ST4000DX002

[BDMcGrew]

Good evening,

Does anyone have any experience using the ST4000DX002 drives? Surprisingly I search the forums and there are no occurrences of this model in any thread.

So here's the deal... 2 FreeNAS Servers using 24x3TB Seagate ST3000DM001 hard drives each. These ST3000DM001 hard drives are absolute garbage and even though they've been replaced my Seagate multipl;e times they're still failing. Yes, we know, they're crap drives. Seagate has opted to replace them with 36x ST4000DX002 drives.

I've done a google search and near as I can tell they're SSHD's and seem to be well received. But I can't find any useful information pertaining to using this model with FreeNAS.

Anyone?

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Seagate has opted to replace them with 36x ST4000DX002 drives.

How odd. My main concern would be the longevity of the 8GB of flash storage. It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that you didn't find anyone discussing them, since they aren't designed for NAS use. I'd ask for 36 x ST4000VN000 (same list price), or 48 x ST3000VN000.

 

[jgreco]

How odd.

How so?

The ST3000DM001 is a well-known problematic drive. What's happening is that Seagate is likely flooded with fail-y units that cannot be easily repaired, so the next step is to provide a "similar-or-better" upgrade.

My guess is that the DX002's aren't as well-received as Seagate was hoping for, and as a result that's the drive that is easiest for them to provide in quantity.

Anyways, starting back in ~2010 we began using the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB's (2.5", 7200RPM, 4GB flash) instead of "enterprise" class drives in our virtualization hosts with RAID1 because the cost differential was so wack. Their ability to cache nearly 1% of their contents made them an interesting choice for VM datastore usage, and combined with the 7200RPM and relatively low price it put them in this weird position of being a LOT more attractive than most other choices.

We've seen maybe a 30%(?) failure rate at the 5 year mark. This is "pretty good" overall especially for a hot-running 7200RPM drive. The 30% isn't particularly scientific, it's just a look at how many of the hypervisors we had installed those in still seem to have them.

I don't think the DX is a particularly good choice for NAS use, but on the flip side, it isn't obvious to me that there's anything horribly wrong with it either. The current DX's are, I believe, 5900RPM, and should be equal-to-or-better-than the DM's in performance. They're probably the same mechanicals as the VN's but I haven't compared them like that. Seagate likely considers the VN's as the "next tier up."

I would suggest you push for the VN's, preferably as a written request, so if there's a problem later, there's a paper trail. If you can't get them, which I don't think you will, I think you're probably fine with the DX's.

 

[Mirfster]

We've seen maybe a 30%(?) failure rate at the 5 year mark. This is "pretty good" overall especially for a hot-running 7200RPM drive.

Pretty good? If you are going by Seagate's track record; then I guess so... :P

 

[jgreco]

Pretty good? If you are going by Seagate's track record; then I guess so... :p

I'm tired of the bullshit regarding "Seagate's track record" on this forum. Seagate's track record is only exceeded in horribleness by Western Digital's. What fricking drive manufacturer do you suggest?

 

[Mirfster]

HGST

 

[jgreco]

HGST

So you recommend Western Digital, because HGST is now owned by Western Digital.

Western Digital has had some real bad runs, especially drives like the WD20EARS and WD30EFRX.

HGST has had some real bad runs, including the 7K1000, which were so bad that they've been nicknamed "Hitachi Deathstar" by many people. The only good thing to come out of that was that Hitachi took a hell of a beating on those, and improved their processes substantially, and in recent years they've actually been pretty good.

But now they're owned by Western Digital. Historically, better technology has tended to be replaced with mediocre, so my guess is that HGST's better processes are unlikely to be adopted by WD, and instead WD may "cost-reduce" HGST's process.

 

[Mirfster]

Not trying to start a fight here.. I am well aware of the "DeathStar"; but keep in mind that occurred ~2001 when IBM was the manufacturer. It wasn't until ~2003 that HGST purchased IBM's hard drive group. So as I see it that whole fiasco was all IBM. As far as WD owning HGST; that is correct... But as far as I know they still operate as separate entities to this very day. Not saying they don't share knowledge or anything (who knows?); only time will tell.

You are correct all manufacturers will eventually have bad runs, I just personally think that HGST has a better track record.

My conundrum is that for the most part one would want to try and purchase larger drives initially in an effort to compensate for growth. However, if the expectation is that 1/3 of those drive are going to go "belly up" and need replacing; then I see it as illogical to pay that kind of money (since larger drives are more expensive) up front. However, I will digress... Not wanting to confuse/hijack this thread.

Sorry if this is a divergence of the OP's original thread. I understand the predicament they are in and I am not suggesting that they go out and purchase all new HGST drives. No way Seagate is going to refund their money either; so hopefully things work out for the best.

 

[jgreco]

We've still got IBM drives in inventory here, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with the history. IBM did indeed royally screw the pooch on their HDD business. They made some of the nicest drives that had some of the most awful failure characteristics.

However, HGST was busy re-earning the DeathStar label through all of the 2000's. In particular, a lot of the 7K desktop drives had a lot of problems. We ordered a lot of drives such as the HDS722525VLSA80 (7K250) and saw very high failure rates. Things didn't get better with the 7K500 but did somewhat with the 7K1000's, but in the end these all had horrid fail rates and eventually we started advising customers to replace them with the 5K1000 with its lower speed.

Our experience is that HGST (not IBM) consistently had some of the worst drives through most of the 2000's, but the warranty and pricing on them made them powerfully attractive in a business where perfect reliability wasn't a major consideration (Usenet).

More recently, HGST failure rates have been very pleasantly low, but if we look in the last ~2-3 years, I could easily say the same of Seagate and WD as well. So the point here is that it probably isn't reasonable to assume that just because someone had problems years ago, that this has any meaning today. By that logic, no one should buy any Seagate or WD/HGST drives, because, y'know, they've produced crap in the past.

The moral of the story is that every drive manufacturer has had runs of bad drives. This is a hazard of being in the storage business. The OP has a small fleet of what is unquestionably one of the worst piece-of-crap drives released in the last five years, but since "trashcan them and buy some other manufacturer's drive" is not only unlikely to be acceptable but also flies in the face of reason, given that all the manufacturers have produced crap, it's more reasonable to stop grinding an axe over any particular mfr and look at which models seem to be doing the best, today.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

How so?

It seemed odd to me that they would provide gaming/desktop-oriented drives that list for $180, when they could provide desktop-oriented drives that list for $150 or NAS-oriented drives that list for the same $180. You may be right about it being related to availability, or it could be something else, we just don't know.

Anyway, I didn't mean to suggest that the ST4000DX002 would necessarily be problematic.

 

[jgreco]

It seemed odd to me that they would provide gaming/desktop-oriented drives that list for $180,

Naw, it has been pretty clear over the years that they offer you the cheapest thing that they have on hand that can be deemed equivalent-or-better.

 

[Z300M]

Good evening,

Does anyone have any experience using the ST4000DX002 drives? Surprisingly I search the forums and there are no occurrences of this model in any thread.

So here's the deal... 2 FreeNAS Servers using 24x3TB Seagate ST3000DM001 hard drives each. These ST3000DM001 hard drives are absolute garbage and even though they've been replaced my Seagate multipl;e times they're still failing. Yes, we know, they're crap drives. Seagate has opted to replace them with 36x ST4000DX002 drives.

I've done a google search and near as I can tell they're SSHD's and seem to be well received. But I can't find any useful information pertaining to using this model with FreeNAS.

Anyone?

I bought six STBD6000100 ("retail") drives, but the drives inside the package are labeled as ST6000DX000, which are nowhere to be found on Seagate's Web site: their "bare" 6TB "desktop" drives being ST6000DM001. Are the ST6000DX000 in any way different from the ST6000DM001? I have no idea. It is true that in some drive capacities, the SSHD drives have a "DX" in the model number, but I have no reason to believe that my ST6000DX000 drives are SSHD.

If I search on Seagate's Web site for your ST4000DX002 drives, I get taken to this page,which suggests that they are Enterprise drives:
http://www.seagate.com/support/inte...hard-drives/constellation-es/?sku=ST4000DX002

BUT I end up at the same page if I enter my ST6000DX000 drives, which are surely not Enterprise models, so I don't know. Maybe Seagate is confused too.

 

[jgreco]

The ST6000DX000 is a "D" = desktop 7200RPM drive. I believe they've been using the "X" on the desktop to denote the 7200RPM whereas the "M" is 5900RPM.

I don't know why that part number would redirect to the Constellation page. Those are all "N" = nearline parts.

 

[Z300M]

The ST6000DX000 is a "D" = desktop 7200RPM drive. I believe they've been using the "X" on the desktop to denote the 7200RPM whereas the "M" is 5900RPM.

I don't know why that part number would redirect to the Constellation page. Those are all "N" = nearline parts.

smartctl -a

shows my ST6000DX000 drives as 7200rpm, but it also shows the ST2000DM001 drives as 7200rpm, so either the M does not indicate 5900rpm -- or perhaps not in every size -- or smartctl is reporting an incorrect rotation speed.

And, yes, although entering either of those "DX" model numbers into Seagate's search box takes me to the "Enterprise drive" page, those "DX" model numbers are not listed among the ones on that page.

 

[jgreco]

Well technically the "DM" indicates it's a "Desktop Mainstream" drive whereas "DX" is a "Desktop Premium". I wasn't aware that they had mainstream drives that were 7200, but yay for making a totally incomprehensible array of products.

 

[Z300M]

Well technically the "DM" indicates it's a "Desktop Mainstream" drive whereas "DX" is a "Desktop Premium". I wasn't aware that they had mainstream drives that were 7200, but yay for making a totally incomprehensible array of products.

ST2000DM001 drives are what are packaged as STBD2000101 "retail" items. OTOH, although -- as I mentioned upthread -- the STBD6000100 "retail" packages contain ST6000DX000, whereas the 6TB "bare" drive are ST6000DM001, which may -- as you suggest -- be 5900rpm rather than 7200rpm.

 

[jgreco]

Remember back in the day when drive manufacturers listed basic things like spindle speeds on their spec sheets?

 

[Z300M]

Remember back in the day when drive manufacturers listed basic things like spindle speeds on their spec sheets?

I can't help recalling what I read a few decades ago concerning Rolls-Royce: they didn't publish hp ratings for their cars, but if one inquired, the answer was "adequate" -- or something like that.

 

[jgreco]

So I guess the storage equivalent for HDD's is now "too slow" or "very slow"...

 

[Yatti420]

Go Seagate Go!..