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I think the real answer here is to demand that disk manufacturers publish performance specifications. This leaves them free to change implementation details (w
by 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.
Then again, drive manufacturers are also known for changing what the definition of a unit of measurement means. Some of us remember when they arbitrarily changed the definition of a gigabyte nearly 20 years ago from 1<<30 bytes to 10^9 bytes - a nearly 7% difference! (See: https://www.zdnet.com/article/attention-hard-drive-manufacturers-most-people-believe-that-a-kilobyte-is-1024-bytes/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/attention-hard-drive-manufactu...)
- dragontamer 7y agoI don't really care if a drive is 150MB/s or 200MB/s. I understand that hard drive manufacturers change their technology on a regular basis (PMR, HAMR, etc. etc.). Adding platters, removing platters, increasing platter density, etc. etc. As hard drives change, so do their performance. What makes this a sore spot, is that SMR drives have something like 1/8th the sustained write performance of PMR drives. Think about how you went from HDD world into the SSD world a few years back. Except do that in reverse. SMR drives are great for archives, but they should never be sold as a mainstream solution, because their performance is so much worse than PMR.
- otterley 7y ago> I don't really care if a drive is 150MB/s or 200MB/s. You do care about performance - you say so in the next paragraph. In this case, it is rewrite performance. This is quantifiable and can be disclosed on spec sheets and labeling. I'm not saying the recording method can't be disclosed too, but I think to most consumers, the metrics are more important than the technology.