New hdd slow 4k writes?

[AntLion]

Just got a new hdd. Seagate BarraCuda 4TB (ST4000DM004}
Before I installed it internally, I formatted it in a usb dock and ran crystaldisk mark to test the empty drive.



Then I started to fill the drive and after filling it a tiny bit wanted to test again.



As you can see the 4k writes decreased exponentially.
I decided to try again internally so I could see if sata vs usb would change things and it did not.



Haven't bought a new hdd in many years and have nothing to equally compare it to so I am unsure if this is normal. If not, any idea what is to blame? A setting somewhere or perhaps a defective/failing drive?

Some additional info: Passes all tests in the seagate seatools software, temps are fine, quiet in operation.
File sys is ntfs partitioned as guid and with default allocation size of 4096.

 

[defaultluser]

If I were to guess, maybe because of Shingled Magnetic Recording? It slows down random writes, because it overlaps other sectors.

 

[AntLion]

Not sure what that means, but these results are not typical for this drive or any hdd manufactured in the last decade.

 

[BinarySynapse]

SMR is a method of overlaying groups of data tracks (called bands) like shingles on a roof to increase data density. It works because the drive's read heads are smaller than the write heads. However, when you have to write data, all of the tracks "uphill" from the one you're writing to have to be read into memory before your data can be written. After your data is written, all of the uphill tracks must be re-written again. So you could be rewriting several megabytes of data just to change 4KB, which means very slow writing performance that is typical of SMR drives that have had data written to them (of which the yours is as far as I can tell).

 

[AntLion]

Thanks for the info. While the info is valid, these numbers are still below the norm and as such I decided on a refund.

 

[Brian_B]

Have you tried a different drive in that enclosure? That could be doing funny things to the benchmark.

 

[AntLion]

Have you tried a different drive in that enclosure? That could be doing funny things to the benchmark.

Look again at my op and notice that I also tried internally via sata and saw the same results.

Anyway this can be marked as closed since I already took the drive back. This was my first Seagate drive and I think I will revert back to brands I've used and had good luck with. Most likely will go for a WD red.

 

[BinarySynapse]

Thanks for the info. While the info is valid, these numbers are still below the norm and as such I decided on a refund.

They are the norm for this drive. SMR’s. have large caches to mitigate the poor write performance for the average consumer use cases. But if the cache is overwhelmed, like during an unrealistic benchmark writing 5GB of 4k data to random places, the write performance falls off a cliff.

 

[drescherjm]

You need a PMR drive if you want 4K performance to be as you expect from a hard drive.