WD Gold vs Seagate Exos

[ezekiel.incorrigible]

A lot of folk round these parts seem to be big fans of WD Gold SATA but I notice that Seagate Exos SAS are about £40 cheaper per unit on the 8TBs and the specifications seem to be very very similar. Is there much in the difference between the two? Does the fact of the disk being SAS make much difference connecting to a SAS bus?

Datasheets:
https://www.wd.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_assets/eng/spec_data_sheet/2879-800074.pdf
https://www.seagate.com/files/www-c...xos-7-e8-data-sheet-DS1957-1-1709US-en_US.pdf

Shops:
https://www.ebuyer.com/722637-seaga...ard-drive-512e-sas-at-ebuyer-com-st8000nm0075
https://www.ebuyer.com/804026-wd-gold-hard-drive-8tb-sata-6gb-s-wd8003fryz

 

[Arwen]

The Seagate Exos 7E8 can be bought in either SAS or SATA.

SAS disks have some advantages;

• Dual ports, (though few people use them as multi-pathed disks)
• Full duplex communication, (so a new request to the disk can be made will processing a prior read request)
• Newer SAS standards allow higher speeds, 12Gbps and 24Gbps, (technically that last is 22.5Gbps, but still double throughput of 12Gbps due to better encoding...)
• Since SAS disks tend to be Enterprise type, they tend to have larger caches
• And generally SAS disks tend to have better MTBF, 3-5 year warrenties, and better error handling

The bad things for SAS disks;

• The MUST have SAS controllers, (won't work with SATA controllers)
• SAS disks tend to be Enterprise type, thus generate more heat and use more power