The World's First 3TB HDD: Seagate GoFlex Desk 3TB Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 23, 2010 12:39 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- Seagate
- HDDs
- GoFlex Desk
Final Words
I like the design of the GoFlex Desk line. The drives look cool and the docking system is functional. I like the capacity lights on the docks as well. I would’ve preferred it if Seagate had made the SATA data/power connectors on the drive more accessible so you could plug directly into a system if you wanted to. I love the performance of the GoFlex Desk over USB 3.0. While you can get better performance out of an external SSD, you have to pay much more.
Unfortunately, despite the performance USB 3.0 offers and the compact design of the GoFlex Desk, the penalty you pay in heat may not be worth it. The temperatures I reached in my testing were unacceptably high for prolonged use. While Seagate insists that even my peak 69C value was ok, I'm concerned about how long a drive would last at those temperatures. To Seagate's credit, many external 3.5" drives aren't well designed from a cooling standpoint - but that doesn't mean we should be ok with it.
It's really the initial copy to the drive that's the most concerning. If you've got several hundred GB of data that you want to load on this thing at the start, you should plan on spacing the copy out at least as to not run into the heat issues I did. For light use it wasn't a problem - the drive usually hovered around 54C, but while copying hundreds of GB the drive got far too warm.
Even if you go to a cooler drive I’m just not comfortable with Seagate’s enclosure design, there’s not enough ventilation for a hot 3.5” drive. While the design keeps the GoFlex Desk as compact as possible, I don’t believe the tradeoff is worth it.
For light use it may be acceptable, but I’m not convinced users who need 3TB of external storage intend to use it lightly.
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gigahertz20 - Monday, August 23, 2010 - link
The heat problem mentioned in this article makes me wonder why engineers fail to correct issues like these. It can't be that much more expensive to put a fan in the unit along with more ventilation. If it was me, I would have installed a fan inside the enclosure that would only turn on when the unit reaches a certain temperature. That way it still stays quiet, but when it gets heated up to the point where it can affect its life span, the fan will cool it down.MarkLuvsCS - Monday, August 23, 2010 - link
lol so first they have a bit of an issue with some firmware and such, but now they decide their 3TB drives should double as coffee warmers?!?!?I used to consider Seagate pretty good mfg but honestly ever since their 1TB fiasco days I don't even consider them. I certainly don't want to see less competitors out there but they really need to get their acts in order.
siuol11 - Monday, August 23, 2010 - link
I used to use Seagate exclusively... I had a RAID 0 array of 7200.10 320's, and one failed completely, erasing most of my papers and photos I'd saved from college. I also had a 500GB 7200.11, one of the few to not suffer from the .11's random fail bug- 5 months in to using it, the SATA connector snapped off (there was nothing putting pressure on it, it just snapped. I booted up my computer one morning and it couldn't find the drive). My last Seagate was a 1TB 7200.12, which started getting massive amounts of bad clusters 10 months in to using it. Thankfully it lasted long enough for me to transfer my files.Since then I've switched to Maxtor... I know you can't really use the retail drives in RAID arrays, but at least none of them have blown up on me.
Belard - Monday, August 23, 2010 - link
RAID-0 is pretty much pointless... And are more acceptable to failures.If your data was that important, then a backup drive should have been used, ESPECIALLY with a RAID-0 setup.
- MAXTOR is owned by Seagate and both "brands" come off the same assembly lines... Never heard of "Can't raid a retail drive" before. Most OEMs are single drive setups... a drive is a drive.
xded - Monday, August 23, 2010 - link
> Never heard of "Can't raid a retail drive" before. Most OEMs are single drive setups... a drive is a drive.Not entirely true. The problem is that, in case of errors, the firmware on retail drives will keep trying reading the faulty sector for too long. This delay will make the RAID controller assume that the drive is gone and it will drop it out of the chain. This unnecessarily increases the load on the array due to the subsequent rebuild phase. If then another drive should fail under the increased load, you will most likely lose the whole array, while correcting the unreadable sector in the first place would have been trivial.
This is why most manufacturers also sell "RAID edition" HDDs which, other than a tweaked firmware, also have a considerably higher MTBF.
For further information, see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-Limited_Error_Re...
see
Belard - Monday, August 23, 2010 - link
Oh... okay. I've not forgotten about enterprise class drives, for a REAL RAID setup, I wouldn't use consumer grade drives.But for most home users, using off the shelf is usually fine. But still RAID-0 is useless compared to the speed to todays drives. The complexity, the overheard and errors aren't worth it.
Want to improve BOOT up time and startup of your apps, spend $150~$200 for an SSD.
pcfxer - Tuesday, August 24, 2010 - link
Complexity? You must be retarded.You can geom Mirror, ZFS RAID-Z, HFS+ RAID or use the onboard software RAID.
If you know what you are doing RAID is fine, but thinking RAID will improve game load speeds is lol-eriffic.
siuol11 - Monday, October 11, 2010 - link
Man, I had completely forgotten about this comment till I came back to this thread today. Thanks for the comments guys, I'm aware of all of this. The 2 .10's in RAID 0 were 320's that I was using as data drives, I'm aware that RAID 0 on physical disks doesn't help latency.I'm fairly sure Maxtor ans Seagate have different QC mechanisms, which make all the difference in the world... And after failures of 3 successive generations of their drives, I think I'll pass. I'm still pissed that I lost all that stuff (and yes, yes, I know I should have had a backup. It just wasn't possible at that time).
Wolfpup - Thursday, September 16, 2010 - link
Yikes, this gives me yet MORE reason to avoid "RAID" 0.adamdz - Monday, August 23, 2010 - link
But you had a backup, right? So you were able to get all your papers and photos back, right?And, yeah Maxtor is owned by Seagate and it was always garbage.