21 ms·
Maybe this is mentioned somewhere in the article, I haven't read the whole thing, but its important to elaborate: SMR is only in-place on WD Red drives between
by 013a 6y ago
Maybe this is mentioned somewhere in the article, I haven't read the whole thing, but its important to elaborate: SMR is only in-place on WD Red drives between 2TB-6TB [1]. Everything smaller and larger than that uses CMR, and SMR isn't used on any other 3.5" drives beyond their budget "blue" drives. This is now cross-elaborated on their Amazon (US) istings; their 2TB-6TB Red drives are in a totally different product listing [2] which says "SMR" in the title (versus their CMR drives [3])
I don't like that they hid it. If they want to keep SMR around for their 2-6TB Red variants, I think they should reclassify those drives with another "color" and not certify them for server applications (WD Pink?)
[1] https://blog.westerndigital.com/wd-red-nas-drives/ https://blog.westerndigital.com/wd-red-nas-drives/
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Red-4TB-Internal-Hard-Drive/dp/B07MYL7KVK https://www.amazon.com/Red-4TB-Internal-Hard-Drive/dp/B07MYL...
[3] https://www.amazon.com/Red-12TB-Internal-Hard-Drive/dp/B07RQ99XJH https://www.amazon.com/Red-12TB-Internal-Hard-Drive/dp/B07RQ...
- colejohnson66 6y agoWhat I don’t understand is: SMR is for increased density, no? So, why don’t the 8 TB Reds use it?
- alias_neo 6y agoTo take a guess, I'd say they managed to remove a platter or two to lower costs on the smaller drives (I wonder if an EFAX is physically lighter?) but couldn't get the same benefit or didn't need the cost reduction in the more expensive 8TB+ drives. It's also possible that in testing, the 256MB cache just want sufficient to make DM-SMR "usable" at those larger capacities or that the firmware/controller just wasn't up to it.