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SMR HDD's: worse reliability?
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newtekie1
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Just performance. I've owned several SMR drives and never had one die.
They are great data storage drives or even game drives. I just wouldn't run an OS off one, but I wouldn't run an OS off any HDD.
They are great data storage drives or even game drives. I just wouldn't run an OS off one, but I wouldn't run an OS off any HDD.
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They would make ok write once archive drives, or mostly read drives like for gaming.
The problem is I have noticed they are almost the same price as CMR, so when the price point is so close, you may as well get CMR as CMR is just flat out better. No question SMRs are cheaper to make otherwise they wouldnt be bothered with which suggests either SMR drives are sold at high margins or CMR close to break even (the former far more likely).
Certain workloads will be brutally bad on SMR such as ZFS storage. Many people do repurpose drives during their lifetime, hence my comment on the prices, I would only consider SMR if its at least 33% or so cheaper than CMR alternatives.
When I got my last two HDD's last year, WD SMR's were less than 5% cheaper than CMR's of the same class. Seagate CMR's could even be had cheaper than WD SMR's.
The problem is I have noticed they are almost the same price as CMR, so when the price point is so close, you may as well get CMR as CMR is just flat out better. No question SMRs are cheaper to make otherwise they wouldnt be bothered with which suggests either SMR drives are sold at high margins or CMR close to break even (the former far more likely).
Certain workloads will be brutally bad on SMR such as ZFS storage. Many people do repurpose drives during their lifetime, hence my comment on the prices, I would only consider SMR if its at least 33% or so cheaper than CMR alternatives.
When I got my last two HDD's last year, WD SMR's were less than 5% cheaper than CMR's of the same class. Seagate CMR's could even be had cheaper than WD SMR's.
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that due to part shortage. is why pricing is so off.
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SMR HDD's are only good for backup purposes where you need cheap massive storage space. For a daily driver you should get a CMR drive.
However, you should not use SMR drives in Raid or in a NAS. You'll get a massive drop in performance & Raid restoring issues. SMR HDD's where also previously sold without declaration and only disclosed after consumers where reporting problems & tech researchers did some digging into it.
It got even to the point where Western Digital got sued in a class action lawsuit & had to pay. Many NAS companies now list SMR drives as not compatible.
However, you should not use SMR drives in Raid or in a NAS. You'll get a massive drop in performance & Raid restoring issues. SMR HDD's where also previously sold without declaration and only disclosed after consumers where reporting problems & tech researchers did some digging into it.
It got even to the point where Western Digital got sued in a class action lawsuit & had to pay. Many NAS companies now list SMR drives as not compatible.
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I got a 2TB Seagate Barracuda Compute HDD not aware of SMR vs CMR at the time. I did a lot of writing to it, extracting large archive files over and over. It slowed to a snail and was horrible. Read about SMR and CMR and learned my lesson. Now it's a long term storage drive in a USB enclosure.