Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 3 TB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive STAC3000101

The other day, I bought 6 TB of storage for under $300. This statement alone is startling to folks like me who have been following the storage and hard disk drive industry, but there is another fact that is more difficult to swallow: It will take days to copy data to these huge 3 TB drives, since the USB interface on each Seagate GoFlex Desk drive is good for just 30 MB/s on Apple Macintosh computers. Searching for a faster alternative led me to crack open the case and experiment with the drive inside.

Introducing the GoFlex Desk

You should read Lemons Into Lemonade: Seagate Repackages SATA As GoFlex before you continue…

I purchased two 3 TB Seagate GoFlex Desk drives from a local retailer for just $139 each. This is an amazingly cheap way to get 6 TB of storage!

My goal is to back up all of my Tech Field Day video to the two drives, using rsync to ensure that each contains a full exact copy of the video data folders. I’ll then store one off-site in a fireproof box for extra protection.

I selected the Seagate GoFlex Desk based on my good experience with their portable line of GoFlex drives. I liked the idea that the drives can be connected to a faster interface (FireWire 800, for example) for filling and then use a slower, cheaper one (USB 2.0) to read the data later or in another location.

The capacity of these drives is simply astonishing, but I question the design. The drive sits in a sealed plastic box with little ventilation, and it got hot to the touch during active use. The interchangeable docks are great, but I was disappointed that the FireWire dock has just a single port – I couldn’t daisy-chain FireWire off my iMac for data transfer, so I was stuck with USB 2.0.

Opening The Case

You might also want to read How To Add An eSATA Port To An Intel iMac

I decided to try connecting the drive to another interface for the copy operation. I had an eSATA dock handy, and my iMac has a DIY eSATA port, but this required removing the drive from its plastic container. Here’s how I accomplished that task.

Note that this likely voids the warranty on the drive, and I found that it did not function properly anyway. More on that later, though.

Step 1: Crack the Case

First, we must crack open the plastic case. The case splits in half along the seams, as one might assume. To locate the top, place the drive flat on a table with the GoFlex (SATA) port on the bottom. We will be removing the top of the case from this perspective.

Using a broad, flat spudger or putty knife, press firmly at the top of the seam in the case to release the clips inside. You have to press very firmly, but the clips will give way one by one.

The clips are more visible in the image above.  Repeat the process on the other side, and pry apart the ends.

Remove the Drive

Now that we have the plastic case open, we can remove the hard disk drive itself from the inner steel case.

Although the drive appears to be easy to remove, it is bolted into a three-sided steel case. Pull it free from the plastic case and we can begin to extract it.

Pry off the rubber bumpers or feet you see and you will discover a screw beneath each one. Unscrew all four and you can extract the hard disk drive itself.

Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001

Turns out this was one of Seagate’s new Barracuda drives! See No More Green Drives from Seagate for more info!

Inside my 3 TB GoFlex Desk I found a Seagate Barracuda drive, presumably a 7200 rpm Barracuda XT. But the disk, model ST3000DM001, is not listed on Seagate’s web site. I presume it’s a special OEM drive not intended for consumer use apart from the GoFlex system.

Surprisingly, this apparently is not an Advanced Format (4K sector) drive. It reported 512 KB sectors. More interestingly, although I reformatted it with GPT, the drive itself appeared to be have MBR format, something that shouldn’t work with a 3 TB drive. Seagate is doing some special mojo here.

This meant that the drive did not function correctly when directly connected with SATA. Though I probably could have reformatted it fresh, it would probably not work with the GoFlex dock then. It also did not function with the portable GoFlex adapter, and just attempting this required a complex cabling setup between that adapter and the drive since it requires more power than USB can deliver.

Stephen’s Stance

Buying 3 TB of storage for less than $150 is a modern miracle, and I’m happy with these drives as purchased. But cracking them open isn’t all that worthwhile, since the format requires the GoFlex Dock adapter. I could wipe them entirely, of course, but that defeats my intended use. So I repacked the drive in its plastic box and will rely on the official connectivity method.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | How To Open a Seagate GoFlex Desk Hard Disk Drive Case
This post was categorized as Apple, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

"So it is down to you, and it is down to me."

Seagate and Western Digital appear to have locked up the majority of the hard disk drive (HDD) market with their respective acquisitions of Samsung and Hitachi’s business. Leaving Toshiba with just a sliver, the American companies will soon become giants, each with more than 40% of the total HDD share and a full line of products. Despite the noise made by solid-state disk (SSD) lovers, the HDD market is likely to continue to rake in profits for decades, and these two giants will battle it out for the foreseeable future.

Western Digital Looks To The Enterprise

Originally maker of integrated circuit chips, Western Digital entered the storage market in the early 1980s, producing hard disk drive controllers. It wasn’t until 1988 that Western Digital produced its first hard disk drive, after acquiring Tandon. These were decidedly low-end products, competing in the desktop PC business with the likes of Quantum and Maxtor, two companies that would later merge and sell to arch-rival Seagate.

Western Digital moved steadily upmarket after the year 2000, expanding buffer cache and platter speeds. This culminated in the Raptor line, the first 10,000 rpm serial ATA (SATA) hard disk drive, and Western Digital is still known as a purveyor of high-performance desktop hard disk drives today. The VelociRaptor, for example, is popular among gamers for its small low-latency platters and high spindle speed.

Although Western Digital sells a wide variety of hard disk drives, they’re not a familiar face in the enterprise storage market. They’ve produced a number of raid storage devices but have never been able to break in the high-end, and have similarly been left out of many OEM contracts.

All this will change shortly, as Western Digital will soon acquire Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST). Formed as a merger of the hard disk drive businesses of IBM and Hitachi, HGST is a formidable competitor in many OEM areas, including enterprise storage. The combined company will control nearly half the storage market, offering products in every niche.

Toshiba looks mighty tiny next to Seagate/Samsung and Western Digital/HGST!

Seagate Expands In Asia

In contrast to Western Digital, Seagate is a familiar name in much of the storage market. Founded by a group of industry legends, including Al Shugart and Finis Conner, Seagate move rapidly from the personal computer space into the enterprise. By the late 1990s, Seagate was prime supplier for enterprise storage companies, competing with IBM and Hitachi.

Although formerly dominant, Seagate was surpassed in market share by Western Digital even before they acquired HGST. The new Western Digital would have dwarfed Seagate, whose 30% market share left them in a distant second place. It is perhaps easier to understand Western Digital’s moves that Seagate’s, but there is much logic in acquiring the hard disk drive assets of Samsung.

First, the transaction, worth 1 1/3 billion dollars, bring Seagate back within spitting distance of the new Western Digital. It also opens up the vast Asian OEM market, where Samsung has had much success, and guarantees a market for Seagate hard disk drives in Samsung products. But the relationship between these two companies goes much further: Samsung and Seagate are now related companies, just as Hitachi and Western Digital will be once the acquisition is complete. In both cases, the new companies will have a strong East-West alliance.

The NAND Angle

Although much of the attention in both transactions has revolved around a hard disk drive business, one should not overlook the solid-state implications. Samsung is the world’s largest supplier of NAND flash memory, and Seagate will gain an important relationship with the company. This may be the furthest reaching aspect of the transaction, since Seagate will be able to leverage this relationship as high-performance storage transitions to flash memory.

HGST had already been working with Intel to develop high-performance flash-based storage, and their combination with Western Digital will continue and expand this relationship. Intel, partnered with Micron as IMFT, is another leading supplier of flash memory chips, and the collaboration with HGST looked promising in the enterprise space. Therefore, both companies gain access to key flash memory technology thanks to these transactions.

Stephen’s Stance

Both Seagate and Western Digital have much to gain from these transactions. Western Digital becomes a full line giant of the industry, a credible competitor, and a successful supplier to OEMs. Seagate also retains its credibility in the market, but also gains access to Samsung, one of the strongest electronics companies in the world. Time will tell which of these companies got the better deal.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Seagate Versus Western Digital: The Hard Disk Drive Battle Lines Are Drawn
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage, Everything. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

They may not look any different, but don’t be fooled: Today’s hard disks are the result of amazing technological gains in capacity, performance, and efficiency. Drive manufacturers face the same trade-offs that engine makers face: Do we sacrifice performance for efficiency or tilt the scales in the opposite direction? What about packaging, flexibility, and the OEM market?

Although we are focusing on the low-power desktop market, these same drives have shown up in enterprise arrays recently: The Seagate Barracuda LP, WD RE4-GP (a cousin to the Caviar Green), and Samsung F2 have all seen use in RAID systems. So these drives can reduce data center bills as well as being at home in your desktop. All three drives are tested in detail over at Tom’s Hardware.

The Traditionalist: Samsung EcoGreen F2

Samsung's EcoGreen F2 gets high marks for performance and efficiency

Samsung isn’t as well-known in the desktop disk drive market as Seagate, Hitachi, and Western Digital, but their F1 line proved popular over the last few years. Samsung put forth a good combination of solid performance, low price, and a decent warranty, but didn’t slather on the buzzwords or mythical advanced features. The new F2 line continues this trend, offering good performance from 500 GB platters at the traditional 5400 rpm spindle speed.

The EcoGreen F2 achieves low-power performance the old fashioned way: Samsung uses fewer platters, heads, and other components. 500 GB platters give the three-platter drive both performance and efficiency with capacity of 1.5 TB. The F2GP is available with either 16 MB or 32 MB cache, as the HD153UI or HD154UI, respectively, and can be had for cheap: NewEgg lists the 1.5 TB HD104UI in OEM guise at just $99. Performance, capacity, efficiency, and value: What’s not to like?

The Individualist: Seagate Barracuda LP

Seagate's Barracuda LP sports 5900 rpm performance and low power

Folks “in the know” about disk drives know that they come in just a few spindle speeds: Desktop drives are either 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm, and enterprise drives add 10,000 rpm and 15,000 rpm to the mix. They also know that 5400′s are slow and 15k’s are blazing fast. But these simple spindle speed levels weren’t always in place, and Seagate is blazing a new trail with their 5900 rpm Barracuda LP.

Keeping the spindle speed below 7200 rpm allowed Seagate to use 500 GB platters for capacity, but bumping it over 5400 rpm allowed them to boast better performance than their competitors. Unlike Samsung, which tops out at 1.5 TB, Seagate goes all the way to 2 TB with a four-platter offering.

The Prestidigitator: Western Digital Caviar Green

Western Digital has never been at home in enterprise RAID systems, but their drives are extremely popular in the home and small business segment. Their line is divided into three colored bands: Black is performance, Blue is value, and Green is efficiency. The Caviar Green line looks like a conventional drive but packs some curious tweaks.

It's not variable, but WD won't say how fast their Caviar Green spins

One curious aspect of the drive, however, is its rotational speed. Many reports suggest that it varies its spindle speed between 5400 and 7200 rpm, delivering both performance and efficiency. Although Western Digital does not discuss the drive’s actual speed, they do not claim that it is variable.

The Caviar Green’s IntelliPower feature is said to deliver “a fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance.” In truth, IntelliPower is just a nice way of saying “it outperforms 5400 rpm drives so we didn’t want it to wear that mark of shame.” Acoustic tests have shown that the 1 TB drive does indeed spin at 5400 rpm, but WD says that some models might have different (fixed) speeds.

The Caviar Green has a big brother, the RE4-GP, which is wowing the press. Certified for RAID use and fortified with a 64 MB cache, the RE4-GP is otherwise closely related to the desktop Caviar Green. And it really brings the goods: Tom’s Hardware shows that it outperforms the other “green” offerings in both I/O and power consumption, a nice trick!

Conclusion

Today’s “green” hard disk drives are definitely stepping up with serious performance and low-power operation. Samsung’s straightforward approach may not be sexy, but it works. Seagate’s use of a non-standard spindle speed is interesting, but it is not clear if this brings much performance benefit. Although Western Digital’s reluctance to attach a “5400 rpm stigma” to their excellent drives is understandable, it would be best for them to simply state the drive speed instead of confusing everyone with their IntelliPower marketing line. That said, reviewers are mighty impressed by the WD Caviar Green and its enterprise cousin, the RE4-GP.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | What Is The Secret To Efficient Hard Disk Drives?
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Not For Laptops

As we’ve discussed before, modern laptops require thin 9.5 mm drives, which usually translates into two-platter units. This new WD Scorpio Blue is a three-platter, 12.5 mm design. So although this drive will certainly see lots of use in the hot mobile external drive market, we will not likely start seeing 1 TB laptops quite yet.

Note that Seagate rolled out a 640 GB FreeAgent Go USB drive last month. Although the company still hasn’t officially revealed the drive mechanism inside this mobile drive, we have surmised that it uses the 9.5 mm laptop-friendly two-platter design with 333 GB per platter. The new WD unit uses the same platter size and density, taking more wind out of Western Digital’s sails.

Shaking Up External Storage

But since both the initial WD and Seagate drives are aimed at the portable USB unit market rather than landing inside laptops, WD’s announcement of both 1 TB and 750 GB sizes should give it a nice differentiator on the shelves of retail stores.

Seagate has relied on 9.5 mm drives for quite a while, so it is unlikely to be able to match WD’s capacity for quite some time. We expect Hitachi GST and Samsung to quickly match WD’s capacity point with 3-platter 12.5 mm units, as they have done in the past, enabling OEMs like Iomega and LaCie to meet WD’s challenge. It remains to be seen if Seagate and Toshiba will ship 3-platter drive units to compete or wait until they can reach 1 TB with two-platter drives.

Enterprise Implications?

All of this talk of increased capacity inevitably leads to the question of whether these units will find their way into data centers and enterprise storage systems. At this point, Western Digital has not been very successful in the enterprise space, so this particular drive is unlikely to play there, either. But a potential 1 TB Hitachi GST response could indeed be used in enterprise storage.

More interesting is the impact that these 333 GB platters will have. Even if 1 TB drives don’t arrive in enterprise storage units today, this new areal density mark is likely to trickle up to this market. With HP announcing that they would shift to the 2.5 inch form factor for all of their enterprise storage products over the next few years, derivative high-capacity drives from other manufacturers could be the first real entry in the enterprise space.

Conclusion

So although this announcement will not shake the laptop or enterprise markets, it does promise to inject new energy into the portable external drive segment, likely reducing prices for existing products as well. After all, with a 1 TB drive sitting on the shelf, who would want to buy a 250 GB drive even at half the price?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | WD’s 1 TB Laptop Drive? Not Quite!
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Until this month, all four major disk vendors have remained silent on the step past the half-terabyte barrier, however. Certainly any could have slapped together a 640 GB, 750 GB, or even 1 TB 4-platter semi-mobile disk drive using existing technology, as Hitachi did last year, but no such announcement came. But the break just came: Seagate has quietly added a 640 GB model to their 2.5 inch FreeAgent Go portable disk drive line. There was no press release, but this is a major step forward.

The rest of the Seagate FreeAgent Go line uses the modern 2-platter Momentus 5400.6 disk mechanism, so we can assume that a new member of that family will also be introduced shortly. The line today consists of two platter densities:

1. The 160 GB ST9160314AS uses a single two-sided 160 GB platter
2. The 120 GB, 250 GB, 320 GB, and 500 GB drives all use a 250 GB platter. The smaller units (named ST9xxx315AS) use a single platter, while the larger ones (ST9xxx325AS) use two.

Seagate could produce a 640 GB drive with three 250 GB platters, but it is difficult to cram three platters into a 9.5 mm case. Therefore, it is likely that Seagate will be introducing a new 320 GB 2.5 inch platter. If this is true, we can guess that the new drive will be named ST9640326AS. An inexpensive single-platter 320 GB ST9320316AS might soon be introduced as well, effectively ending the reign of the 250 GB drive as the budget portable capacity king.

With Seagate first off the dime, expect similar introductions by Western Digital, Hitachi, and Samsung in the next few months. 2.5 inch hard disk prices have fallen slowly for the last six months, but the second half of the year should see each capacity level replace the one below it at the same price.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Seagate Surpasses 500 GB In 2.5 Inches
This post was categorized as Computer History, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Inland 8412 USB to IDE/SATA Adapter

I imagine every home computer hacker one day finds they have one too many hard drives to deal with. Maybe you are migrating to a new system or installing a new OS. Or maybe you’re upgrading the disk in your new Mac Mini. Whatever the reason, a universal way to connect any hard drive to a PC is a very handy thing to have on hand!

Send in the Inland USB to IDE/SATA Adapter. As its workmanlike name implies, it connects just about any IDE or SATA drive to the USB port of any PC or Mac (or just about any other OS, in my experience) with no fuss or hassle. It handles laptop and desktop drives with equal ease, and can provide appropriate power as well. I bought mine at MicroCenter for under $20, but Amazon sells the same Inland brand one I have, as well as a very similar one from Sabrent and others.

The Inland adapter is a USB dongle with three connectors:

1. Standard 40-pin ATA connector for desktop parallel ATA/IDE hard drives
2. Standard 50-pin ATA plus power connector for laptop parallel ATA/IDE drives
3. Standard 7-pin SATA data connector for desktop and laptop SATA drives

The package also contains a few other handy items:

1. A power supply with a standard ATA Molex 4-pin power connector
2. A Molex to SATA power adapter cable
3. A short internal SATA cable

Mixing and matching these three items means you can power up and connect just about any recent hard disk drive, and many old ones besides. I have used mine with 10 year old sub-GB drives and brand new 3 Gbit SATA drives with no trouble. Throughput seems to max out at around 30 MB/s, but that’s plenty fast for most needs. The Mac will even boot from it!

Note: Some of these links include affiliate codes that help pay for this blog. For example, buying an Amazon Kindle with this link sends a few bucks my way! But I don't write this blog to make money, and am happy to link to sites and stores that don't pay anything. I like Amazon and buy tons from them, but you're free to buy whatever and wherever you want.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Handy Gadget: USB to IDE/SATA Adapter
This post was categorized as Apple, Everything, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

LED Display Clock

First up is this LED display/clock. It consists of a series of colored LED lights which flash on and off below a slot cut in the hard drive platter. The perceptual illusion images it creates are just amazing!

Speaker

Next, we have a pair of drives set up as a speaker. They don’t call it a voice coil for nothing!

Music Video

Sticking with the Radiohead theme, here’s a home-made music video, including a recreation of the song, made entirely with old computer junk. Including ten hard drives.

Wind Chime

Not as creative, but still, it’s an old hard drive!

Stirling Engine

Stirling engines are the unicorn of the car-geek community. This one includes hard drive platters!

Eddy Currents With Hard Disk Magnets

Hard disk magnets are awesome. They’re super-strong rare earth magnets – my kids love ‘em! Here is a demonstration of eddy currents using old hard disk and Lego train parts. Double geek!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Friday Fun With Hard Drives
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, Enterprise storage, Personal, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Let’s take a look at the two company’s product lines and market positions as we determine the impact of this deal.

Update: Fujitsu is denying the deal, even though the market loves it, but it still makes sense for WDC to pick up either Fujitsu or Hitachi’s disk drive business to better compete with Seagate.

Update 2: Rumors in December are that the deal is back on.

Final (?) Update: The deal is off as of January 2009.

Introducing Fujitsu

Although they’ve never enjoyed the high profile of (post-Maxtor) Seagate,  Western Digital, and (post-IBM) Hitachi, sixth-ranked disk manufacturer, Fujitsu, has enjoyed success in two key OEM markets: Laptops and servers. The company’s disks are found in many portable computers (including my Apple MacBook Pro), sharing this market with number-three maker, Hitachi. Although Fujitsu reportedly does not manufacture their own drive wafers, they apparently handle all other aspects of design, construction, and assembly.

The company offers a variety of portable 2.5″ drives:

• The BH series is a thin 9.5 mm unit in capacities up to 320 GB
• The BJ is a high-performance 7200 rpm, 9.5 mm mechanism for high-end machines
• The new BT is fatter, at 12.5 mm, but reaches 500 GB
• Finally, the CJ is an upgrade to the BJ, with built-in encryption in addition to 7200 rpm and 9.5 mm thinness

In the enterprise space, Fujitsu offers both 2.5″ and 3.5″ models:

• The 3.5″ MBA3 is available in both Fibre Channel and SCSI variants at 10k and 15k rpm speeds and sizes to 300 GB
• The MBB2 is a 2.5″ drive for blade servers, with low power consumption, 10k rpm speed, and a SCSI interface
• The MBC2 bumps the 2.5″ drive up to 15k rpm

The company also offers a variety of 2.5″ drives for embedded use, with enhanced vibration and shock tolerance and 24×7 operation.

So let’s sum it up:  Fujitsu is the number-six maker (in terms of sales), is strong in the OEM laptop and server markets, and has a respectably diverse set of drive offerings, but mostly focuses on 2.5″ mechanisms.

Western Digital

Now let’s turn to the reported buyer, Western Digital (NYSE: WDC). WDC is well known in the hot (and hotly competitive) retail space, selling buckets of external and portable USB hard disk drives to consumers. The company has been a fixture of the PC market for decades, originally as a manufacturer of a variety of components but focusing on hard disk drives in the early 1990s. The company has grown organically, only acquiring IP and R&D through acquisition rather than buying up its competitors like rivals Maxtor and Seagate. Reports say that Western Digital also buys their platters, but handles the rest of the engineering and construction activities in-house.

Western Digital’s Caviar line was the performance toast of the PC community in the 1990s, and they have recently had a resurgence with their Raptor and VelociRaptor drive units. The latter, a 10k rpm 2.5″ mechanism designed for desktops, was especially lauded in the press and blogs. Although their RE2 and RE3 enterprise SATA drive lines sport respectable specifications, Western Digital has never been a common sight in the data center.

On the mobile side, WDC has two lines: The 7200 rpm Scorpio Black and 5400 rpm Scorpio Blue. The latter is especially common wrapped in the company’s well-regarded My Passport portable USB enclosure, and is also used by OEMs like Verbatim. I transplanted one of these 320 GB Scorpio Blue drives into my MacBook Pro, in fact.

WDC’s bread and butter has long been its desktop drives, however. The company currently manufactures three lines of Caviar drives (Black, Blue, and Green) for different market segments, and their My Book external desktop drives are hot sellers in the consumer sector. The company boasts “green” drives with lower power requirements, as well as embedded units for DVRs like TiVo.

A Nice Match

So what would Fujitsu bring to Western Digital? Greater OEM leverage and increased manufacturing capability, chiefly, along with more R&D depth. Both companies have similar manufacturing capabilities, and Fujitsu’s strong OEM laptop and server lines would mesh nicely with WD’s existing desktop and consumer strength. Although the combined company would still trail Seagate in market share (30% vs. 35%), it would be a force to reckon with in the market, and could force further consolidation among the smaller players. Hitachi’s OEM drive manufacturing business would certainly face pressure, and they would have been a nice alternate target for Western Digital. All in all, I give this rumor two thumbs up!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Western Digital + Fujitsu = More Competition for Seagate and Hitachi
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.