hitardo

I have the same issue now, in that SquareSpace is not on that list, but I heard a sponsorship 1 to 3 weeks ago on the WAN Show.

Are there any updates on this matter I might have missed?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT:
I found it:

"Visit https://www.squarespace.com/WAN and use offer code WAN for 10% off"

Visible on the WAN Show from July 15th 2022:

It seems that the major offender is being prosecuted.

I referred to Western Digital that way because WD used SMR in their Red lineup, which is intented for use in NAS applications, which are many times used in a RAID configuration.

SMR is very bad for RAID.

Quote

Earlier this year, it emerged that certain OEMs had been misrepresenting some of the hard drives they sold in terms of the storage technology they used. One of these companies was Western Digital (WD), who subsequently admitted to doing so with some SKUs of its Red, Black and Blue HDD series. Now, a law firm has filed a suit in order to procure redress for their owners.

Source:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Western-Digital-faces-a-lawsuit-over-the-specs-of-some-of-its-hard-drives.467601.0.html

8 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

@hitardo

I think you should add this to the OP:

https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/list-of-known-smr-drives.83993/

 

A lot of good info is accumulated in that thread.

Thank you!

It seems to have good information - but I am not able to verify it all.

At the moment, I was not able to edit the original post.

I will do it later.

On 4/18/2020 at 3:23 PM, hitardo said:

Geizhals, a German-language price comparison website, lists seven Seagate SMR drives. 

- Barracuda 2TB – 7,200rpm – SATA 6gig – model name – ST2000DM008

Source: https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/15/seagate-2-4-and-8tb-barracuda-and-desktop-hdd-smr/

@Demonking apparently, the HDD you mentioned is affected.

Model: ST2000DM008 

By the link you posted: https://www.newegg.com/seagate-barracuda-st2000dm008-2tb/p/N82E16822184773?item=N82E16822184773

I am not against SMR.

I think - as said before - if there is a use case for it with enough demand, that technology will survive.

HDDs are not going anywhere!

However, I am against manufacturers decreasing significantly the performance of a product, without letting the consumer know.

It is important to highlight that these HDD remained on the same family of products, without a change in labelling, marketing name, or even specification sheets.

This is not transparent, and consumer will be mislead by previous tests, reviews, and experiences.

36 minutes ago, seagate_surfer said:

The reading gets a bit long, I know. In short, the answer is no, not necessarily because the characteristics of an SMR drive are not the characteristics of a NAS-type HDD. There are also cheap non-SMR hard drives in the cheapest line of all, the BarraCuda and they have only a 2 year warranty too. Basically the SMR market is "the lowest cost per GB" market, and IronWolf does not meet that characteristic, also remember that SMR is not for performance focused tasks and that is also another feature that does not fit. IronWolf does offer an excellent performance because it is a NAS type HDD that offers a level-like-Enterprise (the Pro is even closer) performance. So the NAS drives cannot be SMR because of the nature of SMR and the projected tasks of what the HDD will be doing inside a NAS device.

 

The Enterprise market is just another world different from the consumer markets in so many areas, back in the days when the 5TB was launched, the Archive v2 HDDs was the only SMR and it was not for consumers, that drive is no longer under production but now we have the Exos 5E8, its projected usage says "Perfect for Archival data" (cold storage) and the documentation specifies it is SMR, the cost per GB does matter for the Enterprise market because they purchase in bulk, and usually we regular human beings don't pay much attention to this and the logic to us the regular mortals, sometimes don't make any sense in the Enterprise market. They have dedicated equipment to store files that will be accesed once or twice a year (long term storage), and they don't require the best performance of all, but they cannot risk this data to be lost, here is where SMR plays a role and this techonlogy is paired with other techniques for this specific use case. Another example is the HAMR technology, its performance is like an entry level SSD (about 480MB/s), it is not yet available to consumers but this technology is assisted by SMR, CMR, TDMR, MACH.2... Perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR), will eventually run out of steam at about 1 terabit-per-square inch. HAMR should take us up to about 5Tb/square inch. Then a new technology called “heated-dot magnetic recording,” or HDMR, should take us up to 10 Tb/square inch. HDMR essentially combines the techniques used in HAMR with bit-patterned media.

 

"the right drive for the job" means that the drive is prepared for what it was meant to be used, nothing less and nothing more.

Thank you for you great insight.

And I agree with you: consumer needs are significantly different from the enterprise.

And, NAS - for consumers - is not a cold storage, in my opinion.

NAS is accessed more frequently.

And WD Red (up to 6GB) are commonly used in NAS application.

And your text confirms my theory:

They want to separate further their non-Pro to their Pro families of products.

Cheers.

29 minutes ago, amsga said:

I apologise in advance if I seem dense...

 

I kinda understand how SMR impacts performance due to the amount of rewriting in random IOs due to the layering (forgive me for using incorrect term).

I understand why they would be used for cold storage backup rather than running in some NAS or server.

 

Should I start worrying about the WD Black or Seagate Barracuda series as well?

If a company decreases performance of a product, without saying anything, everyone should starts worrying.

Moreover, this could be extended to every product of those companies.

This is particularly worrying, as many people seems to be ok with this - as seen in this thread.

Which I personally think is not seeing the big picture.

Because tomorrow, this may occur with your HDD, Processor, Smartphone, or Camera.

Furthermore, we all should show our opinion on this to the OEMs, and to our local authorities.

I will surely do that.

16 hours ago, mr moose said:

 

I'm not sure I see a problem here,  Every time I buy a new hard drive (about 1 year on average) I don't assume the one I am getting is identical to one I bought a year or 3 ago.  Technologies and manufacturing processes change.  if you buy an i7 you wouldn't assume it was the same as last gens i7 would you?

Processors change series (or generation).

This way, you have a way to tell the difference.

HDD have families, but not generations.

This is wrong doing.

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

The problem is that if they never advertise the technology used, they never have to walk it back. This is what government regulations are for. To avoid these bait-and-switch products from existing.

 

The average consumer only cares about the capacity, not the specs, and the specs don't really mean anything. 

Not exactly.

The perfomrnace - which they advertise - decreased significanlty.

Thus, this is not acceptable.

Guys, I am not against SMR.

And there is space in the market for that

The thing is:

They decreased  the performance of the drives, without (1) telling consumer, and without (2) changing the product name / branding / family.

I reiterate: the main goals of these OEMs - maybe in conjunction - is to:

a) Cheap out on production costs;

b) Enlarge to the difference between the non-Pro and the Pro version, in order to force SOHO and enthusiast users to buy the more expensive Pro versions.

Moreover, this is greatly complicated when people have RAIDs already implemented.

What are you supposed to do?!

Change your entire RAID, and buy all new HDDs?

This is not acceptable, especially because of the two reasons I stated on the second paragraph.

Guys, I understand your point of view.

But this case is more than that.

We are talking of and OEM changing the core of the product, without communicating the change.

Same as, a new phone:

Samsung Quiet S, with a Snapdrogn SoC.

Then, after selling millions of those, Samsung changes to:

Samsung Quiet S, with a MediaTek SoC.

What would you think of that?

Maybe call it Samsung Quiet S1, or S less.

But never call it the same.

Especially when the performance has decreased.

1 minute ago, RejZoR said:

I knew my 8TB Barracuda 5400 RPM was SMR drive and it's listed above. Not sure where I read it tho. They in fact don't state it anywhere on webpage or in their spec sheets. Probably on Geizhals since I use that page to find stuff in Europe.

 

I didn't care, because it's an archive drive. The hot stuff is on 2TB Samsung 850 Pro. But they really should be mentioning things like this. This stuff probably wouldn't ever surface if people using multiple drives in RAID arrays haven't noticed problems when they had regular and SMR drives inside same array.

Thanks for the tip.

Will start using it.

Yes, it depends on your application.

For archiving, yes, you will only feel when you are storing.

Then, for long term storage, there is no significant pani.

But, for NAS application - like WD Red or Seagate Barracuda - I think this is not acceptable.

Personally, I think this is a movement for OEMs to differentiate their Pro versions from their non-Pro versions.

This way, most users (especially SOHO and enthusiast), will spend more on their Pro lineup.

23 minutes ago, williamcll said:

Fortunately I can afford more SSDs.

Fortunately, I can also afford SSDs on my computer.

But, on my NAS, where I have my backups, photos, videos, and much more... HDDs is still the only way to go.

How much would I have spent on SSD to reach my 8TB of total capacity?

Now, I am looking to upgrade my NAS to a 4-bay one, with 3x 8TB HDD, and 1x 512GB SSD for caching.

This situation concerns me.

And, in fact, concerns all of us.

Because it is an OEM changing the specifications of a drive, lowering its performance, without letting the customer know.

You could be watching a performance graph for a WD Red 2TB, but when your new one arrives at your door, we are surprised with a slower performance.

And, all this negative performance, while you are paying the same as before.

Is this fair?

Is this Legal?

Is this acceptable?

Especially when all of these OEMs have expensive drives, reputable names, and loyal customers.

This will be interesting to pay attention.

I, personally, will contact my local authorities and file a complaint!

The three major HDD manufacturer - Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba - have been implementing slower technology (SMR) in their most recent revisions of their hard drives, without telling customers.

Originally, this was noticed by a user, who contacted BlocksAndFiles.com for further investigation.

This was felt as users inserting a new HDD drive to their RAIDs, but the new HDD (with SMR) kept pulling out of the RAID.

In my opinion, this is unacceptable, because manufacturers decreased the performance significantly of their products, while keeping the same marketing name.

You could watch today a video, read a column, or see the performance of a given HDD at your friend's house; and when you purchase the exact same drive (e.g. WD Red 4TB), you would be getting an inferior drive.

Even if you bought a drive in the past, and now hit the "Reorder this item" button, to increase your RAID, you would have issues.

Thus, I consider this a very bad precedent!

Sources

The news I read originally was from NotebookCheck.net, here:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Western-Digital-Seagate-and-Toshiba-have-been-using-slower-technology-in-some-recent-hard-drives-without-telling-customers.461822.0.html

The original investigation was from BlocksAndFiles.com, which separated their articles by manufacturer:

Western Digital: https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/14/wd-red-nas-drives-shingled-magnetic-recording/

Seagate: https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/15/seagate-2-4-and-8tb-barracuda-and-desktop-hdd-smr/

Toshiba: https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/16/toshiba-desktop-disk-drives-undocumented-shingle-magnetic-recording/

Additional sources:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wd-fesses-up-some-red-hdds-use-slow-smr-tech

Quotes

NotebookCheck.com:

Quote

A series of articles by Chris Mellor from the storage specialist website, Blocks and Files, has led to discussions about Western Digital (WD), Seagate, and Toshiba using shingled magnetic recording (SMR) across various consumer drives.

 

 

Quote

SMR is a technology that allows manufacturers to fit more data on to a drive platter by overlapping the sectors while still leaving a clear area for the read head to pass over. This results in a drive that can read at regular hard drive speed but is much slower during writing due to the way it needs to handle the overlapping data.

Quote

The issue is that these SMR drives sit within product lines where the poor write performance could impact on the systems in which they reside. Without specifying that these drives are SMR, users aren't able to avoid them if their use case is one that would be impacted.

 

 BlocksAndFiles.com's Western Digital column:

Quote

 

Alan Brown, a network manager at UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory, the UK’s largest university-based space research group, told us about his problems adding a new WD Red NAS drive to a RAID array at his home. Although it was sold as a RAID drive, the device 'keep getting kicked out of RAID arrays due to errors during resilvering', he said.

 

Quote

There is a similar problem mentioned on a Synology Forum where a user added 6TB WD Red [WD60EFAX] drive to a RAID setup using three WD Red 6TB drives [WD60EFRX] in SHR1 mode. He added a fourth drive to convert to SHR2 but conversion took two days and did not complete.

BlocksAndFiles.com's Seagate column:

Quote

 

 Some Seagate Barracuda Compute and Desktop disk drives use shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology which can exhibit slow data write speeds. But Seagate documentation does not spell this out.

 

Quote

Geizhals, a German-language price comparison website, lists seven Seagate SMR drives. 

- Barracuda 2TB – 7,200rpm – SATA 6gig – model name – ST2000DM008

- Barracuda 4TB – 5,400rpm – SATA 6gig – ST4000DM004

- Barracuda 8TB – 5,400rpm – SATA 6gig – ST8000DM004

- Desktop HDD 5TB – 5,900rpm – SATA 6gig – ST5000DM000

- Exos 8TB – 5900rpm – SATA 6gig – ST8000AS0003

- Archive v2 6TB – 5,900rpm – SATA 6gig – ST6000AS0002

- Archive v2 8TB – 5,900rpm – SATA 6gig – ST8000AS0002

BlocksAndFiles.com's Toshiba column:

Quote

Toshiba told Blocks & Files yesterday that its P300 desktop disk drives use shingled magnetic recording technology (SMR), which can exhibit slow data write speeds. However, the company does not mention this in end user drive documentation.

Quote

According to the Geizhals price comparison website, Toshiba’s P300 desktop 4TB (HDWD240UZSVA) and 6TB (HDWD260UZSVA) SATA disk drives use SMR.

CHANGE LOG:

18/04/2020 @ 03:23pm GMT - Original post

19/04/2020 @ Unknown - Moderator changes (thank you!)

20/04/2020 @ 08:59am GMT - Added Tom's Hardware source, separated the Seagate quotes, and added a clearer introduction.

One day to go, and we need to stay strong Folding@Home :-)

Give it POWERRRRR!

Razer Blade is my ice cream of choice.

It got all the flavours I love, specially the portability - to eat while moving - and the sheer power - to have a big mix of flavours inside my mouth.

Cheers!

Thank LinusMediaGroup and Razer for the giveaway opportunity.

For every member of LMG:

a) What are your main difficulties being an internet "celebrity" regarding your work and home life?

b) How do you fell about - almost - everybody being a specialist in anything you do in the channel?

Tech from A to Z, but we prefer in between.

What makes you interested in the ZBOX when compared to a traditional desktop?

This PC is exactly what I need.

Just because it can be placed in the shelf below my TV, having a big screen to play my favourite games.

It's size (pretty small) and flexibility (to place an SSD and fast memory) is very important to me.

The specifications is exactly what I need to play at medium to high setting, in order to see those good sunsets.

Very nice plans!
Congratulations on the new move

I will miss the kitchen.
But hey, that is progress...

And yes!

I would love to see more VLOGs on this LMG evolution.

Your Vessel username:

hitardo

Links to your two favorite videos on our Vessel page that you watched and liked:

https://www.vessel.com/videos/DkWN4qqW1

https://www.vessel.com/videos/LCoY5zfFf

You can gain bonus entries by sharing the link to both this giveaway and our Vessel referral link, http://vessel.com/linustech

https://twitter.com/hitardo/status/580330962833260544

I am pointing at your rig

PS: I had some issues with Vessel playback, stating that there was some internet connection issues, and I am on Auto on HD...

Hope to see improvements in the future.

Best of luck!

Thank you guys!

I learned a bit, and I will dig more into some things.

Here's a trivia: to get the same loudness of 110dB, the DT990 250 ohms needs 25 milliwatts of signal power, while the HE-6 50 ohms needs 447 milliwats of signal power. That's 17.88x more power than the 250 ohms DT990, even though the DT990 250 ohms got 5x more impedance than the HE-6. Try to guess why...

It is due to efficiency.

The HIFIMAN HE-6 have 83.5 DB of efficiency.

It is not certain of the value of the BeyerDynamic DT990, but it is common to see the value 96 dB.

If you have more input and information to give me, I will certainly appreciate it

BeyerDynamic DT990 250ohm are the one I choose.

Just because I prefer an open pair of headphones that are flat.

Audio-Technica ATH-M50 are closed, thus getting uncomfortable over long periods of time wearing them, and there are too much bass.

It is recommended that you test the headphones before taking the decision on buying an amp or not.

But, as a reference, you can see the headphones impedance.

For example, the majority of Sennheiser's HD 5-series (558, 598, etc...) have 32ohm of impedance.

This value of impedance is relatively low, and makes them drivable for almost all devices: computer, laptop or smartphone.

My BeyerDynamic DT990 250ohm need an amplifier.

There are many versions of this DT990: 32, 250, 300 and 600ohm.

Only the 32ohm does not require an amp.

I use FiiO E06 on the go and a Topping NX1 on my laptop.

Still choosing an DAC.

If you want to kill two birds with one stone, you can buy and Amp + DAC, like the Fiio E10.

Cheers!

Great article!

I am tired of explaining AMOLED is the same as OLED