In article ,
bob prohaska   wrote:
>Martin Gregorie  wrote:
>> On Sun, 13 Dec 2020 16:38:29 +0000, bob prohaska wrote:
>>
>>> I attribute the acceptable performance to the drive being new,
>>> with 1 TB capacity. Once it starts re-writing old sectors it'll likely
>>> slow much more.
>>>
>> AFAIK trim isn't supposed to do anything useful to a hard drive
>> regardless of speed or capacity, but I know nothing about SMR, except
>> that an article I just read says its really only suitable for large scale
>> data storage with minimal updating, i.e. not something I'd use for the
>> (main? only?) storage volume for a Linux or Windows system and definitely
>> not for a journalled fling system.
>>
>Practically, SMR is not readily avoidable. It's denser and therefore cheaper
>than conventional perpendicular recording and has found its way, unbidden, to
>a wide range of sizes, speeds and brands.

It shouldn't be in drives intended for NAS usage.  The 8-TB Toshiba N300s I
bought a couple months ago don't do SMR, and it looks like they offer
capacities up to at least 14 TB.  Look for "CMR" as the antonym of SMR.

Looking at Toshiba's other drives, it appears the only ones that use SMR are
their 2.5" drives.  Seagate only uses it in 2.5" drives and their Barracuda
and Archive drive families.  Western Digital uses it in at least some 2.5"
drives and some Blue and Red drives (what's troubling is that the Red drives
are supposedly for NAS use, though all Red Pro drives and Red drives 8 TB and
larger are CMR).

It would seem that avoiding SMR isn't as difficult as it may have first
appeared, though you are going to pay a bit more for drives that don't use
it.

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