avoid SMR at all cost? must buy PMR?

[dfsgsfa]

looking to buy a 4tb drive, and some comments on smr / pmr are bugging me.

 

i was originally lookung at wd blue 5400 rpm drive, 

 

1 how do i know drive is smr / pmr?

2 how does it affect reliability / lifespan?

 

[ProjectBox153]

What are you looking to use the drive for?

[mariushm]

https://blog.westerndigital.com/wd-red-nas-drives/

 

 

https://blog.westerndigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2020_04_22_WD_SMR_SKUs_1Slide.pdf

 

 

smr drives are just slower at writing, otherwise just as reliable ... for storing movies music and even games they're fine. not good for when you write lots of things often , and overwrite things a lot.

 

 

[dfsgsfa]

4 minutes ago, mariushm said:

smr drives are just slower at writing, otherwise just as reliable ... for storing movies music and even games they're fine

 

6 minutes ago, ProjectBox153 said:

to use the drive for

just storage of games and movies

at 4tb wb blue , would that be smr or what? coz that pic skipped it..

 

[illerin]

16 hours ago, dfsgsfa said:

 

just storage of games and movies

at 4tb wb blue , would that be smr or what? coz that pic skipped it..

 

the first image says it could be either, but then the second image states that only WD Blue 2tb and 6tb are SMR and all other are CMR(read the note at the bottom)

[mariushm]

No, the second picture says  AT THE DATE OF 6th OF JULY , those models in the picture were IN PRODUCTION.

 

It doesn't say if a week before that document they still made 4 TB WD Blue drives with SMR, or if a week from that day, they started making WD Blue with SMR again. 

 

There was a 4 TB WD Blue with SMR made before, and since there's no guarantee you will order a drive and get a drive manufacturer AFTER the 6th of July 2020, you can flip a coin and have about the same chance of guessing the correct answer.

 

The only guaranteed CRM drives from WD are the 8 TB and above, the WD Black and Purple, and the 1 TB drives (makes no sense for SMR on such drives because they can probably store around 700 GB per side of platter).

 

 

[illerin]

Here is the model number for 4tb WD Blue CMR HDD WD40EZRZ. 

 

 

source: https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-blue-hdd

[dfsgsfa]

16 hours ago, illerin said:

Here is the model number for 4tb WD Blue CMR HDD WD40EZRZ. 

 

at least i can confirm wd.....AZ is smr with 256mb cache, while RZ has 64mb cache but its crm

 

the sales person took the wrong model to me, luckily i refunded the AZ smr

[smokeweedeveryday]

On 10/22/2020 at 6:35 PM, dfsgsfa said:

looking to buy a 4tb drive, and some comments on smr / pmr are bugging me.

 

i was originally lookung at wd blue 5400 rpm drive, 

 

1 how do i know drive is smr / pmr?

2 how does it affect reliability / lifespan?

 

ive got a bunch of 8tb seagate smr hdds and they work perfectly fine.

if you're worried about performance you could get some cheap ssds and use them as cache drives

 

you can do that with Storage Spaces in windows 10 pro, see here and here. it works great for me