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WD (and others) sneaking SMR drives into their NAS Drive Lineup

Sagath

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...typically does not impact small business/home NAS-based use cases

well. I'm so glad WD can decide what my use case is for me.

Also, how can they even possibly say this? Write speeds on SMR is ~40/meg/sec. CMR is 100+. A singe drive rebuild is going to take 150% longer on the SMR drive. When rebuilds are already double digit hours depending on drive size that is a significant increase.

They can sell these drives, I don't give a crap. But it should be very VERY clear that it is a different drive. Right now they're trying to pull a fast one selling it as the literal exact same drive as previously.

Since I switched to Seagate I've been happy, and between the 'bad batch of Reds' fiasco and this WD won't be in my computers in any form for a long time. I'm definitely going to keep focused on this though as I replace drives, with any brand.

Thanks SSW!
 

sswilson

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Yeah... keep in mind the "(and others)" part of the title.... WD apparently isn't alone in this, they're just the first one's who've been caught with their hands obviously in the cookie jar.

In the comment section of that article there's a reference to some Barracuda drives being SMR which (knowing the history of the line) never would have crossed my mind to check, let alone think that this kind of tech might be used in a line that for the longest time has been marketed as a speed demon.
 

Entz

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It seems the other issue is the drives seem to stop responding for a bit to do background cleanup (or doing writes) and will get kicked out of software raid arrays like ZFS. This could cause massive loss of data if a couple drives suddenly decide to be useless and 2 perfectly health disks decide to go play in their castle for a few ms.

Not to mention the write speed is basically 1/3.

One of the Red drives (2TB) in my array is starting to show issues (Write error in ZFS, SMART full say okay but I don't trust it long term). Looking for a replacement drive earlier this week and found this mess.

Such BS. I wonder if this is their way of forcing people into 8TB+ disks where profit margins are higher. Make the 2-6 useless.
 

sswilson

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Yeah, the biggest issue isn't necessarily using these as NAS drives (you'll lose some write speed), it's trying to drop one of these into an already existing array comprised of CMR drives.

edit: Another valid concern that was just brought up in the comment section was that since WD claims that these REDs are essentially the same drives, anybody who RMAs an earlier CMR drive stands a pretty good chance of getting one of the SMR ones as a replacement drive.
 
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Entz

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Yeah that is a good point warranty :(

This is why consolidation is so bad. Who are you going to go to? RIP Hitachi and your amazing 7K3000s (Cheap and Fast and Enterprise)

God. I can't believe I'm saying this, my next drives will be Seagate. Ironwolfs, are CMR, at least for now as the 4TB 5400rpm cudas are SMR. Its only a matter of time.

That or just move over to QNAP and hope for the best lol.
 

Entz

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MBAs Accountants ruin everything :D

The only thing I can think of is demand for < 6 TB is not where it once was and they are priorizing everything bigger on the CMR line. So instead of stopping 8TB production to throw 1/3 as many platters on, someone figured out they can save 5 cents per unit by moving these over to the SMR lines which are not likely used very heavily (Archive drives mainly).

I am fine with the move to SMR, I am not fine with them doing it all shady like. Make a new product line called WD Maroon NAS and let people decide.

Edit: I guess technically it would be MBAs to blame.
 
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