Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning
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I thought you guys might be interested in this article about SSD technology from Seagate. It contains a very good explanation of Over Provisioning, and tells you all the features you need to look out for when looking for a new SSD, and what real world benefit those technologies would give you.
https://www.seagate.com/gb/en/tech-insights/ssd-over-provisioning-benefits-master-ti/
I particularly like the analogy of the 15 squares puzzle game.
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@doctorjones - Yup, it is not as simple as (the vast majority) of people thing...
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@doctorjones said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
all the features you need to look out for when looking for a new SSD
Lack of "Seagate" on the label, if their hard drives are any indication.
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@hungrier said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
Lack of "Seagate" on the label, if their hard drives are any indication.
BUUUUURNNNN!
           
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@hungrier said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
@doctorjones said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
all the features you need to look out for when looking for a new SSD
Lack of "Seagate" on the label, if their hard drives are any indication.
I had a bunch fail and Backblaze's stats from that period agree:
Not as bad as the Maxtor DiamondMax 10's though, every single one of those failed within a couple of years. Total garbage...of course Seagate later bought Maxtor.
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How do half your HD fail in a year?
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@hungrier said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
Lack of "Seagate" on the label, if their hard drives are any indication.
Last Seagate I bought, lasted about a week, computer just didn't see it anymore.
Got an RMA and send it to them.
In the meantime, I bought a WD since I couldn't wait for the replacement to arrive.When I got the replacement, I plugged it to make sure it was working, and it did. Since I didn't need it anymore, I left it in the shipping box I received it in.
About 2 months later, I need another HD, so I get the Seagate out of the box, plug it in and...
The BIOS doesn't see it
That was about 6 years ago, and the WD is still working.
I'd rather write my data on ice than on a Seagate, it will last longer (specially in Canada).
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@xaade said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
How do half your HD fail in a year?
By buying Seagate HD
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@xaade said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
How do half your HD fail in a year?
Beats me, that's an astonishing MTTF. The Seagates were destroyed and we went to WDs but the Maxtors weren't used for sensitive data so they were RMA'd back to Maxtor. The replacements were all of another product line (MaxLine IIRC) so I'm certain they knew there was a serious issue with that particular product line.
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@xaade
More accurately, that one particular model of drive came from a certain lot that was produced after:
Seagate CEO speaks about Thailand floods and resulting hard drive shortages
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Seagate CEO Steve Luczo was interviewed about the impact of the Thailand floods and assessed the future of industry, which may not return to normal until the end of 2013.
There was a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE hard drive shortage after those floods. For large multi-TB drives, you flat out couldn't get anything other than those 3TB Seagates in the immediate aftermath of the flood. In hindsight, it's pretty apparent that Seagate had a lower tolerance for what they scrapped as damaged by the flood, and they either made a business decision to risk a high failure/RMA rate or figured they'd last just long enough to clear warranty and fuck the consumer (judging by the fact that they extended the warranty period on those drives once the high failure rate became apparent in the wild, I think it was more of a "the market needs some drives, and we can justify a higher price due to the shortage, so that will offset the RMA risk" business decision, rather than just greedy price gouging).
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I swear I still can't find a 1TB drive as cheap as I did when I built a PC a few months before those floods.
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@jaloopa Newegg sells a 1TB WD Blue for $58 CAD. How much was it before the flood ?
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@timebandit £36
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@jaloopa said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
@timebandit £36
That's 62 CAD at current rate.
Of course, if you add the shipping rate from Canada...
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@timebandit Just looked on eBuyer and they have one 1TB for less than that. It's also not the best £/TB any more, but the point still stands that it took years and years for the price to get anywhere near what it had been and was probably a big factor in the rise of SSDs since the price difference was so much less than it would have been otherwise
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The idea that you manually set aside a bit of extra space for "internal" use is interesting (their example is that you make your partitions a bit smaller than the total available space). Has anybody tried that?
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@jaloopa said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
was probably a big factor in the rise of SSDs since the price difference was so much less than it would have been otherwise
That… and SSDs are just so much faster. Like awesomely, to the point where if you don't need vast amounts of space, they're the default best choice.
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@xaade said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
How do half your HD fail in a year?
Maybe I was present. I've never had a spinning HD last longer than 2 years.
Actually the one currently in my gaming PC is probably older than 2 years now, but it's turned off like 95% of the time, so not sure if that counts.
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@dkf said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
@jaloopa said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
was probably a big factor in the rise of SSDs since the price difference was so much less than it would have been otherwise
That… and SSDs are just so much faster. Like awesomely, to the point where if you don't need vast amounts of space, they're the default best choice.
That. That. That. I'm currently running on a 500GB M2 (boot) and a 2nd 1TB SSD. Cost be damned, I'll always do SSD now.
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@cvi said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
The idea that you manually set aside a bit of extra space for "internal" use is interesting (their example is that you make your partitions a bit smaller than the total available space). Has anybody tried that?
@cvi I have over provisioning set up at home, mainly because Samsung magician recommended at least 10% disk space for it, but you can say fuck it and turn it off if you want.
The software explains over provisioning and that Bad Thingsâ„¢ will happen if you don't have it. I haven't noticed any perceptible slow down in my SSD since it was new, and it's over 80% full now.
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Many people are blissfully unaware that one gigabyte (GB) is precisely 1,000,000,000 bytes, and one gibibyte (GiB) is precisely 2^30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes, or about 7.37% more than a GB. Many people are also blissfully unaware that storage is properly measured in gigabytes, whereas memory is properly measured in gibibytes
If by "properly measured" you mean "we do it because it lets us scam people, and it's not illegal because we've always done it".
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@anonymous234 said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
Many people are blissfully unaware that one gigabyte (GB) is precisely 1,000,000,000 bytes, and one gibibyte (GiB) is precisely 2^30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes, or about 7.37% more than a GB. Many people are also blissfully unaware that storage is properly measured in gigabytes, whereas memory is properly measured in gibibytes
If by "properly measured" you mean "we do it because it lets us scam people, and it's not illegal because we've always done it".
I also have serious doubts that this 7% difference in how things are measured for marketing inherently means the drive does come with the gibibyte capacity and sets aside the difference to gigabytes for OP. I mean, sure, you can do that, but it's by no means a logical conclusion. Or, knowing them, even likely.
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@doctorjones The slowdown from write cascades isn't particularly noticeable, especially since the drive, the BIOS, and the OS all conspire to try to hide that from you. What will be noticeable is the "Your drive is dying!" message you'll get a day or two before it completely locks and/or disappears. But hopefully that won't be for another decade or two.
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@doctorjones said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
Samsung magician
Hmm... what's that?
*quick search later*
Oh. I have a Samsung SSD but never got the idea to look at Samsung for software to go with it. (I guess the data migration feature would potentially have been a less painful way to migrate my existing Windows installation than
dd. Windows isn't really happy about being migrated withdd.)recommended at least 10% disk space
TIL. Something to keep in mind for the next upgrade/expansion, I suppose.
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@cvi said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
@doctorjones said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
Samsung magician
Hmm... what's that?
An illusionist who has achieved enlightenment?
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I haven't left any unused space on my boot SSDs, and so far I haven't had any problems.
My days in hard drive technical support taught me that you should avoid the software that comes with them unless absolutely necessary, but they might be licensing better stuff nowadays. Thankfully I was gone long before the floods, but in my day we did have a bad batch or two of drives. If someone complained enough we made sure they got a replacement from a different batch, but otherwise replacements were made as normal.
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@dcon said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
I'm currently running on a 500GB M2 (boot) and a 2nd 1TB SSD. Cost be damned, I'll always do SSD now.
For my home system, I have a 1TB SSD as a boot drive, another one (250? 500?) for swap/paging (because I had it anyway), and a couple of 4TB spinning rust drives for games (one of which came from an older computer). I've no problem at the moment with using HDDs where I actually want the size, but the boot/OS drive is going to always be an SSD.
Also how much is a 4TB SSD? Yow!
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@cvi said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
@doctorjones said in Interesting article from Seagate about Over Provisioning:
Samsung magician
Hmm... what's that?
*quick search later*
Oh. I have a Samsung SSD but never got the idea to look at Samsung for software to go with it. (I guess the data migration feature would potentially have been a less painful way to migrate my existing Windows installation than
dd. Windows isn't really happy about being migrated withdd.)recommended at least 10% disk space
TIL. Something to keep in mind for the next upgrade/expansion, I suppose.
FWIW it's literally the only piece of Samsung software I'd recommend. It's actually pretty good.
Must have been done by a third party or something......
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@dkf
Given what a 4TB SSD would be most useful for (large SQL servers), that's cheap at any price.Especially given that the software licensing for that box would wind up being over £4,000 per CPU core in the (virtual or physical) machine.
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@izzion Given that £4k was about what I spent to build a 50TB store (with redundancy and hot-swap disks) a couple of years ago, paying a large fraction of that for just 4TB feels painful. 1TB SSDs are much more comfortable.
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4TB Evo (about) $1600 USD = $400/TB
4TB HDD (about) $100 USD = $25/TBSo about a 16:1 difference IF speed is the only criteria...
