Why are Drive Manufacturers in TROUBLE?

[RILEYISMYNAME]

Hard drive companies have been caught secretly selling Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) hard drives with bad-to-unusable performance. But how bad is it really?

 

 

 

Check out ServeTheHome's coverage of this issue: https://www.servethehome.com/wd-red-smr-vs-cmr-tested-avoid-red-smr/

Additional details: https://www.servethehome.com/wd-red-dm-smr-update-3-vendors-bail-and-wd-knew-of-zfs-issues/

Also, on the swapping SMR drives and not telling anyone: https://www.servethehome.com/surreptitiously-swapping-smr-into-hard-drives-must-end/

 

Ars Technica's tests: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/western-digitals-smr-disks-arent-great-but-theyre-not-garbage/

[BobVonBob]

Yikes that resilvering time would be terrifying.

[Demanded]

As someone with a whole bunch of 4tb (ST4000DM004) and 8TB (ST8000DM004) Seagate drives that I just found out were on the list (https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/15/seagate-2-4-and-8tb-barracuda-and-desktop-hdd-smr/) in my Unraid servers, I wonder if there is some way to trade them in.  I was honestly wondering at the performance when expanding the array.  

[Nystemy]

SMR is all fine and good. IF one knows it is there...

Like for general storage I don't mind SMR on a drive.

For a RAID array, I would prefer to not have it... _{(Or at least go fully host managed since then one can be a lot more efficient in how one handles it and not face the downsides to the same degree.)}

But HDD manufacturers ineptitude at properly stating if a drive uses SMR or not is a problem, that thankfully might be fixed for the forseeable future now.

And Western Digital's shoehorning of SMR into NAS drives is the real problem. That honestly wouldn't had been a problem if the inclusion of SMR were clearly labeled.

Just write SMR on the drive label, and include it on the spec sheet, how hard can it be.
Though, would be interesting to see a drive where one could choose and configure SMR to personal preference. Ie, one can decide how much of the drive should use CMR/SMR, or if SMR should be used at all.

[Neamow]

I posted the same comment on YouTube, but I just want to thank LTT for this video, and I guess this has the best chance of it being seen by them.

 

Holy crap. I was literally days away from buying two more WD drives for my NAS. The original ones are running out of space, but have been out of stock. I found the same brand and capacity, and thought it's the same, but thanks to this video saw that the old ones had the code WD60EFRX (CMR), while the new ones I was looking to buy had the code WD60EFAX (SMR). This is so untransparent! There is nothing on the retailer's website, or the product packaging, images, etc, to indicate these drives were any different from each other. I would've unknowingly run into this issue were it not for this video, so thanks LTT!

[Mopy]

What Did I say 

I bought a SMR Drive By Accident finaly linus points it out to comunity, I wish I could get a refund for it tho. 

[EZimm555]

I have some in a free nas and was wondering how do i submit for to have them replaced?

[INurHome]

If WD, Seagate and Toshiba are, as reported elsewhere, some of the biggest offenders which brand of HDD could I consider as alternatives?

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 minutes ago, INurHome said:

If WD, Seagate and Toshiba are, as reported elsewhere, some of the biggest offenders which brand of HDD could I consider as alternatives?

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks.

 

WD Toshiba and Seagate are the only HDD makers out there.

 

WD was the only one to brand DM-SMR drives for NAS use though. DM-SMR drives work mostly ok in desktops.

 

There really aren't any alternatives, go ssds, or just buy CMR drvies.

[Luscious]

I've been using four 8TB SMR Seagate Archive drives paired up with StableBit DrivePool to host my 32TB media server. I have to say that in the 5 years I've been using it I have NEVER experienced a problem and they work phenomenally well for both streaming BD rips and writing large MKV files.

 

I also have owned both a 6TB and 10TB Red drive (CMR) for daily full system backups and have never had issues with those either.

 

What I MAY have come across thanks to your video here is a problem with my three WD7500BPKX drives that I am using in RAID. I am constantly seeing a disk get dropped from the array and having to rebuild. I've always been blaming the raid controller but I am now wondering if these drives are SMR causing my array to drop drives so regularly. Obviously I cannot use RAID0 or risk data loss but even with RAID5 they don't seem to want to play well with the on board Intel RAID controller. Rebuilds take HOURS to perform and are painfully slow for what are just 3x750GB capacity. I doubt it is a BIOS, sata port or Windows problem since the disk shows up in the system every time.

 

Seems I'm having a hard time as well finding a spec sheet for this WD7500BPKX drive. Can somebody chime in if it's a SMR or CMR drive?

 

I do plan to replace these three drives with a single 2TB SSD in the future - I just couldn't afford one when they were still going for four digits in 2015 and RAID was the more cost effective option.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, Luscious said:

I've been using four 8TB SMR Seagate Archive drives paired up with StableBit DrivePool to host my 32TB media server. I have to say that in the 5 years I've been using it I have NEVER experienced a problem and they work phenomenally well for both streaming BD rips and writing large MKV files.

 

I also have owned both a 6TB and 10TB Red drive (CMR) for daily full system backups and have never had issues with those either.

 

What I MAY have come across thanks to your video here is a problem with my three WD7500BPKX drives that I am using in RAID. I am constantly seeing a disk get dropped from the array and having to rebuild. I've always been blaming the raid controller but I am now wondering if these drives are SMR causing my array to drop drives so regularly. Obviously I cannot use RAID0 or risk data loss but even with RAID5 they don't seem to want to play well with the on board Intel RAID controller. Rebuilds take HOURS to perform and are painfully slow for what are just 3x750GB capacity. I doubt it is a BIOS, sata port or Windows problem since the disk shows up in the system every time.

 

Seems I'm having a hard time as well finding a spec sheet for this WD7500BPKX drive. Can somebody chime in if it's a SMR or CMR drive?

 

I do plan to replace these three drives with a single 2TB SSD in the future - I just couldn't afford one when they were still going for four digits in 2015 and RAID was the more cost effective option.

why dsont you test it ? but i dont think there smr

 

also those intel on  board raid is known to be bad, so id stay away from that as a raid solution. Id switch to software raid as it is better in almost every way.

[Windows7ge]

I picked up a super cheap WD 3TB drive to rebuild a ZFS raidz1 array for an application I have. The rebuild only took overnight so I think it's safe to assume it was a CMR drive.

 

This is also a good thing because as it turns out the application I use this array for is not compatible with SMR drives of which I only became aware of the existence of SMR drives at that time. So I think I'm in the clear but it looks like I have to be wary moving forward on new HDD purchases.

[Egg-Roll]

3 hours ago, Luscious said:

I've been using four 8TB SMR Seagate Archive drives paired up with StableBit DrivePool to host my 32TB media server. I have to say that in the 5 years I've been using it I have NEVER experienced a problem and they work phenomenally well for both streaming BD rips and writing large MKV files.

 

I also have owned both a 6TB and 10TB Red drive (CMR) for daily full system backups and have never had issues with those either.

 

What I MAY have come across thanks to your video here is a problem with my three WD7500BPKX drives that I am using in RAID. I am constantly seeing a disk get dropped from the array and having to rebuild. I've always been blaming the raid controller but I am now wondering if these drives are SMR causing my array to drop drives so regularly. Obviously I cannot use RAID0 or risk data loss but even with RAID5 they don't seem to want to play well with the on board Intel RAID controller. Rebuilds take HOURS to perform and are painfully slow for what are just 3x750GB capacity. I doubt it is a BIOS, sata port or Windows problem since the disk shows up in the system every time.

 

Seems I'm having a hard time as well finding a spec sheet for this WD7500BPKX drive. Can somebody chime in if it's a SMR or CMR drive?

 

I do plan to replace these three drives with a single 2TB SSD in the future - I just couldn't afford one when they were still going for four digits in 2015 and RAID was the more cost effective option.

SMR day to day use are fine, some brown stuff hitting the fan happens when a rebuild is needed, in almost every scenario. Like I stated in the WD topic, a longer rebuild time due to a platter tech is a bad thing, esp when the cost savings are not passed on to us.

 

As for your 3 750GBs they should be CMR drives: https://geizhals.eu/western-digital-wd-black-mobile-750gb-wd7500bpkx-a978485.html In fact afaik only WD Blues and Reds 2-6Tb are SMR nothing else. Also I do believe the dropouts are due to Intels raid controller as well.

[caincha]

Well and how do we know if the drive we bought is either CMR or SMR? 

[Egg-Roll]

1 hour ago, caincha said:

Well and how do we know if the drive we bought is either CMR or SMR? 

Depends on the company, a good start is looking up the model number on the drive itself. All consumer drives from the big 3 can be SMR (P for Toshiba, Barracuda for Seagate, Blue for WD), and only Reds and Archives (seagate) can be SMR. Assume anything made by these 3 to be SMR if made this year using those product numbers and since at least April 2019 from WD as that is when the first sightings of Reds being SMR appeared. A easy way of knowing if your drive model is SMR or not is by using the site I linked above, they seem to be fairly accurate as long as it's not some weird number like below. (however mine will still show up on the site, as it is popular)

 

If you don't want to yank the computer apart CrystalDiskInfo should tell you the model number: The part you need is WD80EZAZ nothing else really, I'm assuming it'll be the same for the other 2.

Also, sorry this drive will not show up normally under any WD catalog because it is actually a US7SAL080 drive from a WD Elements/MyBook which used to be a WD Red drive/variant, however WD Reds have been moving to the US7SAN8T0 series which is air instead of helium, meaning they are using a denser CMR platter tech removing one platter making air (a cheaper production line) drives possible. 

[Luscious]

3 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

SMR day to day use are fine, some brown stuff hitting the fan happens when a rebuild is needed, in almost every scenario. Like I stated in the WD topic, a longer rebuild time due to a platter tech is a bad thing, esp when the cost savings are not passed on to us.

 

As for your 3 750GBs they should be CMR drives: https://geizhals.eu/western-digital-wd-black-mobile-750gb-wd7500bpkx-a978485.html In fact afaik only WD Blues and Reds 2-6Tb are SMR nothing else. Also I do believe the dropouts are due to Intels raid controller as well.

Thanks for that info. WD are real tricksters. They discontinued the 750GB mobile Black but kept the 500GB and 1TB. The smaller one they sell now is CMR but the 1TB and 2TB models are listed as SMR.

[Bykow]

Ok, so I'm legit pissed right now. The entire array of disk in my FreeNAS are SMR. 6x6TB...

 

Does anyone knows how to contact WD about that ? I live outside of the US, if that changes anything.

[Velcade]

Now we have 'PLUS' drives...

[lewdicrous]

1 hour ago, Bykow said:

Does anyone knows how to contact WD about that ? I live outside of the US, if that changes anything.

Look for a support method on their site, usually by email.