I was looking to add some terabytes to my workstation's "cold" storage. I already have 8 terabytes of very fast NVMe-SSD and a slow (SMR) internal 8TB hard disk, as well as some USB external drives and network attached drives. Why the need for so much storage? 4K video editing and all kinds of video hoarding.

During Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals, I found a good deal on an external Seagate 14TB USB drive at Costco: $149. Dollars per terabyte, hard to beat that price.

The disk inside this external drive enclosure is just a standard Seagate Exos or IronWolf Pro NAS class-drive CMR hard drive (which separately, sell for more than, sometimes double, the external drive). Reportedly, this price difference is because the warranty on the bare drive is longer than when sold as part of the external drive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41JwxULVdAs

My first instinct/plan was to "shuck" the drive and install it inside my workstation (there's room and cabling and power to support it), but now I'm having second thoughts: USB 3.0 is 5Gbps while SATA 3 is 6Gbps. Is that potential 20% gain in performance something I need for this drive? Not especially. Some say that removing the drive, which usually damages the USB enclosure, may void its warranty. Others say it does not. Shucking cheaper external drives as replacement drives in a NAS (where USB isn't an option) is a fairly popular thing to do, but I'm not really sure about the advantage for workstation use. It is another box on the flower, another USB cable and port used, and its own power adapter. But what is one more in mess under and beside my desk?

What are you experiences with external USB drives? Have you shucked them and used the bare drive in SATA NAS or workstations?
--
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Re: To shuck or not to shuck...
By: Digital Man to All on Sun Dec 03 2023 03:14 pm

>
> What are you experiences with external USB drives? Have you shucked them and > --
> digital man (rob)

Main reason to extract the drive from the case is reliability instead of
performance gains, IMO.

Many cheap cases or encased drives have cheap USB controlers that will die on
you, or their USB connectors will give in, at the worst possible time.

If you don't want the drive to be portable (so that files can be moved from a
place to another without the need of a network) and you have a drive bay in thecomputer which is free, then extracting the drive from the case is the obvious
choice, specially if you can extract it without damaging the case, IMO.

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-=> Arelor wrote to Digital Man <=-

Ar> Re: To shuck or not to shuck...
Ar> By: Digital Man to All on Sun Dec 03 2023 03:14 pm

> What are you experiences with external USB drives? Have you shucked them and

Ar> Main reason to extract the drive from the case is reliability
Ar> instead of performance gains, IMO.

Ar> Many cheap cases or encased drives have cheap USB controlers that
Ar> will die on you, or their USB connectors will give in, at the
Ar> worst possible time.

Ar> If you don't want the drive to be portable (so that files can be
Ar> moved from a place to another without the need of a network) and
Ar> you have a drive bay in thecomputer which is free, then
Ar> extracting the drive from the case is the obvious choice,
Ar> specially if you can extract it without damaging the case, IMO.

I agree with this post.

Another point, that I have observed personally, is that I've had "too
many" external devices connected to USB ports, which has caused
intermittent/flaky operation on some devices. I firmly believe that was
cause by over-taxing the power-handling (supply) ability of the USB
controller(s) to provide. In other words, just because you have 4-6 USB
ports doesn't mean the system can adequately power that many external
devices all at the same time, in a reliable manner.

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Re: To shuck or not to shuck...
By: Digital Man to All on Sun Dec 03 2023 03:14 pm

> During Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals, I found a good deal on an external
> Seagate 14TB USB drive at Costco: $149. Dollars per terabyte, hard to beat
> that price.
>
> The disk inside this external drive enclosure is just a standard Seagate
> Exos or IronWolf Pro NAS class-drive CMR hard drive (which separately, sell
> for more than, sometimes double, the external drive). Reportedly, this price
> difference is because the warranty on the bare drive is longer than when
> sold as part of the external drive.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41JwxULVdAs
>
> My first instinct/plan was to "shuck" the drive and install it inside my
> workstation (there's room and cabling and power to support it), but now I'm
> having second thoughts: USB 3.0 is 5Gbps while SATA 3 is 6Gbps. Is that
> potential 20% gain in performance something I need for this drive? Not
> especially. Some say that removing the drive, which usually damages the USB
> enclosure, may void its warranty. Others say it does not. Shucking cheaper
> external drives as replacement drives in a NAS (where USB isn't an option)
> is a fairly popular thing to do, but I'm not really sure about the advantage
> for workstation use. It is another box on the flower, another USB cable and
> port used, and its own power adapter. But what is one more in mess under and
> beside my desk?
>

you should get a drobo clone like i have. i don't have to crack my computer
open anymore to add drives.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=mediasonic+probox&crid=H46NK3BF99JS&sprefix=mediasonic+probo%2Caps%2C101&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
look up mediasonic probox or look at their other products.

>
> What are you experiences with external USB drives? Have you shucked them and
> used the bare drive in SATA NAS or workstations?

yeah i've done that. i've actually done that years back when an external seagate was cheaper than an internal drive.

But look up the failure rates for current drives. get the most reliable one.
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Re: To shuck or not to shuck.
By: Digital Man to All on Sun Dec 03 2023 03:14 pm

> What are you experiences with external USB drives?

I've had luck with hanging off alot of external SSD drives but not so much
spinning disks. I think you get alot more reliability sticking a spinning disk
in a sturdy chasis.

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Re: To shuck or not to shuck.
By: Nopants to Digital Man on Mon Dec 04 2023 12:10 pm

Agree with last statement, also depends what sotrage for,
games of newer, can be better on SSD, some even good USB STICK.
but a good quilty spin drive. works great, have had few SSD die.
but the old spinner still spins. :)
but some games needing faster respounse, can play better on SSD.
Moderatio Est Figmentum
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Re: To shuck or not to shuck.
By: Nopants to Digital Man on Mon Dec 04 2023 12:10 pm

Agree with last staement, but depending what storage used for.
depending on game, SSD can be better, or even a good USB stick.
but a GOOD quality Spinner has done me good.
{have had Many SSD die} But the spinner still spins.
Reason for some games, (newer mainly) is due to tranfer speed.
high pace shooter something like that takes high laod, and reponse need.
Moderatio Est Figmentum
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Re: To shuck or not to shuck.
By: Lodinsetki to Digital Man on Fri Jan 19 2024 08:38 am

> {have had Many SSD die} But the spinner still spins.

I've had really good luck with SSDs. The one I killed was holding virtual
machines, so likely very high i/o. But, it did take awhile. SSDs I have used
for storage have been good to me. Like you say, it depends on the use case.

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-=> Nopants wrote to Lodinsetki <=-

No> Re: To shuck or not to shuck.
No> By: Lodinsetki to Digital Man on Fri Jan 19 2024 08:38 am

> {have had Many SSD die} But the spinner still spins.

No> I've had really good luck with SSDs. The one I killed was holding
No> virtual machines, so likely very high i/o. But, it did take awhile.
No> SSDs I have used for storage have been good to me. Like you say, it
No> depends on the use case.

SSDs are great for OS drives but any use scenario with heavy I/O operations
will eventually hit the write/rewrite limit on SSD cells. In my work
environment OS drives are SSDs and storage drives are spinning drives. I think
as we move more toward more energy efficiency we'll see SSDs used as storage
devices more often. With SLC drives now capable of up to 1,000,000 rewrites to
each cell the reliability of SSDs is getting closer to that of platter drives.
Long gone are the days of staged ESDI startup sequences where you can hear each
drive individually start spinning and see the BIOS advise you as to which drive
has reached operational RPMs.....

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Re: To shuck or not to shuck.
By: Weatherman to Nopants on Sat Jan 27 2024 02:14 am

We> SSDs are great for OS drives but any use scenario with heavy I/O
We> operations will eventually hit the write/rewrite limit on SSD cells. In
We> my work environment OS drives are SSDs and storage drives are spinning
We> drives.

Doesn't an OS write to its drive quite a lot? I thought modern OSes typically write quite a bit in log files, swap files (if necessary), etc.. I would have thought an OS drive would get more I/O usage than a drive used for storage.

Nightfox

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-=> Nightfox wrote to Weatherman <=-

Ni> Re: To shuck or not to shuck.
Ni> By: Weatherman to Nopants on Sat Jan 27 2024 02:14 am

We> SSDs are great for OS drives but any use scenario with heavy I/O
We> operations will eventually hit the write/rewrite limit on SSD cells. In
We> my work environment OS drives are SSDs and storage drives are spinning
We> drives.

Ni> Doesn't an OS write to its drive quite a lot? I thought modern OSes
Ni> typically write quite a bit in log files, swap files (if necessary),
Ni> etc.. I would have thought an OS drive would get more I/O usage than a
Ni> drive used for storage.

Ni> Nightfox

In general you are correct, however in the environment I work in the storage
drives see up to several million write/rewrite operations a day. Beyond that,
we're looking at arrays with as few as 12 storage disks per node and as many as
60 with up to 16 nodes per rack. With the difference between SSD and spinning
drive costs, it adds up pretty quick when you look at the difference in cost
per terabyte. Spinning drives are just cheaper, especially when you're looking
at petabytes per rack. It's just a lot cheaper to install a 960 GB SSD for OS,
another 480 GB SSD for read cache and then fill up the storage slots with as
many 8, 10, or 12 TB spinning drives as the customer specifies.

We DO have a model that is all SSD and it's the latest and greatest so it may
indicate the direction in which the product is going, but to tell the truth,
that model faces several operational challenges that the spinning drives do
not.

Anyway, all that is designed by people who are supposedly a lot smarter than me
(at least they get paid like they are). All I do is try to keep the damned
things running when the system admins are barely capable of putting their shoes
on the right feet in the morning.

.... There are 10 kinds of people. Those who get binary and those who don't.
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