In recent weeks, there has been much controversy surrounding mechanical hard drives with SRM technology . Shingled magnetic recording (SM) technology is a staggered magnetic writing process used in modern hard drives. This technology has its strengths and weaknesses. A few days ago, we reported on Toshiba drives with this technology; now, we'll cover all drives using it.
SMR technology is simply the partial stacking of data on hard drives . This increases the data density of each platter, but at the expense of write speeds. For general use, this is acceptable, but for drives intended for NAS systems, this technology can be problematic.
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Advantages and disadvantages of this technology
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Advantages
- Increased capacity of hard drives
- Higher density for each plate
- Does not affect the lifespan of hard drives
- Slower write speeds
- They are not good for NAS setups because of their slow write speeds
- Under RAID configurations, cache overload and information loss can occur
Western Digital drives with SMR
- 6TB NAS Network (WD60EFAX) - 3.5 ”- 6TB - 5400RPM - 256MB cache
- Blue 6TB (WD60EZAZ) - 3.5 ”- 6TB - 5400RPM - 256MB cache
- 6TB NAS Network (WD40EFAX) - 3.5 ”- 4TB - 5400RPM - 256MB cache
- 6TB NAS Network (WD30EFAX) - 3.5 ”- 3TB - 5400RPM - 256MB cache
- Blue 2TB (WD60EZAZ) - 3.5 ”- 2TB - 5400RPM - 256MB cache
- Blue 2TB (WD60SPZX) - 3.5 ”- 2TB - 5400RPM - 128MB cache
- 6TB NAS Network (WD20EFAX) - 3.5 ”- 2TB - 5400RPM - 256MB cache
- Blue 1TB (WD60SPZX) - 3.5 ”- 1TB - 5400RPM - 128MB cache
- Black 1TB (WD10SPSX) - 2.5 ”- 1TB - 7200RPM - 64MB cache
Seagate drives with SMR
- Barracuda 8TB (ST8000DM004) - 3.5 ”- 8TB - 7200RPM - 64MB cache
- Exos (ST8000AS0003) - 3.5 ”- 8TB - 5400RPM - 256MB cache
- Archive HDD (ST80000AS0002) - 3.5 ”- 8TB - 5900RPM - 128MB cache
- Archive HDD (ST60000AS0002) - 3.5 ”- 6TB - 5900RPM - 128MB cache
- Desktop (ST5000DM000) - 2.5 ”- 5TB - 5900RPM - 128MB cache
- Barracuda 8TB (ST4000DM004) - 3.5 ”- 4TB - 5400RPM - 256MB cache
- Barracuda 8TB (ST2000DM008) - 3.5 ”- 2TB - 7200RPM - 256MB cache
Toshiba drives with SMR
- P300 (HDWD260UZSVA) - 3.5 ”- 6TB - 5400RPM - 128MB cache
- DT02-V (DT02ABA600V) - 3.5 ”- 6TB - 5400RPM - 128MB cache
- DT02 (DT02ABA600) - 3.5 ”- 6TB - 5400RPM - 128MB cache
- P300 (HDWD240UZSVA) - 3.5 ”- 4TB - 5400RPM - 128MB cache
- DT02-V (DT02ABA400V) - 3.5 ”- 4TB - 5400RPM - 128MB cache
- DT02 (DT02ABA600) - 3.5 ”- 6TB - 5400RPM - 128MB cache
- L200 (HDWL120UZSVA / HDWL120EZSTA / HDWL120XZSTA) - 2.5 ”- 2TB - 5400RPM - 128MB cache
- MQ04 (MQ04ABD200) - 2.5 ”- 2TB - 5400RPM - 128MB cache
- L200 (HDWL110UZSVA / HDWL110EZSTA / HDWL110XZSTA) - 2.5 ”- 1TB - 5400RPM - 128MB cache
- MQ04 (MQ04ABD100) - 2.5 ”- 1TB - 5400RPM - 128MB cache
Note: The P300 and L200 units on this list have been confirmed by Toshiba; the rest of the units have not.
