zfs discuss - Mar 2012 - Question about "Seagate Pipeline HD" or "SV35 series"HDDs

Hello, while browsing around today I stumbled across
"Seagate Pipeline HD" HDDs lineup (i.e. ST2000VM002).
Did any ZFS users have any experience with them?
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/consumer_electronics/pipeline/
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/consumer_electronics/sv35_series/#tTabContentSpecifications

Marketing talk poses them nicely for home-NASes:
   "Cool. Quiet. Low Power.
   Pipeline HD hard drives are designed to deliver
   reliable 24*7 operation ? optimized for low?power
   consumption, quiet operation and smooth video
   streaming.
   24*7 operational profile to meet the always?on
   demands on the DVR market"

They seem relatively consrvatively spec''ed for today -
SATA 3Gb/s, ranged from 250Gb to 2Tb, 5900RPM, caches
8MB or 64MB, 12-13ms seek times, but they can operate
in environments up to 75 degC and with AFR of 0.55%,
and seemingly have small sectors.

Apparently there''s a newer lineup "SV35 Series" with
a higher AFR (about 0.80%), but faster (7200RPM, SATA
6Gb/s, 8.5ms-9.5ms seek times) and larger (1-3Tb).
Possibly also small sectors ("Guaranteed Sectors
5,860,533,168" for the 3Tb model ST3000VX000).

Do any home-NAS or enterprise (surveillance?) users
on the list have experience with such drives? Would
they be good or bad for a home-NAS of about 8+ disks
in raidz3?

Thanks,
//Jim

On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 9:03 AM, Jim Klimov <jimklimov at cos.ru>
wrote:
> Hello, while browsing around today I stumbled across
> "Seagate Pipeline HD" HDDs lineup (i.e. ST2000VM002).
> Did any ZFS users have any experience with them?
> http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/consumer_electronics/pipeline/
>
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/consumer_electronics/sv35_series/#tTabContentSpecifications
I used an SV disk to upgrade one of my Tivo units, but I''ve never
thought them appropriate for general use.  It is my understanding that
this type of disk is optimized for streaming workloads (reading large
video files) and is not as stringent about error correction (who cares
if you lose a few bytes of one frame of 30-FPS video-- you''ll never
see it).  Under a typical NAS workload (much more random, smaller
I/Os) I would expect higher average latency and thus poorer
performance than even a bog-standard desktop drive.

Never seemed like a good idea to me, and to paraphrase Richard Elling,
expecting any kind of respectable performance from spinning media is a
sucker''s game.  ;)

Eric