Just wanted to give a little heads up about something I noticed this week.
I bought a 4TB WD 2.5" external to copy some files onto for portable use thinking it was PMR. One hour into writing I realized it was definitely SMR, the speeds were bouncing and crawling (copying from a fast server) and it was reporting a number of days until completing a 3.5TB~ write.
I turned on PrimoCache and set an 11GB L1 cache with RAM, dedicated 100% to write, with 60 second deferred write and set using the "average" mode. The whole transfer went quick without a hitch in the same time it took to do a full format.
The settings could probably be tuned more efficient but that's just what I chose the first go around and it worked great.
Just a heads up for anyone who may ever come to suffer from some SMR write pains.
I bought a 4TB WD 2.5" external to copy some files onto for portable use thinking it was PMR. One hour into writing I realized it was definitely SMR, the speeds were bouncing and crawling (copying from a fast server) and it was reporting a number of days until completing a 3.5TB~ write.
I turned on PrimoCache and set an 11GB L1 cache with RAM, dedicated 100% to write, with 60 second deferred write and set using the "average" mode. The whole transfer went quick without a hitch in the same time it took to do a full format.
The settings could probably be tuned more efficient but that's just what I chose the first go around and it worked great.
Just a heads up for anyone who may ever come to suffer from some SMR write pains.