, not on their home PCs.

HDDs are already in a death spiral in the consumer space, and I expect that consumers are actually going to see their cost/GB increase to the point they become a niche item - much like tape drives before them.

I agree and disagree. They'll eventually disappear.. but screw the cloud. That's no alternative. SSDs are though.

 

[lexluthermiester]

The cloud is already replacing on-site physical mass storage for many consumers and businesses

That might be a growing trend in South Africa, but not here in the States. No business I know of has replaced onsite storage with cloud storage. The reasonings are simple; access and security. No one wants to be cut off from their data resources should internet connection issues arise, which they often do for various reasons. Most business's are shying away from the cloud for security reasons as many can not afford the liability of data breaches they can not control. Then there is expense. It's only cost effective if you use large amounts storage, which most business's have no need for.

Cloud storage will never replace on-site storage for everyone. Ever. Your conclusion is flawed.

Meanwhile SSDs are getting bigger, faster and cheaper every year while HDD cost/gigabyte is flattening out due to the fundamental limitations of spinning disks and the research costs involved in wringing more density out of them.

While there is some truth to this, barring a significant technological breakthrough, it will be a very long time before SSD's reach the capacity/cost ratio HDD's are at. Thus, your conclusion is flawed.

So a 14TB HDD is nice for bragging rights, but the vast majority of consumers don't need anything that big and never will because as their data grows, it will grow in the cloud, not on their home PCs.

Given ever increasing size of games, a lot of gamers have multiple large HDD's to store all of their data. Then there is trust. A great many users willl never trust a third party with their data. Thus, your conclusion is flawed.

HDDs are already in a death spiral in the consumer space

That statement is not supported by actual sales numbers. Most people buying PC's are buying them with both an SSD and an HDD to get the best speed and lot's of storage.

and I expect that consumers are actually going to see their cost/GB increase to the point they become a niche item - much like tape drives before them.

Doubtful and unrealistic. And seriously? Comparing HDD's to tape drives? Wow..

 

[trparky]

I still have hard drives in my system mainly for backups and some... ISO files. I do use the cloud (Microsoft OneDrive) for some things, mainly things that I absolutely do not want to lose (family photos, documents, etc.). To keep all of my data that I don't store on my SSD in the cloud would be expensive as all hell, I keep that stuff on hard drives. The cloud is used for only files I don't want to lose, anything else... if it's lost, it's lost; it's not worth crying over.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I still have hard drives in my system mainly for backups and some... ISO files. I do use the cloud (Microsoft OneDrive) for some things, mainly things that I absolutely do not want to lose (family photos, documents, etc.). To keep all of my data that I don't store on my SSD in the cloud would be expensive as all hell, I keep that stuff on hard drives. The cloud is used for only files I don't want to lose, anything else... if it's lost, it's lost; it's not worth crying over.

Yes there's the point, do you trust the cloud with those things you don't want to lose? Would it not be better to keep them local to your location? I personally use BDR's for critical data which is then stored in a safe-deposit box. That's just me though..

 

[trparky]

Yeah, I could get a safe-deposit box for data that I can't lose. I mainly use the cloud for data that I want to keep offsite in case of a natural disaster, critical hardware failure, or other such catastrophe. As for trusting the cloud (in this case, Microsoft OneDrive), well now... that's a good question; I've never thought about it. To be honest, I don't know.

 

[newtekie1]

I simply have too much data to not use hard drives for both the main storage and the backup. The backup is the big issue, once you start adding that in, and doubling your cost of storage, SSD just isn't viable. Cloud is a decent option for a backup for most people, but those are also the people that can live with just a single SSD and don't need a hard drive. But when you've got 10+TB of data, cloud is kind of out of the option, and so is SSD storage.

Backup up to optical media is pretty much never an option either, because of how unreliable optical media is unless you shell out huge money for archival grade discs. Otherwise, disc rot start to set in after a year or so, even in the best of conditions you might get a couple years out of optical backups.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Backup up to optical media is pretty much never an option either, because of how unreliable optical media

I have rarely had issues. Not since the days of CDR's have there been issues with discs going bad over time. I still have DVDR's that were made back in 2006 and they still work just fine and even a few CDR's made in the 90's that work. It's less of an issue than it's made out to be. The key is to write disc's at there minimum speed not the maximum. You get a rock solid, perfectly stable burn. Sure, it takes longer, but only by a few minutes and the longevity is worth it.

 

[newtekie1]

I have rarely had issues. Not since the days of CDR's have there been issues with discs going bad over time. I still have DVDR's that were made back in 2006 and they still work just fine and even a few CDR's made in the 90's that work. It's less of an issue than it's made out to be. The key is to write disc's at there minimum speed not the maximum. You get a rock solid, perfectly stable burn. Sure, it takes longer, but only by a few minutes and the longevity is worth it.

The speed of the burn is not going to affect the delamination and oxidation of the reflective layer. I've had numerous disc go bad because of this, or corrupt files.

 

[lexluthermiester]

The speed of the burn is not going to affect the delamination and oxidation of the reflective layer. I've had numerous disc go bad because of this, or corrupt files.

Interesting, I've had none of those problems. And I make optical disc backups almost religiously. There have been discs that failed to burn, or encounter defects during the recording process, but none that have failed after the process completes.

 

[Màӽìɱům Ćĥåɱøď™]

I think HDDs not going to die in near future because, still higher capacity SSDs are very expensive.

 

[micropage7]

so they put about 3/4 from the case for the internal parts, interesting

 

[BorgOvermind]

Friends don't let friends buy Seagate. Sure, go ahead... buy a Seagate, that is... if you like kissing your data goodbye. Their hard drive reliability numbers are still weak compared to that of Western Digital.

That is quite correct. But the reliability improved compared to many of their models of a few years ago. From a very bad reliability to a medium to bad one it's quite an improvement. Plus, they added 5 years warranty to some models that actually may last that long, not like the old times when I had to RMA many of their drives at every 3 months.

As for WD they still make excellent drives as they always have but I think they over-used the color spectrum a little and after seagate starting using colors too it's quite a mess for the average customer.

In all my data centers I always used WDREs, Blacks or now-days Golds for as primary data drives and Greens for secondary off-site backups.
Never had any critical issues, unlike my colleagues that used seagates.

@newtekie1 - market presence is one thing, actual useful products is another.

Getting back to SSDs: there's a problem because way too many companies are manufacturing them and one cannot test something like reliability fast enough. Yes, you can make a kill-them-all endurance test, but it will not be a real workload scenario.
We need less manufacturers and higher quality. Note that after the quad ones will be out massively, reliability will be even lower.

 

[trparky]

I remember that after the flood Seagate quality took a major hit, Western Digital's quality took a hit too but it wasn't nearly as bad. I lost too many Seagate drives after that flood. I've not touched a Seagate drive since then.