# SMR Technology



## Valeriant (Aug 19, 2015)

I'm contemplating on buying Seagate Archive 8TB (http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Archive-Internal-Hard-Drive/dp/B00QX0ZGO6/)  with SMR technology. Price per gigabyte is excellent.

I read that this type of HDD is good for archiving, as in storing data that is not being updated constantly. I want to use this HDD to store multimedia projects (videos, audios, images, icons), like a library or data source that I access when producing videos or winapp projects. Anyone have this HDD or had experience using SMR HDDs? I would appreciate any input. TIA.


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## RejZoR (Aug 19, 2015)

SMR is nothing new these days. All HDD makers use SMR these days. It's the only way to have platter density we use today.


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## R-T-B (Aug 19, 2015)

RejZoR said:


> SMR is nothing new these days. All HDD makers use SMR these days. It's the only way to have platter density we use today.



Only in the highest density drives.  Otherwise, I'd like to see a source as wikipedia seems to imply otherwise.


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## RejZoR (Aug 19, 2015)

Erm, aren't all drives "high density" these days? Unless you're looking at 320GB or 500GB drives where you can't use half a 1TB platter...


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## R-T-B (Aug 20, 2015)

RejZoR said:


> Erm, aren't all drives "high density" these days? Unless you're looking at 320GB or 500GB drives where you can't use half a 1TB platter...



By the looks of it, it's not even used on 1TB platters, it's used on things above that, like the 5TB+ drives and such which generally have >1TB platters.

Unless wikipedia is full of shit, of course.


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## Valeriant (Aug 20, 2015)

This drive has 6 platters of 1333 GB each. The definite win is price here, 3c per gigabyte. I know SMR is bad when you need to update the written data frequently (overwriting), due to the way it has to read-write-write when doing a single overwrite (I did some looking about the tech and found a good read that explains it clearly: http://www.enterprisestorageforum.c...led-drives-for-re-roofing-your-storage-1.html). Tom'sHW and several other techsites reviewed Seagate Archive 8TB and basically the conclusions are: seq-write & rnd-read good, rnd-write & seq-read bad.

SMR drives are supposedly what I needed, to store files that already been organized and no further changes would occured to that files. Just keep adding new file not overwriting existing files. They are very good for data that is read much more than it is written such as in an archive, like you know, that place that keeps old documents/ newspaper clips, the stuffs are meant just to be read not changed.

So, this drive is designed for a very narrow usecase and Seagate even mentioned not to use it as a NAS drive. The only thing worrying me from purchasing is its reliability, SMR drives compared to conventional HDDs are yet to be proven.


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## Valeriant (Aug 23, 2015)

Well, I almost bought the drive until I read this: http://www.hitechreview.com/it-products/pc/tdk-promises-15-tb-hard-drives-next-year/48759/
Sooo, I'll wait for that commercial HAMR drives and see if it can beat SMR drives in price.


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## micropage7 (Aug 23, 2015)

Valeriant said:


> Well, I almost bought the drive until I read this: http://www.hitechreview.com/it-products/pc/tdk-promises-15-tb-hard-drives-next-year/48759/
> Sooo, I'll wait for that commercial HAMR drives and see if it can beat SMR drives in price.


so you wait for better technology next, when you wanna buy it there are some better tech and you never buy it

buy something that you need, if you just chasing the tech you gonna buy and buy and buy and buy and buy it again
today tech will be obsolete in next few years, so better buy that you need and you can use it for years


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## newtekie1 (Aug 23, 2015)

RejZoR said:


> Erm, aren't all drives "high density" these days? Unless you're looking at 320GB or 500GB drives where you can't use half a 1TB platter...



You're thinking of Perpendicular recording, SMR is new and only used on drives with platters higher than 1TB.



Valeriant said:


> Anyone have this HDD or had experience using SMR HDDs? I would appreciate any input. TIA.



The general use is no different than using a standard hard drive.  Sequential read speed is really good thanks to the high data density.  But latency and random access is slower than a normal drive.  But these drives run at 5900RPM, so that is likely the reason for the poor random access and latency.


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## MIRTAZAPINE (Aug 23, 2015)

As of now the most mature technology is Perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR). It is at near its limit already, it would was a breakthrough back in 2006 switching from longitudinal recording(LMR). It is simple change of just flipping the recording site. From a reliability standpoint it should be good as it is tried and tested. So it is good to stick with that.

HGST and WD is sticking to PMR and using helium filled HDD so they are able to pack more platters in a HDD with less heat from the reduction of density from helium vs air. In my opinion is the best option to go to before heat assisted recording and shingle magnetic recording start to mature. Both the latter is rather new. So helium filled drive is a simple technological tweak and a rather safe way to move to.

In the future both technologies would be incorporated to increase HDD density as of now their rather new to the market

LMR vs PMR recording
.


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## newtekie1 (Aug 23, 2015)

MIRTAZAPINE said:


> HGST and WD is sticking to PMR and using helium filled HDD



At least on the Hitachi side they've been using SMR since 2014.

http://techreport.com/news/27031/shingled-platters-breathe-helium-inside-hgst-10tb-hard-drive


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## MIRTAZAPINE (Aug 23, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> At least on the Hitachi side they've been using SMR since 2014.
> 
> http://techreport.com/news/27031/shingled-platters-breathe-helium-inside-hgst-10tb-hard-drive



Wow that is a lot of tech squeezed into that drive. I wonder if the consumer drives have smr for them. I have not been tracking hdd technology that much. The last time I read about Smr and Hmr was the huge cost to move to them. So I really wonder how long it takes for the cost to trickle down for consumers. There is still bit patterned media to go to for Hdd.


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## R-T-B (Aug 23, 2015)

MIRTAZAPINE said:


> Wow that is a lot of tech squeezed into that drive. I wonder if the consumer drives have smr for them.



Yeah, HGST basically committed suicide by spending so much research on their Ultrastars in the advent of SSDs.  The result are some of the arguably best drives in the world but was it worth it for them?  Probably not.


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## RejZoR (Aug 23, 2015)

SSD's are still too small and too expensive. I'm just surprised so little is being invested into hybrid drives which make the most sense at the momen. All we have are crappy budged hybrids with pathetic SSD cache size of only 8GB and 5400 RPM plates. 32GB of MLC costs nothing and 7200 RPM should really be used. This way it'll perform well in all conditions, even when stuff isn't cached on SSD. Or even if it's 5400 RPM, it wouldn't really be a problem if it had 32GB SSD part...


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## Valeriant (Aug 23, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> At least on the Hitachi side they've been using SMR since 2014.



Yup, I read that, thanks for sharing. As I said, the definite win of Seagate Archive 8TB is price. Helium might eliviate some SMR problems but still, Helium HDD is expensive. HGST's 6TB is Helium filled drive and their 10TB is using SMR tech with Helium.



MIRTAZAPINE said:


> HGST and WD is sticking to PMR and using helium filled HDD so they are able to pack more platters in a HDD with less heat from the reduction of density from helium vs air. In my opinion is the best option to go to before heat assisted recording and shingle magnetic recording start to mature. Both the latter is rather new. So helium filled drive is a simple technological tweak and a rather safe way to move to.



HGST said Helium would be their main platform to implement SMR and HAMR. But I agree, it is kind of a support (making it cooler, lighter, greener) for bettering the implemented mechanical-drive technology. The initial idea of HAMR in HDD (Fujitsu I think) went back to 2006 which shows how difficult it was to implement now that TDK said they found a way. SMR is newer and some drives implementing it are already in the market, though having performance issue. I don't know if HGST's SMR drive with Helium instead of air might help the problem, you know, less friction and turbulence than using air.



micropage7 said:


> so you wait for better technology next, when you wanna buy it there are some better tech and you never buy it



I heard this a lot, and don't get me wrong, I did do that on some decisions. But it's not applicable every time, IMHO it depends on urgency and timing. Wouldn't you say it's better to consider and weigh everything when you can? Like in this case, I'm considering the move to buy the drive but the urgency is low, and the timing of the new different but better tech release is close.


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## R-T-B (Aug 24, 2015)

RejZoR said:


> SSD's are still too small and too expensive.



For you maybe.  They are selling like hotcakes despite that.


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## MIRTAZAPINE (Aug 24, 2015)

Valeriant said:


> SMR drives are supposedly what I needed, to store files that already been organized and no further changes would occured to that files. Just keep adding new file not overwriting existing files. They are very good for data that is read much more than it is written such as in an archive, like you know, that place that keeps old documents/ newspaper clips, the stuffs are meant just to be read not changed.
> 
> So, this drive is designed for a very narrow usecase and Seagate even mentioned not to use it as a NAS drive.



I just recall SMR drives remind me of tape drives. Hahah . Good for storage but not much else. Though SMR is a huge advantage in reading vs tape drive.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_drive


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## RejZoR (Aug 24, 2015)

R-T-B said:


> For you maybe.  They are selling like hotcakes despite that.



People buying them for boot drives


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## R-T-B (Aug 24, 2015)

RejZoR said:


> People buying them for boot drives



I believe that.  Still, I get by on 512GB fine.  I've never had a huge porn collection or a lot of media though.


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## RejZoR (Aug 24, 2015)

It's pointless. What, to have a faster boot and ONLY things installed on it? It's stupid. Especially since you have to run spinning plates drive next to it for large storage anyway. I want to get rid of moving data storage entirely. No more stupid vibrations and heat. That's why I'm running it as hybrid, so I benefit from SSD on ALL data stored anywhere on my HDD. At least I benefit it everywhere. I'm fine with 2TB so that's my target.


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## newtekie1 (Aug 25, 2015)

RejZoR said:


> I benefit from SSD on ALL data stored anywhere on my HDD. At least I benefit it everywhere. I'm fine with 2TB so that's my target.



You don't benefit from the SSD on all the data everywhere on the disk. Depending how the caching is set up, you may not benefit on writes at all, and you only benefit on reads if the data is in the SSD cache. Most data is, obviously, not in the SSD cache.


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## CrAsHnBuRnXp (Aug 25, 2015)

R-T-B said:


> For you maybe.  They are selling like hotcakes despite that.


I think he may have been referring to the fact that the size space wise is still too small compared to that of hard drives and even a 1 or 2TB SSD almost isnt work the 4-900 price tag. 


RejZoR said:


> People buying them for boot drives


I have a 120GB boot drive and 2x256GB in raid 0 for games.


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## CrAsHnBuRnXp (Aug 31, 2015)

RejZoR said:


> It's pointless. What, to have a faster boot and ONLY things installed on it? It's stupid. Especially since you have to run spinning plates drive next to it for large storage anyway. I want to get rid of moving data storage entirely. No more stupid vibrations and heat. That's why I'm running it as hybrid, so I benefit from SSD on ALL data stored anywhere on my HDD. At least I benefit it everywhere. I'm fine with 2TB so that's my target.


No, it's not stupid. I notice you complain about stupid stuff a lot around here lately. If it was so "pointless", why would people be buying them for game drives? Storage, yes, I personally have a NAS now that handles that and a 2TB in my system for whatever else. Other than that, I run on full solid state drives. You can have your shitty seek times on your traditional hard drives for your OS and playing games. Ill stick to my near instant load screens and 10 second bootup.


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