External HDD Seagate Expansion 14TB STKP14000402

[Sniper Charlie]

Hello everyone, I was looking for some help with an external hdd I found on Amazon. Its the Seagate model STKP14000402 for $199 USD, for a 14TB. This is by far one of the largest externals I may buy, but needed some guidance please.
This will be for many photos and videos from old computers and digital cameras, vacation stuff and music.

My questions I have

- which format should I do? I will be using Windows only.
- Amount of allocation?
- Does CMR or SMR matter? (Im guessing I wont know in an external unless shucked)
- my old external drives were USB only, this has a power cord, should I keep it plugged in? or unplug when not in use? this one is kinda important to me.
- I understand there is software to tell how fast my drive is (ie 5400/7200 rpm) I have watched videos of people shucking their externals and checking with CrystalDisk?

Please keep in mind, I will not be shucking this. This is to consolidate my 4 externals I am using. a 500GB, 2TB and two 5TB. Thanks for any help on this.

[Set-115689]

Cmr should be better for storage than smr.

The drives a 3.5 inch drive so it pulls more power than 2.5 inch hdd or usb, ssd. Plug it in or it might not work or it might draw too much power from the port?

Likely a 5400 rpm smr? Pcpartpicker might have the stats?

Running crystal disk will likely tell you the stats. Shouldn't be hard to find the rpm a variety of ways. No need to open stuff up.

Back up your back ups because external drives die to. The components can fry vs disk failure. Same as any external/internal drive.

[Sniper Charlie]

Originally posted by Set-115689:

Cmr should be better for storage than smr.

The drives a 3.5 inch drive so it pulls more power than 2.5 inch hdd or usb, ssd. Plug it in or it might not work or it might draw too much power from the port?

Likely a 5400 rpm smr? Pcpartpicker might have the stats?

Running crystal disk will likely tell you the stats. Shouldn't be hard to find the rpm a variety of ways. No need to open stuff up.

Back up your back ups because external drives die to. The components can fry vs disk failure. Same as any external/internal drive.

thanks for the reply and information. very helpful. so keeping it plugged sounds like the way? i was just worried its just sitting there with power, but as long as its not working, should be ok im assuming.

im guessing keep allocation default? and format ntfs like i have done with my other externals?

[Set-115689]

If your not using the drive eject the drive in windows (write caching) and shut down the pc and unplug it when the pcs turned off. Might be less chance of a power spike from the usb port wrecking components on the drives circuit board?

Ntfs should be fine.

[Sniper Charlie]

Originally posted by Set-115689:

If your not using the drive eject the drive in windows and shut down the pc and unplug it when the pcs turned off. Might be less chance of a power spike from the usb port?

Ntfs should be fine.

on my others, ive unplugged when done using, before i turn off pc. i do use that setting where i dont have to press "safely remove drive" thing.

so, keep POWER plugged in, take out usb when not in use, back up back ups, and proceed as usual. sound about right?

[emoticorpse]

Keep it plugged into the outlet but safely disconnect from pc when not using. Don't abuse it like an internal.

[Sniper Charlie]

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

Keep it plugged into the outlet but safely disconnect from pc when not using. Don't abuse it like an internal.

Sounds easy enough. I do take pride taking care of my electronics. As you can see I inform myself beforehand. Thank you all for the help. It's always appreciated.

[Lord Flashheart]

Originally posted by Sniper Charlie:

Hello everyone, I was looking for some help with an external hdd I found on Amazon. Its the Seagate model STKP14000402 for $199 USD, for a 14TB. This is by far one of the largest externals I may buy, but needed some guidance please.
This will be for many photos and videos from old computers and digital cameras, vacation stuff and music.

My questions I have

- which format should I do? I will be using Windows only.
- Amount of allocation?
- Does CMR or SMR matter? (Im guessing I wont know in an external unless shucked)
- my old external drives were USB only, this has a power cord, should I keep it plugged in? or unplug when not in use? this one is kinda important to me.
- I understand there is software to tell how fast my drive is (ie 5400/7200 rpm) I have watched videos of people shucking their externals and checking with CrystalDisk?

Please keep in mind, I will not be shucking this. This is to consolidate my 4 externals I am using. a 500GB, 2TB and two 5TB. Thanks for any help on this.

ntfs will work with windows, but is maybe one of the worst file systems there is. When formatting, you will lose a bit of the space, which is normal.
CMR or SMR? SMR will be very very slow when you are copying the data to the drive initially. Oh and SMR is not great for any NAS type of setup.

So for me. Ay data of any importance is on on alder machine being used as a server.
It has a Trunenas Virtual machine 5 x 4TB CMR drives in raidZ1. It give me not far off 16TB storage, with 1 drive redundancy.

I would not put anything remotely important on anything else but ZFS. It is accessed over the network. I think windows cannot read/use ZFS directly.
It is all backed up with USB external drives also - linux drives and not NTFS.

[Jaunitta 🌸]

Akways make 2 backups.
My 5 TB seagate suddenly died at 3 years old and sent it to a professional as my life was on it.
He could not repair it and couldnt place into a donar drive as Seagate doesnt allow switching parts.
May I recomend Western Digital. More reliable lasts longer. Is repairable.

[Illusion of Progress]

The extra cable is because external drives are larger than portable drives, and need more power. Portable drives are 2.5" and powered entirely on the USB cable alone. The larger drives that have their own power plug should be connected when in use.

SMR is a method of storing data that overlays the data tracks (think like shingles, hence what the "S" stands for). It does this to fit more capacity in a given area. The drawback is that if it ever has to write where there is already data in a neighboring track that is overlaying it, it will have to rip up some stuff and rewrite it alone with whatever write instruction it was originally trying to do.

CMR doesn't do any of this, but costs more as the same capacity will, all else being equal, need more platter space I believe.

It's personal preference on if you go with CMR or SMR. I dislike SMR and won't even go with it on an internal drive, but my external 5 TB (portable) drive is SMR. While it hasn't been the end of the world, it can get annoying at times when writes only occur at 30 MB/s. Then for seemingly no reason, weeks later, it's going 90 MB/s to 110 MB/s.

I'd say if it's a drive that will serve a "write few, read many" role, where you will put stuff on it and not add to/edit it often (like I do with my storage drives, hence SMR is something I avoid), then SMR is fine for the savings, but otherwise CMR is better.

As for RPM, 7,200 RPM isn't worth paying for in a storage drive IMO. 7,200 RPM HDDs in the consumer space are probably the first to be going the way of the dodo. I know it might seem backwards to say given what I said about SMR and CMR, but the performance gains from 7,200 RPM over 5,400 RPM aren't drastic, at least certainly not for a storage role drive, but maybe even in general. HDDs are slow anyway and 7,200 RPM isn't saving them. It's a needless expense of noise, heat, spin up time, and cost for something that doesn't really matter for a storage drive. Rather have the savings or just use the added cost for a higher capacity (something that can matter for storage drives) instead. SMR on the other hand can bring performance down many times over in the right conditions, so I will avoid it most of the times.

AFAIK though, most things at 8 TB or above should be CMR anyway, so if you're looking at 14 TB I'd be shocked if it's SMR. SMR is mostly on consumer level drives in the TB range below that size. Above that size is mostly enterprise/NAS level drives which, a few exceptions aside, should always be CMR.

[Sniper Charlie]

Originally posted by Illusion of Progress:

The extra cable is because external drives are larger than portable drives, and need more power. Portable drives are 2.5" and powered entirely on the USB cable alone. The larger drives that have their own power plug should be connected when in use.

SMR is a method of storing data that overlays the data tracks (think like shingles, hence what the "S" stands for). It does this to fit more capacity in a given area. The drawback is that if it ever has to write where there is already data in a neighboring track that is overlaying it, it will have to rip up some stuff and rewrite it alone with whatever write instruction it was originally trying to do.

CMR doesn't do any of this, but costs more as the same capacity will, all else being equal, need more platter space I believe.

It's personal preference on if you go with CMR or SMR. I dislike SMR and won't even go with it on an internal drive, but my external 5 TB (portable) drive is SMR. While it hasn't been the end of the world, it can get annoying at times when writes only occur at 30 MB/s. Then for seemingly no reason, weeks later, it's going 90 MB/s to 110 MB/s.

I'd say if it's a drive that will serve a "write few, read many" role, where you will put stuff on it and not add to/edit it often (like I do with my storage drives, hence SMR is something I avoid), then SMR is fine for the savings, but otherwise CMR is better.

As for RPM, 7,200 RPM isn't worth paying for in a storage drive IMO. 7,200 RPM HDDs in the consumer space are probably the first to be going the way of the dodo. I know it might seem backwards to say given what I said about SMR and CMR, but the performance gains from 7,200 RPM over 5,400 RPM aren't drastic, at least certainly not for a storage role drive, but maybe even in general. HDDs are slow anyway and 7,200 RPM isn't saving them. It's a needless expense of noise, heat, spin up time, and cost for something that doesn't really matter for a storage drive. Rather have the savings or just use the added cost for a higher capacity (something that can matter for storage drives) instead. SMR on the other hand can bring performance down many times over in the right conditions, so I will avoid it most of the times.

AFAIK though, most things at 8 TB or above should be CMR anyway, so if you're looking at 14 TB I'd be shocked if it's SMR. SMR is mostly on consumer level drives in the TB range below that size. Above that size is mostly enterprise/NAS level drives which, a few exceptions aside, should always be CMR.

Great information! Thank you for simplifying it too. I enjoy the tech world, but I still like to learn, inform myself and keep this helpful stuff available, not just for me, but for all. Seriously, thank you all, I know it's just a external hdd, but for those, like me, it truly can be more than meets the eye (yes transformers reference). The hdd is on its way, and I am honestly not looking forward to transferring all this stuff lol. There's sooooo much. Vacations, etc from 2008 and on, when I started taking digital pictures.

Anyways, thank you all. Seriously no other community like Steam

[Set-115689]

Copy don't cut/paste. Chance of losing stuff is greater. Cutting/pasting might also increase chance of getting a messed up folder.

Can also keep the old copies and delete as necessary. Make a delete folder? Should act as a back up at no extra cost since you still perform the same actions. New hdd might break before files are transferred anyways if your unlucky.

Run some short hdd tests and see what crystal disk info says after the data is transferred.

[Sniper Charlie]

Originally posted by Set-115689:

Copy don't cut/paste. Chance of losing stuff is greater. Cutting/pasting might also increase chance of getting a messed up folder.

Can also keep the old copies and delete as necessary. Make a delete folder? Should act as a back up at no extra cost since you still perform the same actions. New hdd might break before files are transferred anyways if your unlucky.

Run some short hdd tests and see what crystal disk info says after the data is transferred.

I will do that. I will do copy for now. I use to the exact opposite, cut then paste. Been lucky thus far, but why take chances with this new huge drive. Thank you again.

[Sniper Charlie]

So without shucking it, and based on CrystalDiskInfo, I have a Seagate Exos X18 14GB, SATA 300/600. CMR. I looked in with a small flashlight and saw green and you can barely make out the X18. So I got a video surveillance HDD lol.

[icehat]

EXOS aren't surveillance disks, they are normal enterprise disks

this is typical, 3.5in externals usually contain enterprise disks that fail certain stages of QC

[Sniper Charlie]

Originally posted by icehat:

EXOS aren't surveillance disks, they are normal enterprise disks

this is typical, 3.5in externals usually contain enterprise disks that fail certain stages of QC

I must have misread or got bad info. Either way, so far its been working good. Thanks for the correction.