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Forum Discussion
Are Archive hard Drives ok for Readynas?
Are Archive hard Drives(aka Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) ok for Readynas?
They kind of overlap the magnetic strips like shingles, and have a double wide reader/writer head or something like that. Makes for faster read speeds but slower write speeds.
I just purchased a 8TB external, when I opened it past the point of no return, I discovered it was an " archive" drive.
Please advise.
Thanks.
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I don't recommend them as internal drives for the NAS. A couple users found them acceptable, though many did not. Seagate does not recommend them for NAS.
I've also seen posts saying the external SMR drives also misbehaved when plugged into a USB port. If they work for you, be very careful on ejection.
One option is to connect it to a PC and use it for to back up the NAS over the network. Last time I checked, Windows drivers handled this drive technology better than linux.
miogpsrocks wrote:
They kind of overlap the magnetic strips like shingles, and have a double wide reader/writer head or something like that. Makes for faster read speeds but slower write speeds.
The overlap is correct, but the implications are somewhat off.
The overlap allows the drive to hold about 25% more data, which lowers the cost per terabyte. Read speeds are pretty much the same as PMR drives.
But when you write to track X, the write operation destroys what's on track X+1. So the writes need to "ripple"
- read track X+1
- write track X
- read track X+2
- rewrite track X+1
- read track X+3
- rewrite track X+2
- ...
The drive is divided into zones (with at least one unused track between the zones). So the "ripple" continues to the end of the zone.
They are equiped with large caches, and the firmware on the drive orders the write requests to try and minimize the performance impact. But if you do sustained writes, you will run into a serious performance dropoff.
Another implication is that some commands (spin down for instance) don't take effect for a long time. The drives will keep running the "ripples" in the background until they are complete. This can confuse software that expects the commands to take effect when they are issued.
I don't have many official source to quote, but there are multiple discussions and articles online advising not to do that. And it would make sense as these drives are really not designed for this type of usage and can be really slow in write speed.
You should look at the datasheet of your HDD model for more information.
That said, these drives are built for 24/7 operation and archive. So if you want to use your ReadyNAS for true archiving, which I doubt, then maybe. Otherwise, I really wouldn't use these drives in a ReadyNAS.
Here is one example:
"Archive HDDs are not intended for surveillance or NAS applications, and you may experience lower performance in these environments."
"Engineered for 24×7 workloads of 180TB per year"
"Best-Fit Applications • Cost-effective online archiving • Object storage • Big Data cold storage • Cloud active archive • Web-scale archiving"
There was a flood of issues and discussion here when these drives first came onto the market. Netgear did make some disk driver patches in the ReadyNAS at the time to overcome some of the issues. After that discusssion died down - not sure if that was because 8 TB PMR drives came onto the market, or if there were other reasons.
jak0lantash wrote:
That said, these drives are built for 24/7 operation and archive. So if you want to use your ReadyNAS for true archiving, which I doubt, then maybe. Otherwise, I really wouldn't use these drives in a ReadyNAS.
RAID sync also presents obvious problems. If you must use the drive in the NAS, then creating a separate JBOD and storing archival material in those shares is the safest approach. Then avoid maintenance functions like balance, defrag, etc.
StephenB wrote:There was a flood of issues and discussion here when these drives first came onto the market. Netgear did make some disk driver patches in the ReadyNAS at the time to overcome some of the issues. After that discusssion died down - not sure if that was because 8 TB PMR drives came onto the market, or if there were other reasons.
.So how does it stand today after the patches? The drives technical work but still not recommended?
Ugh!
I guess I will use my 8TB as intended as a stand-alone backup to my Readynas for picture and documents,etc..
I purchase this as an external drive and opened it up to use the hard drive in an upgrade.
Thanks.
miogpsrocks wrote:
I purchase this as an external drive and opened it up to use the hard drive in an upgrade.
It is tempting to do that because of the lower price, though even if they are PMR they aren't designed for RAID (no TLER for example).
Most Seagate USB drives > 4 TB are SMR. Western Digital drives don't use SMR.
Hopefully HAMR will come along soon. The 16 TB seagates expected in 2018 are allegedly HAMR.
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