WD Sets the Record Straight: Lists All Drives That Use Slower SMR Tech

[Schro]

Could it be something like this

Or this - https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.th...hiba-trade-hard-drive-manufacturing-equipment

Doesn't mean that Toshiba got all the equipment or exclusive rights to the IP.

Toshiba was making 2.5" drives at that time.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Or this - https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.th...hiba-trade-hard-drive-manufacturing-equipment

Doesn't mean that Toshiba got all the equipment or exclusive rights to the IP.

Toshiba was making 2.5" drives at that time.

Good find!

 

[BinarySynapse]

From the FTC order, it was just the HGST "Mars" 3.5 hdd product line that was sold to Toshiba. Not sure what drives that includes though.

 

[Deleted member 243478]

That's because WD/HGST was required to license their HDD tech to Toshiba for the anti-monopoly police to allow the merge to happen.

Even better, HGST lives on sort of...

I know my first batch of Toshiba MD04ACA500 identify as Enterprise Drives.

 

[cybereality]

Is SMR really that bad? I mean I get that it is slower, but HDDs are already pretty slow and if you want speed you'd buy a SSD.

 

[drescherjm]

It's not good in a raid array. And Reds are marketed as being NAS friendly.

 

[BinarySynapse]

Is SMR really that bad? I mean I get that it is slower, but HDDs are already pretty slow and if you want speed you'd buy a SSD.

For the average desktop user, you’re right. But for multi-drive storage solutions, it not that’s just that it’s slow, the SMR behavior actually causes problems. So when you get a drive advertised for a certain use case that it can’t actually perform in, it’s bad

 

[Master_shake_]

Or this - https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.th...hiba-trade-hard-drive-manufacturing-equipment

Doesn't mean that Toshiba got all the equipment or exclusive rights to the IP.

Toshiba was making 2.5" drives at that time.

That just reiterated what the chart I posted said.

 

[Meeho]

For the average desktop user, you’re right. But for multi-drive storage solutions, it not that’s just that it’s slow, the SMR behavior actually causes problems. So when you get a drive advertised for a certain use case that it can’t actually perform in, it’s bad

This. Controllers can kick them from the array because they detect them as bad due to a large nosedive in performance. Alse, there is the IDNF bug:
https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/15/shingled-drives-have-non-shingled-zones-for-caching-writes/

 

[cybereality]

Okay, that makes more sense after reading your article Meeho

I still personally wouldn't have a problem, since I don't mess with RAID or NAS, or anything like that, but I understand the issue now.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Is SMR really that bad? I mean I get that it is slower, but HDDs are already pretty slow and if you want speed you'd buy a SSD.

Yes. Heavy I/O and normal I/O with small files will make the drive run slower than a 30 year old SCSI drive. SMR is a pitiful attempt by the spinning rust industry to keep relevance in the SSD era by doing everything possible to reduce drive cost, including scamming customers with worthless drives.

The only use case for SMR drives is infrequently accessed cold storage in singular drive configurations because RAID controllers choke on them.