x
This website is using cookies. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. More info. That's Fine
HPC:Factor Logo 
 
Latest Forum Activity

Server hard drives

Rich Hawley Page Icon Posted 2017-06-17 7:45 PM
#
Avatar image of Rich Hawley
Global Moderator
H/PC Guru

Posts:
7,188
Location:
USA
Status:
Okay, someone educate me. I have about 2 dozen server hard drives. Most say something like Savvio 15K.3 or Savvio 10K.4. And one is in some type of removable tray like the one pictured below.

So my question is this: What are they good for? Can you use them like a normal hard drive? What is the interface? These I picked up from an auction recently from some IT company that went out of business...they all have labels that say "eradication complete" on them...which I assume is that they wiped them clean.

On the 15K.3 is a 300 written, is this 300GB? On the 10K.4 it has 600 written, again, 600GB?



(drive1.jpg)



(drive2.jpg)



Attachments
----------------
Attachments drive1.jpg (412KB - 0 downloads)
Attachments drive2.jpg (335KB - 0 downloads)
 Top of the page
HPC:Fan Page Icon Posted 2017-06-17 8:35 PM
#
Avatar image of HPC:Fan
H/PC Sensei

Posts:
877
Location:
Europe/USA
Status:
The Seagate Constellation 2 appears to be a 500GB hard drive with a SATA interface according to its model number. You can use these drives in a regular computer. Simply remove them from their server caddy (the plastic housing) and insert them in your computer. The nice thing with these drives are relatively fast read times and durability.

Do a complete test on them to see if they're still functioning correctly.

For more information, see http://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/constellation-fa...

For info regarding the Savio (number here), http://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/savvio-fam/enter...

Edited by SOLIDUS 2017-06-17 8:36 PM
 Top of the page
C:Amie Page Icon Posted 2017-06-18 9:21 AM
#
Avatar image of C:Amie
Administrator
H/PC Oracle

Posts:
17,950
Location:
United Kingdom
Status:
Something doesn't add up there because as SOLIDUS has said, the ST9500620NS is a 7.2k SATA drive.

15k and 10k are the drive rotation speeds (vs. 7.2k, 5.6, 5.4, 4.2k for consumer drives). As a rule, the faster the rotation, the smaller the drive and the more expensive. 300GB 15k drives are not uncommon even in 2017. In fact I brought servers with 2x 2.5" 300GB 15K's in RAID1 only last month.

There are a very small number of 10k SATA drives, I am not aware of any 15k SATA. Consequently they will almost certainly be SAS drives (with a possibility of them being FC drives too).

You can connect SATA drives to SAS controller, but NOT SAS drives to SATA controllers and not SATA drives to FC controllers.

To give you an idea of the spindle speed premium. A brand new 600GB 10k Savvio will cost about £200. A new 300GB 15k Savvio will cost about £220. You can get a 7.2k 6TB SATA drive in that price range!

So you are dealing with server backplane or SAN hard drives here.

Unless you have enough of them to build an array group, need high IOPS disk storage and have a SAS/FC controller, they are of little worth to you. I would suggest eBay and as a tip, always list the full contents of the sticker in the listing ---- especially the F/W and manufacturing date codes! These can be very important to server and data centre administrators.
 Top of the page
Rich Hawley Page Icon Posted 2017-06-18 2:25 PM
#
Avatar image of Rich Hawley
Global Moderator
H/PC Guru

Posts:
7,188
Location:
USA
Status:
Okay, did a little research...this is all new to me...and these are SAS drives. Picture of the connector below.

Most of them are the Hitachi, 600GB drives, but this other brand, HGST is a 1.2TB drive I guess. They are both 10K drives.

I thought that maybe it was something as simple as shoving one in an external USB3 enclosure and using them as external storage. Obviously not. And aren't these the things you always see on TV that make a racket or have these huge cooling rooms/enclosures, etc? I like my silent computer just as it is.

Does HPCFactor have any need for them? Or does the fact that they are used make them unreliable? I have about 20 of the damn things...



(drive2.jpg)



(drive1.jpg)



Attachments
----------------
Attachments drive2.jpg (183KB - 0 downloads)
Attachments drive1.jpg (337KB - 0 downloads)
 Top of the page
Rich Hawley Page Icon Posted 2017-06-18 5:58 PM
#
Avatar image of Rich Hawley
Global Moderator
H/PC Guru

Posts:
7,188
Location:
USA
Status:
And what in the hell is a box full of server motors good for anyways?



(servermotors.jpg)



Attachments
----------------
Attachments servermotors.jpg (290KB - 0 downloads)
 Top of the page
HPC:Fan Page Icon Posted 2017-06-18 6:40 PM
#
Avatar image of HPC:Fan
H/PC Sensei

Posts:
877
Location:
Europe/USA
Status:
Lol, thought these were ordinary SATA drives. I had a couple old server harddrives (and I mean OLD) that were regular IDE but came in huge gray plastic server caddy's. My apologies for the wrong info.
 Top of the page
C:Amie Page Icon Posted 2017-06-18 7:40 PM
#
Avatar image of C:Amie
Administrator
H/PC Oracle

Posts:
17,950
Location:
United Kingdom
Status:
HGST is Hitachi global storage technologies, which confusingly just means a Hitachi drive made after 2012, which even more confusingly means it's a western digital drive.

As they are data centre drives, they'll be low vibration, but they are tuned for performance, not sound or power use. You can get SAS caddies, but in all seriousness Rich, sell them for anything you can get and buy yourself two large SATA drives for yourself from the proceeds. You have no need for the performance. 15k drives are for virtualization and databases where access time matters. 10k is just how you specify data centre kit for production services.

You are also correct, they will be temperature sensitive.

Thanks for the offer, but I don't have any spare enclosure space to put more drives in :-(

What are the motors for then
 Top of the page
Rich Hawley Page Icon Posted 2017-06-18 8:36 PM
#
Avatar image of Rich Hawley
Global Moderator
H/PC Guru

Posts:
7,188
Location:
USA
Status:
I have no idea on the motors...they were just in a box that said "server motors." I couldn't find anything like them on eBay, so I assume here were pulled from some old server drives by...who knows? And he just held onto them in case he ever had a motor fail. Anyways, they went into the trash.
 Top of the page
C:Amie Page Icon Posted 2017-06-18 8:47 PM
#
Avatar image of C:Amie
Administrator
H/PC Oracle

Posts:
17,950
Location:
United Kingdom
Status:
I suppose they could be spindle motors, it's difficult to tell in the photo as there is no scale. They looked a bit long to be for 3.5" drives.

I've got since FC drives in a box somewhere, they're even more obscure.

You could always grab yourself a second hand SAS enclosure of you wanted to play with high performance drives. They will be designed to run 24/7 in high vibration environments
http://m.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=Sas+enclosure&isNewKw=1&isRef...

Do some data crunching
 Top of the page
stingraze Page Icon Posted 2017-06-23 12:42 AM
#
Avatar image of stingraze
H/PC Vanguard

Posts:
3,656
Location:
Japan
Status:
Quote
Rich Hawley - 2017-06-19 2:58 AM

And what in the hell is a box full of server motors good for anyways?


Make your own robots with Raspberry Pi / other SBC
 Top of the page
Rich Hawley Page Icon Posted 2017-06-23 4:37 PM
#
Avatar image of Rich Hawley
Global Moderator
H/PC Guru

Posts:
7,188
Location:
USA
Status:
I heard the same thing from a friend...use them in robotics...
 Top of the page
HPC:Fan Page Icon Posted 2017-06-23 10:40 PM
#
Avatar image of HPC:Fan
H/PC Sensei

Posts:
877
Location:
Europe/USA
Status:
Build an exo-suit.
 Top of the page
Rich Hawley Page Icon Posted 2017-06-24 1:58 AM
#
Avatar image of Rich Hawley
Global Moderator
H/PC Guru

Posts:
7,188
Location:
USA
Status:
I think it would be more fun to run a bunch of wires to them, tear apart an old cellphone and add that to the mess, pack an old briefcase with modeling clay, spray some gun cleaner nitro solvent on the mess, and leave it on a desk in some governmental office and watch the people go nuts.

Now let's see if the NSA flags this post...

Just kidding...just kidding...crap, gotta run...someones breaking down the door...
 Top of the page
HPC:Fan Page Icon Posted 2017-06-25 5:55 PM
#
Avatar image of HPC:Fan
H/PC Sensei

Posts:
877
Location:
Europe/USA
Status:
I'm almost scared to reply to this thread now haha. Nice one Rich. If the FBI knocks at your door, microwave your hard drives.
 Top of the page
Jump to forum:
Seconds to generate: 0.328 - Cached queries : 55 - Executed queries : 28