# My SMR drive - opinions please



## qubit (Jun 4, 2022)

In April 2020 I bought the WD Blue WD60EZAZ 6TB drive. I use it to store my game installs and occasional virtual machines (I tend to test and discard) and it's currently holding 3.3TB of data. It's not backed up, since the games are all on Steam, Origin etc so can be downloaded again, although it would take several months to do at my "broadband" speed of 20Mbps. I don't play them all that much either and I've not had any problems with the drive or noticed any particular performance issues.

A couple of months later, the scandal broke out between SMR and PMR drives because manufacturers at the time had a habit of not specifying the recording method used in their spec sheets, as they didn't with my drive.

*SMR* = Shingled Magnetic Recording
Sounds like something you catch, doesn't it?

*PMR* - Perpendicular Magnetic Recording
The way "normal" drives work.

My question: is it worth replacing the drive with a PMR model to avoid potential problems down the road, or just stay with it? Common sense seems to dictate just to stay with it, but I'd be interested to see what others think.


*EDIT TO CLARIFY USAGE*

Usage is mostly read when I'm loading a game up, which isn't very often. The only write operations of note are automatic game updates from Steam where write performance doesn't matter, especially at my download speed.

If I was doing a lot of writing with it, I'd have replaced it for sure and this wouldn't have even been a question. And it's only holding my games which aren't important in the grand scheme of things. All my other data is stored on a WD Black 4TB and is properly backed up.


This LTT video explains the difference between SMR & PMR drives and their trade-offs.


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## Shrek (Jun 4, 2022)

By PMR do you mean CMR?

CMR and SMR Hard Drives | Seagate US


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## MIRTAZAPINE (Jun 4, 2022)

Shrek said:


> By PMR do you mean CMR?
> 
> CMR and SMR Hard Drives | Seagate US



CMR  aka conventional magnetic recording is the same as PMR (Perpendicular magnetic recording). The CMR name came about to differentiate SMR (Shingle magnetic recording) from Non-SMR drives aka PMR only. All SMR drive are PMR drives but they are not CMR.



qubit said:


> My question: is it worth replacing the drive with a PMR model to avoid potential problems down the road, or just stay with it? Common sense seems to dictate just to stay with it, but I'd be interested to see what others think.



Its up to you. SMR hdd are fine if you use them in their intended way of archiving media and it being a mostly read only operation. Problem comes when you workload is read and write especially writes which would suffer alot when the HDD cache is used up. Personally I would replace it CMR drive myself from your workload it sound like you have read/write workload usage for the HDD which is not quite ideal. Otherwise I don't see it being a problem. Not sure if SMR and CMR have any difference from a reliability standpoint. CMR in theory should be more reliable with data tracks not being overlapped like SMR. I have had bad experience with SMR so I tend to avoid them unless it is a light use HDD.


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## eidairaman1 (Jun 4, 2022)

Id use it as a backup drive only.

And also trusting steam to keep your games is like playing craps. Id have them backed up to a mech drive/usb and then optical media kept in a dark cool case with dessicant.

Those software launchers could easily lose your data. I remember a Parts store losing all account info for warranty parts. Its a good thing I made copies of Reciepts as well since most places use thermal paper.


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## ThrashZone (Jun 4, 2022)

Hi,
Tough to say chunk it seeing it's size and the way you game 
But blue is data only type of series which is archive stuff backup I have 1 or 2 for just system image storage but nowhere this size you have.

I lean to black series for game and t.v series stuff seeing I access the data a lot/ daily.

So stay with it just in another way.


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## qubit (Jun 4, 2022)

People, I've just clarified my usage of the drive in my OP. Check it out.


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## ThrashZone (Jun 4, 2022)

Hi,
I'd still move games to black.


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## Shrek (Jun 4, 2022)

I still like the hybrid drives (Seagate FireCuda) as the 8GB solid state cache reduces hard drive thrashing and the hard drive reduces cache writes (it's the writes, not reads, that cause SSD wear)

HOWEVER _*only*_ the 3.5" version is CMR


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## 64K (Jun 4, 2022)

My Grandfather used to say. "If it ain't broke don't fix it".

Sounds like you don't game enough that you would be concerned if this drive died on you and you had to replace it and download some games again. I've never had any problems with HDDs including one of my PCs at work that I used daily for almost 11 years. The IT people hauled the PC away and put me in a new PC just because of adopting Win 10 system wide.


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## Shrek (Jun 4, 2022)

64K said:


> My Grandfather used to say. "If it ain't broke don't fix it".



While I agree with this, I still tend to open up my old working power supplies and recap them (preventive maintenance), so they won't break at an inopportune moment.




qubit said:


> This LTT video explains the difference between SMR & PMR drives and their trade-offs.



*Very interesting about the ZFS files system and SMR drives interaction.*


Concerning your vote; I'd say

Keep it for storage (games and the like)
Replace it if used as a boot drive
which puts you in the first category.


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## qubit (Jun 4, 2022)

@Shrek 
I think CMR / PMR are just different terms for the same thing. The video used PMR so I went with that and I think that's the more common term.




MIRTAZAPINE said:


> Its up to you. SMR hdd are fine if you use them in their intended way of archiving media and it being a mostly read only operation. Problem comes when you workload is read and write especially writes which would suffer alot when the HDD cache is used up. Personally I would replace it CMR drive myself from your workload it sound like you have read/write workload usage for the HDD which is not quite ideal. Otherwise I don't see it being a problem. Not sure if SMR and CMR have any difference from a reliability standpoint. CMR in theory should be more reliable with data tracks not being overlapped like SMR. I have had bad experience with SMR so I tend to avoid them unless it is a light use HDD.



Yeah, it's more of an archiver for my usage. I think my OP clarification covers it.  


@eidairaman1 
Seriously, it doesn't matter for my usage. I've only got the inconvenience of redownloading everything if it craps out and they're only games in the end. And in my experience, Steam and the other content management systems have done a fine job of looking after my games, so I'm not worried about that.

@Selaya 
Grats for voting to chuck it in the furnace! 



Everyone, looks like the verdict is in: given my usage, I'll just stay with it and not worry about the internal workings. In particular, it's lovely and quiet, which is really important for me.


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## Aquinus (Jun 4, 2022)

Does it work? I mean, as long as reliability is good and the performance is *tolerable*, then why not? I have a dinky 2.5" 4TB drive that's my backup for my laptop. It's not very fast, but it gets the job done and has been fairly solid so far. So long as you're happy with it and it works well, then why not use an SMR drive? For games though, I'll always take SSD over rotational media, hands down.


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## qubit (Jun 4, 2022)

Thanks @Aquinus

Yes, it performs well enough for its assigned duty.

A faster rotating drive would surely be better for game loading times, eg WD Black as 3.3TB+ is a little large for a home SSD setup lol, but I play them so little nowadays that the extra few seconds doesn't matter.


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## chrcoluk (Jun 5, 2022)

If its currently working ok for you then it will probably in the future providing its used for the same purpose.

There is no evidence I am aware off that SMR drives degrade faster.

Of course when you next buy a spindle go for a CMR model.


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## qubit (Jun 5, 2022)

chrcoluk said:


> If its currently working ok for you then it will probably in the future providing its used for the same purpose.
> 
> There is no evidence I am aware off that SMR drives degrade faster.
> 
> Of course when you next buy a spindle go for a CMR model.


Ya, I totally will. Of course, I only bought this one as the recording method wasn't disclosed.


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## newtekie1 (Jun 5, 2022)

I see no reason to even worry about having a SMR drive when using them in a single drive configuration. The downsides of SMR, when in a single drive configuration, really are blown out of proportion. Yes, they can write slower when the CMR cache runs out. But I've literally written 100s of GB of data to my SMR drive at once and it never hit the point where it was writing to the SMR directly.  So, unless you plan to buy one and fill the drive up in one go, SMR will likely never even affect you.



qubit said:


> A faster rotating drive would surely be better for game loading times, eg WD Black as 3.3TB+ is a little large for a home SSD setup lol, but I play them so little nowadays that the extra few seconds doesn't matter.


Almost all my games are run off an 8TB WD SMR drive. If you really want faster without breaking the bank, look into using an SSD cache with the HDD. And 8TB HDD with a 1TB SSD cache is way cheaper than 8TB of SSD storage.


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## Mussels (Jun 5, 2022)

Clearly, stay with it until and unless write speeds become an issue. When they do, upgrade to anything not SMR.

You could also use some kind of caching (primocache, optane, blah blah blah) to reduce performance issues as well.


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## Assimilator (Jun 5, 2022)

Considering that 4TB 2.5" SSDs can be found for under 300 quid now, that's another option.


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## Mussels (Jun 5, 2022)

Assimilator said:


> Considering that 4TB 2.5" SSDs can be found for under 300 quid now, that's another option.


They're QLC drives, the SSD equivalent to SMR.

Except they die fast, as well as write slow.


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## MIRTAZAPINE (Jun 5, 2022)

Mussels said:


> They're QLC drives, the SSD equivalent to SMR.
> 
> Except they die fast, as well as write slow.



The crucial MX500 have gone down to about that price and it is a TLC ssd. The crucial 4tb version have about 1000TBW for them I am highly considering after price drop for my use too. Currently the cheapest TLC based ssd with a decent track record.  I would avoid QLC ssd.


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## qubit (Jun 5, 2022)

Thanks for the extra feedback people. It's fine though, I'm staying with it as was my gut feeling in my OP.

@newtekie1 
That's interesting about all those heavy writes being absorbed by the cache. It looks like the usage where it really makes a difference is in RAID where it can be dramatic as in that LTT video.


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## newtekie1 (Jun 5, 2022)

qubit said:


> That's interesting about all those heavy writes being absorbed by the cache. It looks like the usage where it really makes a difference is in RAID where it can be dramatic as in that LTT video.


Yeah, for the most part, normal users never even realize they have an SMR drive. It became a problem when WD released SMR drives under the Red line, and even then they worked fine for a while until one died and someone noticed it was taking forever to rebuild their array. Rebuilding the array writes so much data to the drive that the cache runs out and write speeds tank. Only then did the whole SMR thing come out and people like LTT started making videos about them.  But SMR drives have been sold to consumers for close to 10 years now and consumers never even really realized it.


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## lexluthermiester (Jun 5, 2022)

qubit said:


> In April 2020 I bought the WD Blue WD60EZAZ 6TB drive. I use it to store my game installs and occasional virtual machines (I tend to test and discard) and it's currently holding 3.3TB of data. It's not backed up, since the games are all on Steam, Origin etc so can be downloaded again, although it would take several months to do at my "broadband" speed of 20Mbps. I don't play them all that much either and I've not had any problems with the drive or noticed any particular performance issues.
> 
> A couple of months later, the scandal broke out between SMR and PMR drives because manufacturers at the time had a habit of not specifying the recording method used in their spec sheets, as they didn't with my drive.
> 
> ...


If it's not your boot/OS drive, you're fine. SMR drives are not garbage. They're just not suitable for an OS drive because they're slower.

Keep the drive, worry not.


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## chrcoluk (Jun 5, 2022)

Mussels said:


> They're QLC drives, the SSD equivalent to SMR.
> 
> Except they die fast, as well as write slow.


Plus that price is still around triple of a 4TB HDD very bad value per TB if the priority is storage capacity.


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## qubit (Jun 5, 2022)

lexluthermiester said:


> If it's not your boot/OS drive, you're fine. SMR drives are not garbage. They're just not suitable for an OS drive because they're slower.
> 
> Keep the drive, worry not.


But I like fretting! 

But seriously, it's strictly data only of course. I'm tempted to try it out as a boot drive one day to see how awful it is, enthusiast style.


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## lexluthermiester (Jun 5, 2022)

qubit said:


> I'm tempted to try it out as a boot drive one day to see how awful it is, enthusiast style.


To be fair, they're not that slow. They're just not as fast as CMR based drives. Even for an OS drive it would be workable. Not optimal, but doable. For example, I have a WD EasyStore external drive that is SMR. Only figured that out after looking it up. Would not have cared otherwise because write performance is in the 180MB to 210MB per second range. Not something to be at all concerned about.

Grab a copy of CrystalDiskMark and test it for yourself. Post the screenshots, I'd be interested to see what you get with that drive compared to mine. 

EDIT;
I'll go first.






This is with the drive partitioned and full of data. So the numbers are different that the first tests I ran when it was new. Still 170MB range is nothing to complain about..


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## 80251 (Jun 5, 2022)

Shrek said:


> I still like the hybrid drives (Seagate FireCuda) as the 8GB solid state cache reduces hard drive thrashing and the hard drive reduces cache writes (it's the writes, not reads, that cause SSD wear)
> 
> HOWEVER _*only*_ the 3.5" version is CMR


How does the 8GB solid state cache work? Does it defer writes to the actual HDD until it fills up or like a write-back cache (with cache lines and modified/dirty bits)? If the system reboots or you lose power is the data still safe (since it's in non-volatile NAND)?


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## Shrek (Jun 5, 2022)

I believe it only caches frequently used sectors


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## Steevo (Jun 6, 2022)

I have had more blue drives fail than any other, I have replaced about 7 in the last 2 years, 4 in Dell servers. Hitachi drives are far more reliable.


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## Mussels (Jun 6, 2022)

80251 said:


> How does the 8GB solid state cache work? Does it defer writes to the actual HDD until it fills up or like a write-back cache (with cache lines and modified/dirty bits)? If the system reboots or you lose power is the data still safe (since it's in non-volatile NAND)?


the same way cache always works on the drives, only bigger. delayed writes if needed, combined with any reads that are still in the cache being accelerated
(with a size limit to prevent large files overtaking the whole thing)


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## qubit (Jun 6, 2022)

newtekie1 said:


> But SMR drives have been sold to consumers for close to 10 years now and consumers never even really realized it.


Now you mention that I remember reading articles about this technology 10+ years ago and how it was going to help break capacity barriers.

@lexluthermiester I'll run the test, gimme a day or so.


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## 80251 (Jun 6, 2022)

Mussels said:


> the same way cache always works on the drives, only bigger. delayed writes if needed, combined with any reads that are still in the cache being accelerated
> (with a size limit to prevent large files overtaking the whole thing)


Mussels, is there anyway to make the on-board, 8 GiB, solid state cache on SHDD's into a pure write cache with no read caching being done at all?


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## lexluthermiester (Jun 6, 2022)

80251 said:


> Mussels, is there anyway to make the on-board, 8 GiB, solid state cache on SHDD's into a pure write cache with no read caching being done at all?


I'm sure the factory could do it, but there are no consumer utilities that will do that.


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## Mussels (Jun 6, 2022)

What lex said.

You can make your own RAM cache with primocache to do exactly that (I have a 32GB read/write combined cache, despite my honkin SSD's)


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## 80251 (Jun 6, 2022)

@Mussels
"honkin SSD's." Hilarious. I'm hoping I'm not violating any rules by this reply.


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## Shrek (Jun 6, 2022)

qubit said:


> It looks like the usage where it really makes a difference is in RAID where it can be dramatic as in that LTT video.



Don't know about you, but I'd like to run ZFS one day.


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## newtekie1 (Jun 6, 2022)

qubit said:


> But seriously, it's strictly data only of course. I'm tempted to try it out as a boot drive one day to see how awful it is, enthusiast style.


It's not going to be any worse than a CMR hard drive as an OS drive, as long as it isn't almost full. The CMR cache makes SMR drives perform almost identically to a CMR drive except when writing extremely large amounts of data, or when the drive is nearly full and the CMR cache is gone.

That said, it's still going to be pretty awful, because HDDs just suck as OS drives in general.


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## 80251 (Jun 6, 2022)

newtekie1 said:


> It's not going to be any worse than a CMR hard drive as an OS drive, as long as it isn't almost full. The CMR cache makes SMR drives perform almost identically to a CMR drive except when writing extremely large amounts of data, or when the drive is nearly full and the CMR cache is gone.
> 
> That said, it's still going to be pretty awful, because HDDs just suck as OS drives in general.



If SMR HDD's suffer performance issues when writing extremely large amounts of data that might make them less useful for non-differential data backups right?


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## chrcoluk (Jun 6, 2022)

ZFS type workloads is what destroys performance on SMR drives, if its a mostly read workload it will probably not feel any slower than CMR.  They have a CMR cache area kind of like how TLC/QLC SSDs have a SLC cache, so if the writes are not high enough to not go in that cache there should be little to no performance difference in theory.


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## Assimilator (Jun 6, 2022)

Mussels said:


> They're QLC drives, the SSD equivalent to SMR.
> 
> Except they die fast, as well as write slow.


There's zero evidence for that. QLC drives have been with us for a good while now, have you heard *any *reports of multiple failures of those drives? No? That's because those failures aren't happening.

I expect better of a moderator than FUD-spreading.


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## chrcoluk (Jun 6, 2022)

Assimilator said:


> There's zero evidence for that. QLC drives have been with us for a good while now, have you heard *any *reports of multiple failures of those drives? No? That's because those failures aren't happening.
> 
> I expect better of a moderator than FUD-spreading.



I think he meant in relative terms as a comparison to TLC and MLC they die fast, even if its not "fast" in absolute terms.

I also think they have not been out long enough yet to consider them to have reasonable longevity, personally I will expect an SSD to last 5 years absolute minimum, but on modern tech even 10+ years.  Consider how slow wear levelling tends to happen, my 850 pro is around 7 years old now, and still doesnt have 100 erase cycles, the drive should last 50 years easily at that rate assuming the system area of the drive is not wearing faster.

Do QLC drives have automated NAND refreshes to keep the data readable (like the original planar TLC 840 fix which would accelerate wear), is that known?


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## Shrek (Jun 6, 2022)

The following may be out of date
What is QLC SSD | Pure Storage

"So far, manufacturers have been able to produce QLC flash with 1,000 P/E cycles, which is orders of magnitude less than what’s possible with SLC SSDs (100,000 P/E cycles)."

I'm not here to say anyone is right or wrong, I'm just here to learn.

We are off topic, and this is the reason I opened up
Small SLC SSD boot drive | TechPowerUp Forums


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## newtekie1 (Jun 6, 2022)

80251 said:


> If SMR HDD's suffer performance issues when writing extremely large amounts of data that might make them less useful for non-differential data backups right?


Yes, that could be an issue for SMR drives.


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## lexluthermiester (Jun 6, 2022)

Assimilator said:


> There's zero evidence for that. QLC drives have been with us for a good while now, have you heard *any *reports of multiple failures of those drives? No? That's because those failures aren't happening.


They happen all the time. I'm making a lot of money replacing them with higher quality TLC drives.


Assimilator said:


> I expect better of a moderator than FUD-spreading.


Whereas we all have come to expect the nonsense you continually shovel everywhere. Perhaps you should STOP with the personal jabs and people might take you seriously.


Shrek said:


> We are off topic, and this is the reason I opened up
> Small SLC SSD boot drive | TechPowerUp Forums


True, so back on topic: Have you decided what you want to do?



80251 said:


> If SMR HDD's suffer performance issues when writing extremely large amounts of data that might make them less useful for non-differential data backups right?





newtekie1 said:


> Yes, that could be an issue for SMR drives.


While true, it would only slow things down somewhat. It would never cause data corruption problems. The difference is in speed only, not data integrity.


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## qubit (Jun 6, 2022)

lexluthermiester said:


> Grab a copy of CrystalDiskMark and test it for yourself. Post the screenshots, I'd be interested to see what you get with that drive compared to mine.
> 
> EDIT;
> I'll go first.


Here ya go. Takes ages to run, doesn't it?!


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## lexluthermiester (Jun 7, 2022)

qubit said:


> Here ya go. Takes ages to run, doesn't it?!
> 
> View attachment 250081


Yeah, that looks about right.


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## Mussels (Jun 7, 2022)

Shrek said:


> Don't know about you, but I'd like to run ZFS one day.


Seriously, i feel like we're a decade overdue for more filesystem options in windows, even if it's just on non-OS partitions



Assimilator said:


> There's zero evidence for that. QLC drives have been with us for a good while now, have you heard *any *reports of multiple failures of those drives? No? That's because those failures aren't happening.
> 
> I expect better of a moderator than FUD-spreading.


I mean... they officially have greatly lower lifespans, by their own specifications.


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## lexluthermiester (Jun 7, 2022)

Mussels said:


> Seriously, i feel like we're a decade overdue for more filesystem options in windows, even if it's just on non-OS partitions


The old idiom rings true: If it's not broken, don't fix it. NTFS and exFAT are very stable and robust. There's really no need to replace them.


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## chrcoluk (Jun 7, 2022)

Mussels said:


> Seriously, i feel like we're a decade overdue for more filesystem options in windows, even if it's just on non-OS partitions
> 
> 
> I mean... they officially have greatly lower lifespans, by their own specifications.


Windows does now have REFS and storage spaces.  If you willing to experiment a little.  It has checksumming same as ZFS.


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## Chrispy_ (Jun 7, 2022)

SMR fine for WORM-style usage.
Keep it unless the lack of write performance annoys you and then buy either an Ironwolf/Ironwolf Pro or Red+/Red Pro.


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## Shrek (Jun 7, 2022)

Mussels said:


> Seriously, i feel like we're a decade overdue for more filesystem options in windows, even if it's just on non-OS partitions



I thought one could now boot from a ZFS drive


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## Chrispy_ (Jun 7, 2022)

chrcoluk said:


> [SMR drives] have a CMR cache area kind of like how TLC/QLC SSDs have a SLC cache, so if the writes are not high enough to not go in that cache there should be little to no performance difference in theory.


That's another annoyance of the one SMR drive I accidentally ended up with, though it depends if you have host-managed SMR or drive-managed SMR.

Mechanical drives aren't quiet; There's the 7200rpm whine, and depending on what case they're in there's the constant chatter of head moves. With an SMR drive that writes to the CMR cache area, there's several minutes of background chatter long after the OS says that the copy/move/write is finished and the drive claims to be idle.

It's not really a big deal but I found it to be yet another annoyance of SMR and since mechanical drives are now the realm of large capacity datasets that I can't justify on SSDs, chances are good that we're talking about hundreds of gigabytes which means that a typical write to the drive completely saturates its cache area and takes the maximum possible time to calm down after it's "finished".


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## Shrek (Jun 7, 2022)

Chrispy_ said:


> ...there's several minutes of background chatter long after the OS says that the copy/move/write is finished and the drive claims to be idle.



But does that not increase the chances of corruption should there be a power cut?


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## lexluthermiester (Jun 7, 2022)

Chrispy_ said:


> SMR fine for WORM-style usage.
> Keep it unless the lack of write performance annoys you and then buy either an Ironwolf/Ironwolf Pro or Red+/Red Pro.


As shown earlier in the CrystalDiskMark run, performance is solid 165MB to 170MB per second. Qubit's drive and the one I have perform on par with each other, so they shouldn't have any issues.



Shrek said:


> But does that not increase the chances of corruption should there be a power cut?


That wouldn't be any different than any other drive in a power-cut.


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## Shrek (Jun 7, 2022)

lexluthermiester said:


> That wouldn't be any different than any other drive in a power-cut.



Except, there is more chance catching it when busy if it spends minutes tidying up the cache.

Unless it is clever and does not validate a move till it is complete, that way it can recover from being disturbed.


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## Chrispy_ (Jun 7, 2022)

Shrek said:


> But does that not increase the chances of corruption should there be a power cut?


No, the data is moved from CMR area to PMR area. I'd be surprised if the drive wipes the source sectors in the CMR area before it's finished writing to the SMR area. Presumably it'll just continue where it left off after power is restored.


lexluthermiester said:


> As shown earlier in the CrystalDiskMark run, performance is solid 165MB to 170MB per second. Qubit's drive and the one I have perform on par with each other, so they shouldn't have any issues.


SMR's downside isn't sequential writes to blank areas of disk, it's IOPS - and since even decent mechanical drives are such a terrible choice for IOPS compared to the alternative options these days, that downside is becoming less relevant by the day.

I still personally avoid them, but SMR isn't bad _*when used the way they're intended to be used *_- as single (non-array) secondary storage drives. Don't use them in RAID, don't install your OS on them, and you'll be fine.


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## lexluthermiester (Jun 7, 2022)

Shrek said:


> Except, there is more chance catching it when busy if it spends minutes tidying up the cache.


Um, not really and because...


Shrek said:


> Unless it is clever and does not validate a move till it is complete, that way it can recover from being disturbed.


...all modern drives do. That's been a thing since the inception of the SATA/SAS protocols(AFAIK)..



Chrispy_ said:


> SMR's downside isn't sequential writes to blank areas of disk, it's IOPS


Given the benchmarks Qubit and I both ran earlier in the thread, that doesn't seem to be the case.


Chrispy_ said:


> Don't use them in RAID


It would be better said, don't mix CMR and SMR drives in an array. Mixed drives is a bad idea anyway.


Chrispy_ said:


> don't install your OS on them


Again, given the performance shown, I can't agree with this. It's not optimal, sure, but one could do fine with such a drive.


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## Chrispy_ (Jun 7, 2022)

lexluthermiester said:


> Given the benchmarks Qubit and I both ran earlier in the thread, that doesn't seem to be the case.
> 
> Again, given the performance shown, I can't agree with this. It's not optimal, sure, but one could do fine with such a drive.



You're using a tiny 2GiB test area in CDM and that's barely even stressing the DRAM cache, let alone the CMR staging cache. Performance is fine (for mechanical) in that CDM test simply because it's too small and too short.

As for using CMR for your OS, that was *the* use-case that caused the majority of the hate for SMR in the first place. I don't have a strong opinion on it because IMO mechanical drives are a poor choice for your OS regardless of whether they're SMR or CMR. It's definitely possible to run your OS on an SMR drive if you have no better alternative, but it's sometimes going to crawl along, especially if you are short on RAM and the pagefile starts getting hammered. 

There are literally hundreds of threads with tens or hundreds of thousands of complaints about laptops and desktops with SMR OS drives by now. They're just all old, dead threads by now and nobody cares any more since you can pick up a _new_ 128GB SSD on Amazon for under $20 or possibly just find one being handed out for free (I gave away 150+ 128GB drives to Techreport forum users FOC because they weren't worth enough to bother selling).


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## ThrashZone (Jun 7, 2022)

Hi,
Yeah you might as well throw out a as ssd test as some sort of proof, both are just playware


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## swerist (Jun 7, 2022)

My choice is HGST or Hatachi since last 10 years
Now with 6 HC320 drives.
Also, using air drive not Helium drive


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 7, 2022)

Chrispy_ said:


> You're using a tiny 2GiB test area in CDM and that's barely even stressing the DRAM cache


Oh? One moment...




Doesn't make much of a difference does it? But hey let's try the maximum size CDM can test...



Hmm. Margin of error kind of thing.


Chrispy_ said:


> but it's sometimes going to crawl along


175MB per second is hardly a crawl unless you compare to SSD's, which you clearly want to. In reality most people could run an OS with those speeds and be perfectly happy. So having an SMR based drive as mass storage is simply not a problem.



ThrashZone said:


> Yeah you might as well throw out a as ssd test as some sort of proof, both are just playware


Ok, let's try something else..



Anyone want to argue with this?


----------



## ThrashZone (Jun 7, 2022)

Hi,
Sure did you make a point somewhere ?


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 7, 2022)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Sure did you make a point somewhere ?


You tell me. You called CDM "playware", so I answered with a different and much more involved/grueling test.. Results didn't really change much, especially given that write caching was bypassed and the file size was 16GB which would push passed any drive caching schemes, effecting direct to disk writes.
BTW, that test took 48minutes to complete.


----------



## ThrashZone (Jun 7, 2022)

lexluthermiester said:


> You tell me. You called CDM "playware", so I answered with a different and much more involved/grueling test.. Results didn't really change much, especially given that write caching was bypassed and the file size was 16GB which would push passed any drive caching schemes.


Hi,
Only thing I noticed was you increased the space tested 
Besides that you may call it margin of error but I see inconsistencies between the same playware and even compared to another being atto I didn't mention but was part of a few I was referring to
Throw in as-ssd and all three will be different  

So you're kind of proving my my point

Only thing these "utilities" might prove is just basic trouble shooting performance issues.
Otherwise they just hammer small blocks by default.


----------



## chrcoluk (Jun 7, 2022)

Chrispy_ said:


> That's another annoyance of the one SMR drive I accidentally ended up with, though it depends if you have host-managed SMR or drive-managed SMR.
> 
> Mechanical drives aren't quiet; There's the 7200rpm whine, and depending on what case they're in there's the constant chatter of head moves. With an SMR drive that writes to the CMR cache area, there's several minutes of background chatter long after the OS says that the copy/move/write is finished and the drive claims to be idle.
> 
> It's not really a big deal but I found it to be yet another annoyance of SMR and since mechanical drives are now the realm of large capacity datasets that I can't justify on SSDs, chances are good that we're talking about hundreds of gigabytes which means that a typical write to the drive completely saturates its cache area and takes the maximum possible time to calm down after it's "finished".


Yep I had that concern and another reason I stayed away.  Whats weird is how closely priced SMR is to CMR, probably why they tried to get away with not labelling it on the spec.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 7, 2022)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Only thing I noticed was you increased the space tested
> Besides that you may call it margin of error but I see inconsistencies between the same playware and even compared to another being atto I didn't mention but was part of a few I was referring to
> Throw in as-ssd and all three will be different
> ...


Given that opinion, there's no testing method that would satisfy your position, which has the effect of rendering your point mute. So believe whatever you want and ignore science.


----------



## ThrashZone (Jun 7, 2022)

lexluthermiester said:


> Given that opinion, there's no testing method that would satisfy your position, which has the effect of rendering your point mute. So believe whatever you want and ignore science.


Hi,
I've used all three on 2 adata sx8200 pro's testing 
Returned both of them from the terribly inaccurate read/ write of the adata spec's sheet of them on two different systems
So they have a purpose but not just one of them.


----------



## qubit (Jun 7, 2022)

Chrispy_ said:


> Mechanical drives aren't quiet; There's the 7200rpm whine, and depending on what case they're in there's the constant chatter of head moves. With an SMR drive that writes to the CMR cache area, there's several minutes of background chatter long after the OS says that the copy/move/write is finished and the drive claims to be idle.


In an absolute sense no, they're not quiet. Thankfully, depending on the model, they can be quiet enough, like the WD Blue that's the subject of my thread here.

My PC is in an open case on the table right next to me. All I hear is the quietest swish from the bearing if I listen out for it, no whine and if the head is doing lots of accessing, a slight rattle, nothing too obtrusive. Clearly these drives are engineered for quietness, which includes reduced spindle speeds. Note that there is some fan noise from the PSU and a tiny bit from the CPU cooler, which helps to cover up the drive noise.


----------



## ThrashZone (Jun 7, 2022)

Hi,
Yeah I've never notice my WD blacks whine at all 
Same here on the open bench with 2 1tb right next to me I'd know it if they made any sounds


----------



## qubit (Jun 7, 2022)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Yeah I've never notice my WD blacks whine at all
> Same here on the open bench with 2 1tb right next to me I'd know it if they made any sounds


Thinking about it, my WD Black is pretty quiet too. Bit noisier than the Blue.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 8, 2022)

qubit said:


> Bit noisier than the Blue.


That's to be expected.


----------



## Mussels (Jun 8, 2022)

Shrek said:


> Except, there is more chance catching it when busy if it spends minutes tidying up the cache.
> 
> Unless it is clever and does not validate a move till it is complete, that way it can recover from being disturbed.


NTFS does that, writing into a empty location and only when complete does the file list get updated marked as active for those clusters

As an example, when you defrag it keeps the original location (and original fragments) in place until they're finished moving, then adds the new record before deleting the old one. This is how un-delete programs work, since the files are still present and only the listing in the file table was removed.

Various file systems do it differently and that's probably only 90% correct, but close enough


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 8, 2022)

Mussels said:


> NTFS does that, writing into a empty location and only when complete does the file list get updated marked as active for those clusters
> 
> As an example, when you defrag it keeps the original location (and original fragments) in place until they're finished moving, then adds the new record before deleting the old one. This is how un-delete programs work, since the files are still present and only the listing in the file table was removed.
> 
> Various file systems do it differently and that's probably only 90% correct, but close enough


Drive controllers do this natively as well.


----------



## Athlonite (Jun 8, 2022)

Seeing as WD saw fit to rename their Green line of drives Blue I'd be inclined to burn it with fire then bury it in the back garden 
if you're looking for serious long term storage get an HDD meant for servers or a NAS like WD's Red Pro or Seagate's Ironwolf series


----------



## qubit (Jun 8, 2022)

lexluthermiester said:


> That's to be expected.


Indeed, it's much higher performance.


----------



## Chrispy_ (Jun 8, 2022)

lexluthermiester said:


> Anyone want to argue with this?


The only person who wants to argue is you.

There's no shortage of forums/redit/review evidence highlighting the shortcomings of SMR, and the multiple successful class action lawsuits against HDD manufacturers for failing to disclose the performance issues of SMR are testament to the fact that SMR has issues. How SMR works is no mystery; It is unable to write a small block of data without erasing and re-writing all the other blocks shingled together in the band of shingled tracks. Write amplification goes from 1x to as much as 64x depending on the workload and for a drive that has a maximum write rate of ~200MB/s, reducing that rate by up to 64x is obviously detrimental to performance in certain situations.

My guess that CDM's test size was the reason clearly wasn't right but I'm not interested in exactly what causes synthetic tests to inaccurately reflect real-world usage. That's why they're called synthetic tests rather than real-world tests. It's not my job to convince you that SMR has pitfalls. The HDD industry and international legal systems have extensively investigated and concluded the disadvantages of SMR. Like all technological compromises, there's nothing wrong with it as long as the compromises are clearly labelled and people can make up their own mind about whether the downsides are worth the decrease in cost/TB.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 8, 2022)

Chrispy_ said:


> The only person who wants to argue is you.


Not true, the OP wanted input and there has been plenty offering insight.



Chrispy_ said:


> There's no shortage of forums/redit/review evidence highlighting the shortcomings of SMR


And most of those are dominated by angry nitwits special-snowflaking over what is effectively minor differences in performance. My CMR drive gets about 200MB per second as opposed to the SMR drive at 175MB per second. This is NOT an isolated experience.



Chrispy_ said:


> Write amplification goes from 1x to as much as 64x depending on the workload and for a drive that has a maximum write rate of ~200MB/s, reducing that rate by up to 64x is obviously detrimental to performance in certain situations.


Given the testing earlier, I have some doubts about how seriously that problem actually effects performance.



Chrispy_ said:


> My guess that CDM's test size was the reason clearly wasn't right but I'm not interested in exactly what causes synthetic tests to inaccurately reflect real-world usage. That's why they're called synthetic tests rather than real-world tests. It's not my job to convince you that SMR has pitfalls. The HDD industry and international legal systems have extensively investigated and concluded the disadvantages of SMR. Like all technological compromises, there's nothing wrong with it as long as the compromises are clearly labelled and people can make up their own mind about whether the downsides are worth the decrease in cost/TB.


And the ATTO tests? These utilities first create a test file as a part of the testing. Then they use that file to subject the drive to a battery of workloads that closely mimic real world usage. They are "synthetic" only in the fact that they are deliberately inducing mimicking workloads. The work being done by the drive is still "real" in the fact that the drive is performing functions it would normally conduct under non-testing use. The term "synthetic" is NOT a synonym for "fake". To deny this is pure ignorance as demonstrated by the users who voted "Chuck it into the nearest furnace to melt this garbage down".

My drive is subjected to frequent read/write ops that weigh in the hundreds of GB. I've never noticed it slow down or even show signs of doing so.

The proof is in the pudding, and the tests show solid performance, within 12% of their CMR companion drives under ALL testing workload methods.


----------



## ThrashZone (Jun 8, 2022)

qubit said:


> Indeed, it's much higher performance.


Hi,
There are 7200rpm blue's 40.us for 1tb lol only one I have is a 5400 though just for system image storage


			https://www.amazon.com/WD-Blue-1TB-Hard-Drive/dp/B0088PUEPK


----------



## newtekie1 (Jun 8, 2022)

lexluthermiester said:


> While true, it would only slow things down somewhat. It would never cause data corruption problems. The difference is in speed only, not data integrity.


They never said anything about data corruption. The question asked was specifically about performance and the slow down making them less useful for non-incremental backups. Seriously, stop going off on tangents that have nothing to do with what people are discussing.



lexluthermiester said:


> The proof is in the pudding, and the tests show solid performance, within 12% of their CMR companion drives under ALL testing workload methods.



Fill the drive to 90% then turn it again.


----------



## qubit (Jun 8, 2022)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> There are 7200rpm blue's 40.us for 1tb lol only one I have is a 5400 though just for system image storage
> 
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/WD-Blue-1TB-Hard-Drive/dp/B0088PUEPK


lol so it is as are a few others up to 2TB. I don't think that there were any 7200 RPM Blues when I bought mine. My one is 5400 RPM and I see that the newer 8TB model is a very odd 5640 RPM. I'd like to know why they made it that speed.

Specs of the whole Blue range are here:



			https://www.westerndigital.com/en-gb/products/internal-drives/wd-blue-desktop-sata-hdd
		


EDIT: I see that the 8TB WD80EAZZ drive (CMR) is about £200 from Scan, so I might treat myself to it. At the time, I wanted an 8TB Blue, but they didn't make them. It would be a pure vanity purchase though lol as I haven't bought an upgrade for my PC in ages. I hope it's suitably quiet though...

Anyway, my 6TB Blue is now over 2 years old and the warranty's expired, so isn't it about time that it failed?


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 8, 2022)

newtekie1 said:


> They never said anything about data corruption.


No, but the implication was hinted at, thus the statement to shut that thought down.


newtekie1 said:


> Fill the drive to 90% then turn it again.


Perhaps you didn't notice the testing screenshots. It's one of my backup drives which is consistently near full. And the tests above were conducted with the drive at 87% usage. Sooo... your point?


----------



## newtekie1 (Jun 9, 2022)

lexluthermiester said:


> No, but the implication was hinted at, thus the statement to shut that thought down.


No, it wasn't in any way.



lexluthermiester said:


> Perhaps you didn't notice the testing screenshots. It's one of my backup drives which is consistently near full. And the tests above were conducted with the drive at 87% usage. Sooo... your point?


You showed a partition on a drive that is 87% full, not that the drive was 87% full. And the Easystore drives are not all using SMR. So you really showed nothing.


----------



## Mussels (Jun 9, 2022)

Hey lex, can you verify the actual mechanical disk in your external enclosure?
You're making claims about its performance but you didnt seem to actually specify what it is, only that it's a WD drive in an external enclosure

It would be quite a facepalm moment if it turned out to not be the drive you expect, i've had quite a few WD externals throw random disks at me (I bought three 4TB in one transaction, got two greens and a red when i opened them)


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 9, 2022)

newtekie1 said:


> No, it wasn't in any way.


That depends on how you read the commentary. Not going argue about it.


newtekie1 said:


> You showed a partition on a drive that is 87% full, not that the drive was 87% full. And the Easystore drives are not using SMR. So you really showed nothing.


The other partitions are just as full.


Mussels said:


> Hey lex, can you verify the actual mechanical disk in your external enclosure?


Looked it up when the SMR drama happened. The drive inside is a white label and when I looked it up the specs said SMR. Not opening it up again right now.


----------



## qubit (Jun 17, 2022)

Oh sod it, I've bought it! I found myself just wanting the 8TB CMR/PMR version (WD80EAZZ) - enthusiastconomics style lol - as it was what I wanted originally, but didn't exist then, so I've just bought it from Scan and is due tomorrow.

I'll run some comparative benchies and post them here. The differences should be interesting. I'll figure out what I wanna do with the 6TB drive afterwards as it's still in perfect working order. Might eBay it perhaps, we'll see,



			https://www.scan.co.uk/products/8tb-wd-blue-wd80eazz-35-hdd-sata-iii-6gb-s-5640rpm-128mb-cache-oem
		


@Pixel Princess you might want to bookmark this thread.


----------



## Pixel Princess (Jun 21, 2022)

qubit said:


> Oh sod it, I've bought it! I found myself just wanting the 8TB CMR/PMR version (WD80EAZZ) - enthusiastconomics style lol - as it was what I wanted originally, but didn't exist then, so I've just bought it from Scan and is due tomorrow.
> 
> I'll run some comparative benchies and post them here. The differences should be interesting. I'll figure out what I wanna do with the 6TB drive afterwards as it's still in perfect working order. Might eBay it perhaps, we'll see,
> 
> ...



Sooooo.....what are you going to do with 8TB @qubit ? 

@qubit I have bookmarked this thread.  I'm still reading all of the amazing info shared


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 21, 2022)

Pixel Princess said:


> Sooooo.....what are you going to do with 8TB @qubit ?


Game installs and backups would be my guess.


----------



## qubit (Jun 21, 2022)

@Pixel Princess @lexluthermiester

Yup, lex isn't far off. I'm just gonna transfer my 3.24TB of game installs over the weekend to the new drive. That and a few scratchpad items are all that's on it. Note that the copy operation will take more than 24 hours, so I want to do it when I'm not working.

I'll then wipe the old drive and probably eBay it, or give it to a friend maybe.


----------



## Pixel Princess (Jun 21, 2022)

@lexluthermiester right of course!!  (Clever username)

@qubit I had an additional spirited conversation with my daughter this morning concerning saving gaming installs vs. trusting the Steam and/or Origin cloud.  She said the main game she'd worry about loosing that she'd consider saving is Valheim.


----------



## qubit (Jun 22, 2022)

Pixel Princess said:


> @qubit I had an additional spirited conversation with my daughter this morning concerning saving gaming installs vs. trusting the Steam and/or Origin cloud. She said the main game she'd worry about loosing that she'd consider saving is Valheim.


Personally, I've never lost information to Steam so I don't have any reason to distrust them. Seems other people have though.


----------



## Pixel Princess (Jun 22, 2022)

qubit said:


> Personally, I've never lost information to Steam so I don't have any reason to distrust them. Seems other people have though.



Good to know and I'm sure Steam is exemplary in their member data storage.  She just has built a freaking kingdom in Valheim and I can't even imagine the drama if she lost it.


----------



## qubit (Jun 24, 2022)

Right, so I've just broken the antistatic bag seal, connected the drive to the PC and... _woah!_ This thing vibrates!    The platter is totally unbalanced. The vibration is strong when held in the hand and when it touches the table or the PC case, it acts like a sounding board, making for a very unpleasant 94Hz humming noise.

This isn't normal, so has to be either a manufacturing fault, or a design fault, therefore, I've already applied for a return, including shipping, as a faulty product. Note that this strong vibration wasn't disclosed in the product description as I wouldn't have bought it if it had been, so I have a very strong case.

I've never seen anything like it. I've had drives that vibrate a bit, but nothing like this, ever. With most drives, including the ones installed in my PC, the vibration can hardly be felt and that's after years of use too, including the 6TB Blue, and the bearings are quiet too, making for a very quiet environment, which I require. Vibration this bad can't be good for long term reliability, either.

Clearly this thing is built right down to a price and this is one of the things they've compromised on. I wonder if other samples are this bad and suspect they are. I'm not gonna go through the hassle of buying another one just to find out that it's the same and have to return that too. I might buy an 8TB Black at £280, but not right now as this really wasn't an essential purchase and that's a lot of money.

Because of this, I've not bothered formatting it or anything. I just unplugged it and put it to one side.


----------



## claes (Jun 24, 2022)

I’d avoid WD black if you’re worried about noise/vibrations, so no loss there


----------



## qubit (Jun 24, 2022)

claes said:


> I’d avoid WD black if you’re worried about noise/vibrations, so no loss there


I've actually had several Blacks over the years and they've all been fine for vibration. Bearing and head access noise can be a bit louder on the older ones, but nothing too bad. In fact, I've got a 4TB Black in there right now, doing great for years. Hence, I have confidence that the next Black I buy will be fine.


EDIT

This was supposed to be a separate post about 12 hours later, but the post merger add-on snaffled it instead.

I've had the RMA number from Scan now - fast service. Glad to say that this shop normally has great customer service.


----------



## Chrispy_ (Jun 24, 2022)

qubit said:


> I've actually had several Blacks over the years and they've all been fine for vibration. Bearing and head access noise can be a bit louder on the older ones, but nothing too bad. In fact, I've got a 4TB Black in there right now, doing great for years. Hence, I have confidence that the next Black I buy will be fine.


It's been a while since I bought any serious quantities of consumer-grade spinning rust, but my experience back then across Samsung, Hitachi, WD, Seagate, & Toshiba is that the tier of disk from budget to flaghship made no real difference to the smoothness and balance of the platters. I had cheapo Toshiba drives and OEM Baracudas that were balanced perfectly with near-silent bearings, and WD Gold/Black that sounded rough when new and stayed like that. Drives I bought a lot of were Samsung Spinpoints, WD Blue/Green/Red, and early Seagate Ironwolves back from the times when 4TB was a "big" drive.

Number of platters (capacity) seems to have far more impact on noise levels than anything else. Spin speed only really affects the pitch of the bearing whine.


----------



## qubit (Jun 24, 2022)

@Chrispy_ While they do vary, I wonder if this drive has simply been damaged in transit, knocking the platter balance out of alignment. At 5640 rpm, it wouldn't take much for it to vibrate like that.

The most balanced drive I've ever had is the WD Raptor X 150GB with the clear window allowing the platter and head to be viewed. Spinning at a whopping 10000 rpm, there's no vibration at all!

It's a helluva drive for its time, although the head seeks we're extremely loud and annoying.

While I retired it years ago, it's still in perfect working order and in perfect condition. I'm keeping it as a collectors item.


----------



## Chrispy_ (Jun 24, 2022)

qubit said:


> The most balanced drive I've ever had is the WD Raptor X 150GB with the clear window allowing the platter and head to be viewed. Spinning at a whopping 10000 rpm, there's no vibration at all!
> 
> It's a helluva drive for its time, although the head seeks we're extremely loud and annoying.


Before the X25-M I bought, SSDs were too small and too expensive so I "borrowed" (permanently) a couple of 15K Seagate Cheetahs and SAS RAID card for a RAID0 OS+Apps drive from the datacenter. Even those could not make the original release of Windows Vista feel fast, but man were they awesome disks for their day.

Compared to a 7200rpm consumer desktop drive of the time they were truly insane but I donated my stolen goods almost immediately after buying myself an 80GB Intel SSD and never looked back. I do not miss the horrible whine of 15K drives or the jackhammer of "performance above all else" head seeking but I do have a soft spot for them.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 25, 2022)

claes said:


> I’d avoid WD black if you’re worried about noise/vibrations, so no loss there


Your loss. WD Black drives are among the best made. Full stop.


----------



## InVasMani (Jun 25, 2022)

The only reason I still keep a mechanical drive in my system is for the added sound acoustics because floppy disks are harder to come by.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 25, 2022)

InVasMani said:


> The only reason I still keep a mechanical drive in my system is for the added sound acoustics because floppy disks are harder to come by.


That's some hard-core nostalgia going on!


----------



## claes (Jun 26, 2022)

lexluthermiester said:


> Your loss. WD Black drives are among the best made. Full stop.


I didn’t say anything about quality, just that they make more noise than other drives I’ve used. They’re great drives overall, and honestly I’m  more picky than others about noise, most users run fans that distract the hell out of me, calling them silent :shrug:


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 26, 2022)

What?



claes said:


> I didn’t say anything about quality, just that they make more noise than other drives I’ve used.


No, what you said was...


claes said:


> I’d avoid WD black if you’re worried about noise/vibrations, so no loss there


...this, which is NOT the same as saying that "they make more noise than other drives I’ve used".

Context is important. Try it sometime.


----------



## claes (Jun 26, 2022)

I think you’re just trying to pick a fight with me or are misreading. I have half a dozen 8TB Blacks in a ZFS array, and have capacities as old as 500GB PATA laying around that still work fine (they’re obvs in a box though). I used to build arrays for studios and offices, and WD Blacks have always been great.

Please don’t troll. Have a nice day!


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 26, 2022)

claes said:


> I think you’re just trying to pick a fight with me or are misreading.


You made a statement which was misleading and an attempt at brand shaming. Your vocabulary was very clear.


claes said:


> I have half a dozen 8TB Blacks in a ZFS array, and have capacities as old as 500GB PATA laying around that still work fine (they’re obvs in a box though). I used to build arrays for studios and offices, and WD Blacks have always been great.


Then why did you suggest avoiding them?


claes said:


> Please don’t troll. Have a nice day!


Oh, now you're blame shifting? Nice try.  If you don't want people contesting your nonsense, stop spouting nonsense.
And for the record, I was already participating in the conversation of this thread before you made your comment...


----------



## claes (Jun 26, 2022)

lexluthermiester said:


> You made a statement which was misleading and an attempt at brand shaming. Your vocabulary was very clear.


Yeah, if you’re worried about noise/vibrations, you’re not missing out on their build quality and high price. Reds are just as good, and don’t perform as well, and are quieter.


lexluthermiester said:


> Then why did you suggest avoiding them?


“Noise/vibrations”


lexluthermiester said:


> Oh, now you're blame shifting? Nice try.  If you don't want people contesting your nonsense, stop spouting nonsense.
> And for the record, I was already participating in the conversation of this thread before you made your comment...


LTR


----------



## Mussels (Jun 26, 2022)

Guys, enough.


----------



## qubit (Jun 26, 2022)

I'd just like to give a special thanks to all those who voted chuck it in the furnace - epic, guys.  

It's what I felt like doing when I initially discovered it was SMR as it hadn't been disclosed before purchase.


----------



## InVasMani (Jun 26, 2022)

The furnace scenario isn't far fetched. The metal will be more valuable than the drive itself at some point.


----------



## Mussels (Jun 28, 2022)

InVasMani said:


> The furnace scenario isn't far fetched. The metal will be more valuable than the drive itself at some point.


The dystopian future where people raid server farms for the helium in the hard drives


----------



## InVasMani (Jun 28, 2022)

Helium huffing cyberpunks...hey guys all out of that good stuff, but I got a couple dozen HDD's you wanna get high!?


----------



## defaultluser (Jun 28, 2022)

Since the initial load, my single wd easystore 2tb USB smr drive has yet to exceed cache on incremental backups.  and read speeds are exactly the same as my old cmr drives

I'm really not as flustered about this as I initially thought I would be, because I don't  run zfs - for all my internal drives I'll pay the Red Plus premium (extract local archives, or long data copies like raw Blu-ray ready for encode), but for pure network-accessible backups, why should I care?


----------



## qubit (Jul 8, 2022)

Right ppl, I've got an update for you.

Scan has now refunded me for the faulty drive, no quibble, they're a good retailer. The drive cost me about £207 with shipping, which is about right.

I live in England so unsurprisingly, I normally buy off British stores. amazon.co.uk don't sell this drive, but amazon.com do, but get this: I bought it for just £143 including international shipping! I couldn't believe it when I saw it. Chances are that amazon.co.uk would have sold it for around £200 too if they had it.

It's due any day now, so I'll let you know how I get on with it.


----------



## Shrek (Jul 9, 2022)

I didn't realize it was faulty.


----------



## 80251 (Jul 9, 2022)

Are 10K or 15K RPM HDD's manufactured anymore?


----------



## qubit (Jul 9, 2022)

Shrek said:


> I didn't realize it was faulty.



Oh yeah, I went on about it a few posts up lol.



80251 said:


> Are 10K or 15K RPM HDD's manufactured anymore?


My guess is that yes, but as niche products for compatibility reasons. I've heard a 15K drive in operation and that whine was no joke. We're talking insanity inducing hearing damage noise. Imagine a datacentre full of them?! Ear defenders are a must. Even with SSDs, they're very noisy places due to the cooling that often need ear defenders. They're basically fridges with computer equipment inside.


----------



## 80251 (Jul 9, 2022)

I worked in a data center, hearing any hard drives over the numerous high RPM fans and AC equipment was impossible.


----------



## qubit (Jul 14, 2022)

Ok, so I got my new drive from amazon.com a day early and I'm glad to say that this one works properly - very little vibration and near silent just like my other Blue, as I was expecting.

This one came properly protected in its official WD shipping box, unlike the one from Scan that was delivered in a pathetic bit of bubblewrap unfit for a HDD. A dedicate computer hardware retailer, Scan should know better.

I reckon the other one must have been dropped or banged about which caused the platter to become unbalanced. I'm surprised it worked at all in that state, but no, no errors. At least for the few minutes that I had it running, anyway.


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## Mussels (Jul 16, 2022)

7.27TB?

Deficient, throw it back


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## newtekie1 (Jul 16, 2022)

qubit said:


> My guess is that yes, but as niche products for compatibility reasons.


The only SATA 10K drives were the WD Raptor line, which I think is now discontinued. But there are definitely still SAS 10/15K HDDs.


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## qubit (Jul 16, 2022)

newtekie1 said:


> The only SATA 10K drives were the WD Raptor line, which I think is now discontinued. But there are definitely still SAS 10/15K HDDs.


Thanks for the clarification. This isn't an area I know much about.


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## Shrek (Jul 16, 2022)

I'd love one of those raptors with the window; but I'm off topic.


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## qubit (Jul 16, 2022)

Shrek said:


> I'd love one of those raptors with the window; but I'm off topic.


And I've got one in mint condition from new since 2007. Now you can truly look green with envy!


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## 80251 (Jul 16, 2022)

Is the window on the seagate raptor HDD at all helpful in diagnosing drive problems?


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## qubit (Jul 16, 2022)

80251 said:


> Is the window on the seagate raptor HDD at all helpful in diagnosing drive problems?


I never had problems with it, but it might give some indication if the head movement looked off, maybe.

That platter looks like a perfectly smooth mirror and when it spins, it looks the same. That's how precision made it is.

I remember the WD website at the time didn't say anything about the feature, so I think it's purely decorative. There was a version of it, same specs, with a regular cover, for slightly less money.


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