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Re: HDD whining Bryan Fields via NANOG (Sep 26)
So this is also a thing as it pertains to spinning rust. SAS will greatly out
perform SATA _every_ time. It can be massive, I've seen 2x the speed and
latency especially on SAS vs the same SATA drive. SAS disks support queuing
and full duplex on the interface (6 vs 12gb really doesn't matter), whereas
SATA doesn't. In a ZFS pool this can be huge, especially with raidz vs mirrors.

IOPS are still crap on rust vs ssd, but SAS...

Re: HDD whining Randy Bush via NANOG (Sep 26)
fwiw, amazon is promising me twelve 20tb wd red pros, and asserts that
they are new. we'll see.

as joel said, hyperscalers are dumping large oxide that has depreciated,
so beware.

randy

Re: HDD whining Randy (K6RP) via NANOG (Sep 26)
I'd tell you where I get mine (slightly used) but I'm afraid they will
get sold out in 2 seconds.

Good luck to all the non-AI/big cloud providers....

---
~Randy

Re: HDD whining Ben Cartwright-Cox via NANOG (Sep 26)
In practice now, the moment you use enterprise drives (and for the love of god update the drive firmware when you first
deploy them) modern SSDs are both increadibly hardy (in terms of endurance) and don't do the "fail at the same time"
thing that a lot of people remember from the older days

If you use consumer grade drives with constant server-like workloads, yeah don't be surprised when they die young, the
OEM drives...

Re: HDD whining Crist Clark via NANOG (Sep 26)
As I understand it, the pressure on HDDs is indirect because of the
shortage and higher costs of SSDs as the memory for SSD gets diverted into
the AI race.

That is, lots of people who would have bought SSD, are buying HDD since the
price delta on a per GB-basis between SSD and HDD has been /increasing/.

Re: HDD whining Nigel Titley via NANOG (Sep 26)
Randy has already mentioned the difficulty in getting 20TB SSDs, but
there are other good reasons for not, for example, using SSDs in a RAID
array... like, unlike HDDs, they tend to all fail at once. I don't know
if he's using them with MD5 RAID but that's another good reason for
continuing to use spinning rust.

Nigel

Re: HDD whining Aaron C. de Bruyn via NANOG (Sep 26)
No disagreement there.
Doesn't mean I have to like it. ;)

-A

Re: HDD whining Kevin Tillery via NANOG (Sep 26)
Right, the problem here is not the drive makers. The problem is that some idiot who's in charge of the economy gave
some sociopaths enough money that they could just completely buy out certain sectors for over a year. AI just happens
to be the thing they're obsessed with today.

There will be plentiful drives after the crash, whenever that is, but this is not how a stable economy is supposed to
work.

If AI relied on fresh tomatoes...

Re: HDD whining Rusty Dekema via NANOG (Sep 25)
I am neither a RAM nor drive maker but if I were, I would choose to:

o Caulk the wagon and float it across.

-R

Re: HDD whining Randy Bush via NANOG (Sep 25)
< comment from peanut gallery >

if you're a RAM or drive maker, do you

o keep your current manufacturing capacity, run it to the max, and
charge ridiculous prices, or do you

o follow the crazy AI folk, borrow to your eyelids, spend massive
capex to increase capacity, and hope the AI bubble does not burst?

i think i would choose the first

randy

Re: HDD whining Aaron C. de Bruyn via NANOG (Sep 25)
I've had to resort to going through large vendors.
Not Amazon or Newegg, but like IX systems, Equus, and CDW.

Several of them will only sell drives as part of new server.

The goal is finding the cheapest thing they'll consider a server, and pack
it full of drives.

I ended up building something that was basically an entry-level server with
4 gigs of RAM, a very low-end CPU, and an HBA that let me put in 12 drives.

The server cost...

Re: HDD whining Randy Bush via NANOG (Sep 25)
i can not second guess you. but in case you do, if you think 20TB HDDs
are scarce, see if you can find 20TB SSDs. :)

randy

Re: HDD whining Crist Clark via NANOG (Sep 25)
I literally read this multiple times trying to find where I missed you
describing the noise the drives were making.

Re: HDD whining Shane Ronan via NANOG (Sep 25)
Do we even want to know why you are insisting on HDD's?

On Fri, Sep 25, 2026 at 3:57 PM Randy Bush via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>
wrote:

HDD whining Randy Bush via NANOG (Sep 25)
i am having a really hard time getting a dozen 20TB WD WD201KRYZ Golds. 
the latest is a seller who takes my order and then a day later emails
that they only have three and they are refurbs. 

i imagine we could use reds instead of golds. but i am very hesitant to
take refurbs.

this is crazy making. the two, supposedly new. amazon 6TBs i drove four
hours from portland to seattle to install turned out to be crap; one was
doa (like dmesg...

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