Review: Seagate Barracuda Pro 14TB HDD (the Megalodon has arrived)

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 09/13/2018 07:34 AM | source: | 21 comment(s)

We review the Megalodon among the HDDs as the Barracuda Pro 14TB from Seagate is unleashed, that's a 14.000GB HDD folks! This, by far, is the biggest single consumer unit storage device to date. It might not offer SSD performance, but it certainly isn't a slouch.

Read the full review here.

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wavetrex
Senior Member

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Joined: 2008-07-16

#5582993 Posted on: 09/10/2018 01:21 PM

Obviously tech pushes forward, and more capacity is better for anyone that needs it.

However price / GB is not yet Ok for these 14 Tera-drives.
You can get more capacity per money spent by buying 2x 8TB than 1x 14TB, as those two 8TB drives are cheaper than 1x 14TB.

However, when absolute max capacity is needed for a limited amount of drives (let's say a 4-bay NAS), this new capacity level is awesome !

Fox2232
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Joined: 2012-07-20

#5582997 Posted on: 09/10/2018 01:25 PM

My largest HDD is 2TB. Not using it, really. I can't even remember how long I have it.

Back in the day, I backed up every game I had, every DVD, ...

But since 40GB+ movies and games came along, I considered it waste of space. It's not like in case there is no more internet to re-download my games, I would be in position to sit at home and play games from backup.

Hilbert Hagedoorn
Don Vito Corleone

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#5583000 Posted on: 09/10/2018 01:26 PM

owever price / GB is not yet Ok for these 14 Tera-drives.

You do need to math in that this is a Barracuda, Helium-filled - faster 7200 RPM and performance. If you go with two 8 TB Seagate Archive HDDs... cost indeed sits at 3 cents per GB. But the performance difference certainly is noticeable due to the lower platter rpm and 128MB cache (256 MB for this one).

jura11
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Joined: 2015-03-20

#5583005 Posted on: 09/10/2018 01:35 PM

2*14TB in my case would be just sufficient,as currently have 6*3TB and 1*4TB plus 3*1TB SSD just what puts me off is price, sadly

Then failure rate of Seagate HDD, owned 3*3TB Barracuda and all of them failed, recovering them would be too expensive and I didn't recover them, lost several months of rendering plus my other works

But still nice to see 14TB HDD review and test over here

Hope this helps

Thanks, Jura

Præses
Senior Member

Posts: 939
Joined: 2004-05-15

#5583011 Posted on: 09/10/2018 01:52 PM

So roughly 14,5 hours to fill it up at max speed? :p

wavetrex
Senior Member

Posts: 750
Joined: 2008-07-16

#5583019 Posted on: 09/10/2018 02:11 PM

Question: How is it possible that this drive doesn't seem to slow down towards the end ?

The HD Tach show SSD-like speed consistency, and that is very unusual.
Either there is some strange caching involved, or the drive itself is "mapping" addresses like a SSD, always writing and reading first from the outer tracks.

@Hilbert Hagedoorn
It would be interesting if you could fill this drive completely (all the 14 TB) with random data, and test read speeds then.
Constant 240-250 MB/s on the entire drive is NOT normal.

Stairmand
Senior Member

Posts: 150
Joined: 2007-07-25

#5583029 Posted on: 09/10/2018 02:26 PM

I just worked out, if this was available at the same £ per MB when I bought my first hard drive. It would have cost £17,500,000

Holy crap.

SashiX
Junior Member

Posts: 19
Joined: 2005-06-23

#5583050 Posted on: 09/10/2018 03:08 PM

Slowing down at the end as expected.

Yogi
Senior Member

Posts: 232
Joined: 2015-06-25

#5583066 Posted on: 09/10/2018 03:35 PM

I'm not sure I'd trust a single drive with that much capacity.
1 failure and you've lost 14 TB worth of data. Or whatever fraction of it you've managed to fill.

Misha Engel
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Joined: 2017-06-29

#5583084 Posted on: 09/10/2018 04:18 PM

HWgeek
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#5583092 Posted on: 09/10/2018 04:42 PM

I am interested to see how ST2000DM008 can perform,it's single 2TB platter HDD with 220MBS, interested to see how it can used for Steam library, My current WD EZEX 1TB is very slow for Rainbow Six Siege and all calling me a potato PC even tho I got 2700X/120GB SSD/1080TI/200MBs Fiber.

Hilbert Hagedoorn
Don Vito Corleone

Posts: 36843
Joined: 2000-02-22

#5583096 Posted on: 09/10/2018 04:51 PM

It would be interesting if you could fill this drive completely (all the 14 TB) with random data, and test read speeds then.
Constant 240-250 MB/s on the entire drive is NOT normal.

I added two new measurements in the HD Tune section displaying that behavior pretty precisely.

schmidtbag
Senior Member

Posts: 4649
Joined: 2012-11-10

#5583099 Posted on: 09/10/2018 04:57 PM

Surprisingly good performance for a singe drive.

However price / GB is not yet Ok for these 14 Tera-drives.
You can get more capacity per money spent by buying 2x 8TB than 1x 14TB, as those two 8TB drives are cheaper than 1x 14TB.
I'm not sure I would entirely agree. Keep in mind that people running drives like this are probably going to RAID1/5/10 them. If data integrity matters to you, spending a little bit extra so you have fewer drives to make redundant is a better long-term approach. Every additional moving part you add is one more thing creating heat, noise, and an increased chance of failure.

That's not to say your idea is a bad one, but for some people, the extra expense is a practical one.

alanm
Senior Member

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#5583108 Posted on: 09/10/2018 05:10 PM

I'm not sure I'd trust a single drive with that much capacity.
1 failure and you've lost 14 TB worth of data. Or whatever fraction of it you've managed to fill.
14tb + Seagate sends shivers up my spine.

Hilbert Hagedoorn
Don Vito Corleone

Posts: 36843
Joined: 2000-02-22

#5583113 Posted on: 09/10/2018 05:17 PM

14tb + Seagate sends shivers up my spine.

There's always a possibility it fails, there's always a possibility that anything in your PC fails. These helium-filled units, however, have made the HDDs way more reliable. From the top of my head less than 1% failure rates with the latest Backblaze 12 TB ones .. which is on par with SSDs as well. But here you're going to fire off "but yeah, that SSD doesn't hold 14 TB of data dude". I know .. I know..

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