3 ms·

As mentioned in the Manfred Berger talk, the tech is supposed to, in theory, get you a 25-50% cost effectiveness advantage. Obviously the market prices don't re

As mentioned in the Manfred Berger talk, the tech is supposed to, in theory, get you a 25-50% cost effectiveness advantage. Obviously the market prices don't reflect that, but that explains why they'd do this.

loeg 6y ago
Reality seems to be more like 10% on a capacity basis. On a performance basis, of course, it's extremely negative.
- cbsmith 6y ago
  Magnetic disks are generally valued on capacity, but at least as I heard the talk, he was talking about it growing to a 50% difference as they pushed the limits. I get that the reds are more performance oriented, but capacity is still a key factor (if not, you just go SSD and be done with it).
  - loeg 6y ago
    I get that 50% has been the sort of marketing aim for "why bother support SMR at all," but until they actually get there, it's just marketing. Reality is ~10%. Magnetic disks are valued on capacity only because people considered CMR HDDs a performance floor. When they realize how bad SMR is, I think performance becomes a factor. If you're talking about GB per volume, SSDs beat HDDs of all stripes there: the biggest HDDs are 16 TB in a 3.5" form factor, while the biggest SSDs are 100 TB in the same form factor. 10 or 50% improvement in HDDs wouldn't begin to bridge that gap. SMR should be understood to be sort of a fast Tape, rather than slow CMR HDD.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      > SMR should be understood to be sort of a fast Tape, rather than slow CMR HDD. I wouldn't go that far. If I can assume that the firmware won't cause a lot of problems all by itself, I think in my desktop I'd slightly prefer a 7200RPM SMR drive to an equal-price 5400RPM CMR drive. And no matter what kind of hard drive(s) you're using, take a $20 SSD and use half of it as a cache with writeback enabled.
    - cbsmith 6y ago
      > SMR should be understood to be sort of a fast Tape, rather than slow CMR HDD. In fairness, more like an array of tape drives. ;-) I get what you're saying about how it hasn't panned out in reality, but the question was why did they even try SMR, and I expect that was motivated by the misguided potential of the win.
OriginalPenguin 6y ago
But perhaps the manufacturing costs do reflect it? In which case the profits would be much, much higher than normal drives.

loeg 6y ago

Reality seems to be more like 10% on a capacity basis. On a performance basis, of course, it's extremely negative.

cbsmith 6y ago
Magnetic disks are generally valued on capacity, but at least as I heard the talk, he was talking about it growing to a 50% difference as they pushed the limits. I get that the reds are more performance oriented, but capacity is still a key factor (if not, you just go SSD and be done with it).
- loeg 6y ago
  I get that 50% has been the sort of marketing aim for "why bother support SMR at all," but until they actually get there, it's just marketing. Reality is ~10%. Magnetic disks are valued on capacity only because people considered CMR HDDs a performance floor. When they realize how bad SMR is, I think performance becomes a factor. If you're talking about GB per volume, SSDs beat HDDs of all stripes there: the biggest HDDs are 16 TB in a 3.5" form factor, while the biggest SSDs are 100 TB in the same form factor. 10 or 50% improvement in HDDs wouldn't begin to bridge that gap. SMR should be understood to be sort of a fast Tape, rather than slow CMR HDD.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    > SMR should be understood to be sort of a fast Tape, rather than slow CMR HDD. I wouldn't go that far. If I can assume that the firmware won't cause a lot of problems all by itself, I think in my desktop I'd slightly prefer a 7200RPM SMR drive to an equal-price 5400RPM CMR drive. And no matter what kind of hard drive(s) you're using, take a $20 SSD and use half of it as a cache with writeback enabled.
  - cbsmith 6y ago
    > SMR should be understood to be sort of a fast Tape, rather than slow CMR HDD. In fairness, more like an array of tape drives. ;-) I get what you're saying about how it hasn't panned out in reality, but the question was why did they even try SMR, and I expect that was motivated by the misguided potential of the win.

OriginalPenguin 6y ago

But perhaps the manufacturing costs do reflect it? In which case the profits would be much, much higher than normal drives.