Help buying new HDD SMR vs CMR

[LOST TALE]

Goal is storage. Performance is handled by other drives.

Daily Backup involves Random Writing (because it updates instead of replacing the backup). However the update amount is <50MB per daily update

 

Willing to pay premium/GB for smaller drives due to slow increase in storage needs and cheaper to wait for cheaper future tech. Thus staying mostly with max 4TB

 

If the SMR drive has separation between SMR sectors smaller than the drive's cache, then it should never be horrible even at max capacity. If however it relies on CMR sector, then it's a little more expensive considering <500Gb would likely have to be free.

 

I could use it as a torrents/movies/games archive.

I don't know how well it would handle writing torrents to it since they are downloaded in pieces.

I also wonder how well it would do for recording Video. Its userbench random 4k performance is awesome.

 

Prices are in CAD. Must ship to Canada

Cheapest $/gb SMR Sold by Aero Malls and Fulfilled by Amazon. 82.99

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B087QTVCHH?tag=pcp0f-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1

 

Cheapest $/gb  CMR Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca. 109.00

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B071KVB4F8?tag=pcp0f-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1

 

Tentative conclusion: 83$ SMR drive better $/gb even if 500GB are left free.

 

useful links: https://nascompares.com/answer/list-of-wd-cmr-and-smr-hard-drives-hdd/

https://www.seagate.com/ca/en/internal-hard-drives/cmr-smr-list/

 

ssd (not shown) is a price bot glitch and fake.

the barracuda is 90.50 due to min 10$ shipping

The ES.3 has complaints that the drives are used. Seller is 3rd party.

 

 

https://hdd.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/206623/SEAGATE-ST3000NM0023

https://hdd.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/243570/ST4000DM004-2CV104

https://hdd.userbenchmark.com/Search?searchTerm=WD40EZAZ

[Electronics Wizardy]

SMR should be fine here. You don't seem to need much write performance. For torrents, Id have it download to another drive, then just copy the file when its down downloaded. I think many programs allow this.

[LOST TALE]

Soon after starting to copy a 1TB archive, the drive slowed to a write speed of about 30 MB/s and will now take 17 hours to complete.

Whereas the normal sequential write speed is 200MB on diskmark and about 130MB in practice to start.

 

Fortunately if it's just an archive it should be ok. 

 

I have the CMR version of this drive which never does this and would keep a high 180MB/s throughout a transfer. 

CMR: WD40EZAZ

SMR: WD40EZRZ