Scott Alfter  wrote:
>
> 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.

It remains  fairly difficult if I want a 2.5" drive rather than 3.5".
Is there some special  trick for finding them? By pure luck I found this:
https://www.toshiba-storage.com/products/toshiba-internal-hard-drives-l200/

which reports that these drives use CMR:
HDWJ110UZSVA,
HDWK105UZSVA,
HDWJ105UZSVA

Only the first is even listed on Amazon, with no sales nor reviews.
It's particularly unhelpful that Amazon pads search results with
unrelated products. An exact match search would help a lot.

There are many online lists of SMR drives, it's not so easy to
find non-SMR drives, especially in smaller sizes, for sale.

If anybody has search terms or tips that help please post them.
I'd like to stick with Amazon as the supplier.

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska

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