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Forum Discussion
shingled magnetic recording (SMR) hard drive fiasco - inquiring on recommendations
It's been a while since I jumped on the forum but what brings me here is my NAS volume utilization is hovering around 65%. I believe it's good until 80% and then starts to bark at you about storage ...
I ran across this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWYnM58C1ro
Might be worth following, as he is planning some testing of these drives in RAID.
I saw someone mention weighing them to see if it has fewer platters. I don't know about that, the platters are pretty light. But that means you have to buy it first, too.
Sandshark wrote:
I saw someone mention weighing them to see if it has fewer platters. I don't know about that, the platters are pretty light. But that means you have to buy it first, too.
Yeah, I don't think I'd trust a weight comparison. There could be other component differences between the models, or even the case.
WD did respond with a list of specific models that used SMR and said that all other models did not. Personally I'd just go with that.
It'll be interesting to see the performance numbers for RAID resync when the youtube guy above presents his testing results. Also, if other folks here have the EFAX models above, it'd be helpful to hear your experiences.
The negative impact of SMR does depend on the details of how well WD manages the cache, and how many SMR zones are on the disks (also the capacity of CMR zones on the disk). No matter how you do it, write performance will sometimes be "unpredictable". But if they found a way to handle RAID resync and reshaping in a reasonable time, it might be acceptable for a light-duty NAS. Personally I'll stick with CMR though.
I did run across a 2018 WD whitepaper on this btw - https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/collateral/white-paper/white-paper-shingled-magnetic-recording-helioseal-technology.pdf
StephenB wrote:
Sandshark wrote:I saw someone mention weighing them to see if it has fewer platters. I don't know about that, the platters are pretty light. But that means you have to buy it first, too.
Yeah, I don't think I'd trust a weight comparison. There could be other component differences between the models, or even the case.
WD did respond with a list of specific models that used SMR and said that all other models did not. Personally I'd just go with that.
It'll be interesting to see the performance numbers for RAID resync when the youtube guy above presents his testing results. Also, if other folks here have the EFAX models above, it'd be helpful to hear your experiences.
The negative impact of SMR does depend on the details of how well WD manages the cache, and how many SMR zones are on the disks (also the capacity of CMR zones on the disk). No matter how you do it, write performance will sometimes be "unpredictable". But if they found a way to handle RAID resync and reshaping in a reasonable time, it might be acceptable for a light-duty NAS. Personally I'll stick with CMR though.
I did run across a 2018 WD whitepaper on this btw - https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/collateral/white-paper/white-paper-shingled-magnetic-recording-helioseal-technology.pdf
I saw that same chart off the link in my original post and hopefully those are the ONLY SMR drives. However, I've seen a few Amazon reviews claiming the 8TB drives also have SMR. Unfortunately, WD was shaddy here and made it difficult to trust them at their word. What they need to do is put the recording method into the tech specs so people can make inform decisions on what's best for their enviroment/design. Otherwise, I agree it's CMR for me as I want no part of the online horror stories about mixing SMR an CMR drives and failed RAIDS.
My NAS on which I hade to replace a failed WD60EFRX with a WD60EFAX just completed a scrub for the first time since the replacement, and it took almost 2x longer than before. I don't think there was a lot of difference in the traffic on the NAS that might have been the cause.
Sandshark wrote:I saw someone mention weighing them to see if it has fewer platters. I don't know about that, the platters are pretty light. But that means you have to buy it first, too.
Right, and the sceince made sense to me as well since we are talking grams or simple physics here. This guy has a whole database where he weighed the entire drive and could predict the # of TBs per platter and therefore can infer whether SMR was used or not based on past HD platter count using PMR/CMR. It's worth a look if you're curious but of course he hasn't tested every drive and caveats his methods: The HDD Platter Capacity Database
In short, if your platter/TB ratio was 1.5-1.67TB/platter or less then your drive doesn't appear to employ SMR. It seemed all the SMR drives are now capable of 2.0TB/platter. It was also nice to see him confirm the 8TB+ Red drives as benig CMR/PMR and just rebadged HGST Ultrastars:
Rebadged HGST Ultrastar
WD80EFAX-xxKNBNx 8TB (5/10)*
WD101EFAX-xxLDBNx 10TB (6/12)**So at this point, I'll either spring for the 10TB drive above or the 12TB drive in hopes of getting ahead of my data hoarding. Either one I believe is a safe bet at this point given the press releases and other available sources. I won't run out and buy a scale to weigh them but will certainly run some CrystalDiskMark tests as a preliminary check.
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