Adding more storage looking for $/TB while avoiding the crap

[LOST TALE]

So I've been following https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/

and there's so much more crap to go through now that I didn't have to years ago.

Crap such as:

 

The reselling of used hard drives.

Massive shipping costs not shown on pcpart picker.

SMR without making it clear it's SMR.

 

So have any of you gone through this process and have reached a recommendation?

Let's help each other where we are best at PC hardware.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

How big do you want the drive?

 

Id just shuck externals. 10TB+ should have no smr, and there normally very good values.

 

EDIT changed 8 to 10tb

[LOST TALE]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id just shuck externals. 

shuck=?

[Helpful Tech Witch]

3 minutes ago, LOST TALE said:

shuck=?

not deal with them

NM, i was thinking of it as slang. 

[FakeNSA]

1 minute ago, LOST TALE said:

shuck=?

As in: Remove the plastic case so you can install the standard 3.5in drive inside your system.

[GhostRoadieBL]

4 minutes ago, LOST TALE said:

shuck=?

take the Seagate 8TB desktop external drive, remove the case and pull the Sata HDD out for use. 
I've done this a few times with the 8TB ones for my NAS, only writing to them occasionally for adding media and then lots of reads so SMR isn't a huge issue. 
best part is these 8TB drives go onsale for $185 CAD all the time

[Helpful Tech Witch]

there is the 16tb seagate EXOS enterprise. thats .03$/GB. IDK how much it would be to ship.

[VeganJoy]

1 minute ago, LOST TALE said:

shuck=?

s h u c c

 

you remove the hard drive from an external drive housing, like a WD passport or similar. kinda tossup on WD externals as iirc theres red label drives and white label drives, and white is smr. not a super crazy storage person so i dunno there. external hdds are usually much cheaper as theyre marketed towards a different audience and you can sometimes get them under 15 bucks per tb

[BobVonBob]

3 minutes ago, LOST TALE said:

shuck=?

Opening them up and removing the drives inside. They aren't particularly high quality drives, but they are cheap.

 

Wow a lot of people explained that in a very short time

Edited September 9, 2020 by BobVonBob

[minibois]

6 minutes ago, LOST TALE said:

SMR without making it clear it's SMR.

So have any of you gone through this process and have reached a recommendation?

If you want a HDD without SMR, you're basically looking at NAS drives (not including the WD Red), such as the Red Plus, Red pro, Ironwolf (Pro), etc. or high end desktop drives like the WD Black or Toshiba X300.

 

Most 'normal' desktop drives like the WD Blue, Seagate Barracuda or Toshiba P300 are SMR.

Or of course shucking external drives is possible too; just gotta make sure the connectors are not soldered onto them (which I don't know if they do it on 3.5" drives, but that was kind of a thing on some 2.5" WD external drives).

 

/r/datahoarders probably has some good info on that

[LOST TALE]

10 minutes ago, minibois said:

If you want a HDD without SMR, you're basically looking at NAS drives (not including the WD Red), such as the Red Plus, Red pro, Ironwolf (Pro), etc. or high end desktop drives like the WD Black or Toshiba X300.

 

Most 'normal' desktop drives like the WD Blue, Seagate Barracuda or Toshiba P300 are SMR.

Or of course shucking external drives is possible too; just gotta make sure the connectors are not soldered onto them (which I don't know if they do it on 3.5" drives, but that was kind of a thing on some 2.5" WD external drives).

 

/r/datahoarders probably has some good info on that

Since when were they all SMR? Was it so 8 years ago? Isn't SMR the thing where it has to rewrite over a lot of things sometime to fit in new data?

[AbydosOne]

12 minutes ago, VeganJoy said:

white is smr

*looks at the six WD white label drives on my desk, all of which aren't SMR*

 

White label drives are just the ones WD didn't bother putting a fancy label on. They can be anything, really; not anything for sure.

[VeganJoy]

Just now, AbydosOne said:

*looks at the six WD white label drives on my desk, all of which aren't SMR*

 

White label drives are just the ones WD didn't bother putting a fancy label on. They can be anything, really; not anything for sure.

whoops lol, i recall people throwing a fit on reddit about white label ones but redditors throwing fits about things aint new haha. ngl i cant even remember which one between smr and cmr are better, i have no use for that kinda ridiculous storage. i have a 4tb backup and havent even backed up my <1 tb amount of stuff lol

[minibois]

2 minutes ago, LOST TALE said:

Since when were they all SMR? Was it so 8 years ago?

Unfortunately I don't know that.

SMR is something I have only been looking into since Linus did a video on it couple years ago. Now that I need a new drives + the WD Red thing I have been looking a bit more into it; so all my info is rather recent.

3 minutes ago, LOST TALE said:

Isn't SMR the thing where it has to rewrite over a lot of things sometime to fit in new data?

Yes.

There is no penalty on reading, it can still do that normally.

But when it needs to write something when there is already another shingle written overtop of it, it needs to read that shingle, write it in cache, write the thing you are actually writing and then rewrite the shingle it had to save somewhere.

Of course if the shingle overtop had another shingle overtop there, and that one another overtop.. etc. it can be very slow.

 

Random write operations could take very long, which is why it is not fit for certain heavily random workcases.

[LOST TALE]

Just now, minibois said:

Unfortunately I don't know that.

SMR is something I have only been looking into since Linus did a video on it couple years ago. Now that I need a new drives + the WD Red thing I have been looking a bit more into it; so all my info is rather recent.

Yes.

There is no penalty on reading, it can still do that normally.

But when it needs to write something when there is already another shingle written overtop of it, it needs to read that shingle, write it in cache, write the thing you are actually writing and then rewrite the shingle it had to save somewhere.

Of course if the shingle overtop had another shingle overtop there, and that one another overtop.. etc. it can be very slow.

 

Random write operations could take very long, which is why it is not fit for certain heavily random workcases.

I'm totally fine using it for Archiving and moving files to another drive for active use but I'm very worried that it'll well take forever for something at some point even thought I'm not actively working on anything on it.

[LOST TALE]

Where can I tell if a drive is CMR or SMR? ok checking manufacturer website seems to work.

[LOST TALE]

Thanks everyone. I bought the WD40EZRZ as it's the cheapest and clearly CMR.

It does appear to have some warranty issues as its OEM. Seems hit or miss from the reviews with failure events.