[RndTbl] 5TB - makes no sense

[Trevor Cordes]

I have some of these 5TB drives coming in stock, including one for
myself this week, so it will be interesting to see how it goes.
Looking at reviews, I spotted something interesting/sad/funny:

===============
Other Thoughts: Because of the terrible overall performance and
consistency of data transfers in the external enclosure, I decided to
pull the drive out and use it internally.

Obviously, as others have stated, that does not work. This drive has a
crippled CC41 firmware that has an APM value of 64 (250 or higher is
ideal for performance) causing constant head parking and spindown, both
wearing out the drive. Since it has a 1 year warranty, I think this, in
addition to the non-existent cooling of the enclosure, is obviously
intentional on Seagate's part.

The firmware is also apparently crippled to not run AHCI in an again
obvious attempt to prevent people from getting the "cheaper" external
USB drives that carry a weak warranty, in order to push them toward
more expensive internal retail drives.
===============

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=34052.0

If that's true, then there goes backblaze's idea out the window.  The
sad part is (if it's true), I'm not at all surprised Seagate would
"cripple" an external drive.  Thankfully I plan to use it pretty much
as intended, as an external backup, but it's aggravating to see that
should the external case die I can't just yank it and put it in another
(say, Vantec) case or internally and keep using it.

I guess there had to be a "catch" to get 5TB for under $175.