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Are the disk vendors publishing performance metrics that are being violated by the use of SMR technology? Or is this just one of those cases of performance gen

Are the disk vendors publishing performance metrics that are being violated by the use of SMR technology? Or is this just one of those cases of performance generally not being as good as it used to be, and customers becoming reliant on past behavior despite the lack of an explicit performance promise from the vendors?

dragontamer 7y ago
> Are the disk vendors publishing performance metrics that are being violated by the use of SMR technology? Not really, no. SMR drives overlays data on top of each other, like "shingles" on a typical American roof. As such, whenever an SMR drive writes data, it must read the data "underneath" the current spot, rewrite the "underneath" data, and then lay the new data on top of it. SMR drives are great for archives (write once, read many). But they're pretty much useless to the typical consumer. SMR drives should be avoided if you're building your own computer.
- otterley 7y ago
  I think the real answer here is to demand that disk manufacturers publish performance specifications. This leaves them free to change implementation details (which consumers usually don't know or care about) as long as the published specifications are accurate.
  - dragontamer 7y ago
    For literally years, people bought WD Red drives, DESPITE being more expensive, because they had higher performance. WD Blue drives had SMR / Shingles in them. WD Green drives were shoddy, low quality, and had issues with RAID Rebuilds. WD Red commanded a high price, but came with higher quality. What's happened here, is that WD has begun to sell low-performance drives under their high-priced "Red" brand.
- ric2b 7y ago
  > SMR drives are great for archives (write once, read many). Isn't that the wrong way around? Archives are write many, read maybe. I do regular backups that I hope I never have to read.
  - otterley 7y ago
    I think it's a question of write vs. rewrite. Most archival backups are write-once in the sense that they're append-only, especially now that storage is so cheap nowadays (see: Amazon Glacier). SMR performs generally fine except in the physical rewrite case. A 6TB disk is unlikely to see a lot of physical rewrites except in this pathological case of a RAID rebuild that people are complaining about.

dragontamer 7y ago

> Are the disk vendors publishing performance metrics that are being violated by the use of SMR technology? Not really, no. SMR drives overlays data on top of each other, like "shingles" on a typical American roof. As such, whenever an SMR drive writes data, it must read the data "underneath" the current spot, rewrite the "underneath" data, and then lay the new data on top of it. SMR drives are great for archives (write once, read many). But they're pretty much useless to the typical consumer. SMR drives should be avoided if you're building your own computer.

otterley 7y ago
I think the real answer here is to demand that disk manufacturers publish performance specifications. This leaves them free to change implementation details (which consumers usually don't know or care about) as long as the published specifications are accurate.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  For literally years, people bought WD Red drives, DESPITE being more expensive, because they had higher performance. WD Blue drives had SMR / Shingles in them. WD Green drives were shoddy, low quality, and had issues with RAID Rebuilds. WD Red commanded a high price, but came with higher quality. What's happened here, is that WD has begun to sell low-performance drives under their high-priced "Red" brand.
ric2b 7y ago
> SMR drives are great for archives (write once, read many). Isn't that the wrong way around? Archives are write many, read maybe. I do regular backups that I hope I never have to read.
- otterley 7y ago
  I think it's a question of write vs. rewrite. Most archival backups are write-once in the sense that they're append-only, especially now that storage is so cheap nowadays (see: Amazon Glacier). SMR performs generally fine except in the physical rewrite case. A 6TB disk is unlikely to see a lot of physical rewrites except in this pathological case of a RAID rebuild that people are complaining about.