I did a small research (pics included) and I've noticed there's something strange happening with recent WD hard drives. For instance let's take a look at this 4TB WD Purple (WD43PURZ), the datasheet says it's CMR but if you look at the graph it behaves like SMR and TRIM is supported.https://files.catbox.moe/xdudsc.jpgSame applies to 4TB WD Blue/Red Plus models, all these have 256MB cache and 181 buffer zones (like WD Red EFAX) instead of typical 61 like normal CMR WD drive. https://files.catbox.moe/htn2k3.jpgLook at these 4TB drives - they all look like this SMR WD Red EFAX drive.https://files.catbox.moe/cz46vl.jpgAnd 6TB WD drives are also identical to this EFAX drive.https://files.catbox.moe/nd55ho.jpgSo WD is lying again like they did when they released their first SMR Red. Avoid all 4-6TB models, unless it's enterprise class (Gold, Black, Ultrastar).2) Seagate is also guilty of this. Compare this 6Tb Ironwolf model to a SMR Barracuda, https://files.catbox.moe/xod0q4.jpgThey both belong to the same disk family (V11) and the 256MB cache is another indication.3) Most recent hard drives except for enterprise drives have hard locked head parking timers (from 8 sec to 5 min) and it's impossible to change it.4) Some modern WD drives have that little piece of red tape glued on the chip. I have no idea what it does but the drives that have these red things run much hotter that the ones without it. Some recommend to remove it. https://files.catbox.moe/qhtr5u.pngI'll list the WD drives that I'd recommend and avoid (continued in the next post).
Here's the list.1) Best: WD85PURZ (Purple) - genuine CMR based on HGST, good read/write graphs, no head parking.https://files.catbox.moe/8owsjz.pngAcceptable:WD80EFPX(Red) - same as WD85PURZ but the head parking timer is locked at 5 minA bit worse:WD80EAAZ (Blue) - same as the previous two 8TB models but the head parking timer is locked at 8 secGood:WD20EARZ (Blue), WD20EFPX (Red), WD23PURZ (Purple) are all physically the same drives with different TLER and head parking settings that can be turned off.https://files.catbox.moe/qzh574.jpgThese are genuine CMR with good read/write graphs and 64MB cache, 61 buffer zones.https://files.catbox.moe/gcseg2.jpgIf you have the money then choose either larger 8TB+ drives or Ultrastar/ Exos/MG but they run hotter and require extra cooling.2) Rather avoid unless proven that they're CMR: *All 4-6TB WD Blue/Red Plus/Purple are pseudo-CMR drives based on previous EFAX Reds (look at the pics in the previous post)WD40EFPX, WD60EFPX (Reds)- pseudo-CMR with 256MB cache and 181 logical zones (no TRIM), head parking timer is locked at 5 min.WD40EZAX, WD60EZAX (Blues) - same as the previous drives but the head parking timer is locked at 8 sec.WD43PURZ, WD64PURZ (Purples) - same as the previous drives but also has TRIM and a weird write/read graph, disabled head parking.So here's the conclusion - WD simply doen't give a fuck and they still sneak SMR trash into NAS and Survelliance models and they need to be called out for their bullshit, otherwise I'm afraid that the worst might happen - CMR 3,5" drives will soon cease to exist except for maybe enterprise drives just like they stopped making 2,5" CMR drives, all hdd manufacturers are deliberately lowering the drive quality and lifespan by adding unturnable head parking timers, PWL, adding red tapes on the chip which increases the temperature etc.
>>106459760>Western Digital is still lying about their "CMR" drivesMight you be the same OP who posted in April?https://desuarchive.org/g/thread/105032250>WARNING! Don't buy any Western Digital hard drives
>>106459863Yes, it was me, but this time I want to show concrete examples that expose misinformation coming from WD and tell people which drives to choose or avoid. I just did another long research (finding out info about drive vendor, family model, read/write graphs, actual cache, if they're actual cmr or smr etc). I think it's necessary to call these greedy lying fucks out. I wanted to make such post back then in that thread but 4chan got shut down for two weeks at this exact moment and I totally forgot about that. Sorry about that, just wanna be helpful.
>>106459954>I just did another long researchDo you test the drives yourself?>Sorry about thatThat's quite all right.
I've moved to seagate 2Tb green for storage.
Thank you for your service. I was actually deciding between buying a large WD Red (22/24 TB) or just going with 8TB Blues. My main concern with the reds is that many people report an annoying as fuck recurring sound which I believe is PWL whereas the blues wouldn't have that issue.Are head parking timers really not configurable? I remember people messing with their timers back when greens existed.
>>106459778Shit, I had bought a WD40EFPX drive shortly before that original post. Is it safe for data storage? Any recommendations to extend its lifespan?
OP is a seagate shill. Never had a WD drive die on me. Had multiple maxtor/seagates/toshibas off themselves for no reason
>>106460065lol you sound like a wd shill. what the fuck does that have to do with wd scamming people with smr drives?
>>106459969Yes I did test three 2TB Red/Blue/Purple drives personally (they belong to the same disk family CarmelR Plus 2 Lite) and I'm happy with them because they're turned out to be real CMR drives with 2TB per platter density and I could succesfully disable head parking via Victoria's APM settings (on purple it's automatically disabled). Although people would prefer bigger drives. I also did buy a pair of WD80EFPX (which are based on HGST drives and run at 5640 RPM despite that 5min head parking which can be bypassed via KeepHDAlive), one 8TB HGST, a couple of 2TB HGST as system drives and managed to avoid 4-6TB Reds/Blues/Purples once I found out that they're not real CMR. Unfortunately 4-6TB drives are taking the most hit right now. >>106460020It's technically impossible to disable head parking on 4, 6 and 8TB Reds/Blues. Only via software such as KeepHDAlive if it's at least 5min. 8 sec (which 4-8TB WD Blues have) is too fast to react and will accumulate thousands of load/unload cycles very fast. Yes PWL is another deliberate act of sabotage because older drives didn't have it and despite that many of them are capable of working 10+ years with no issues.
>>106460093I thought it wasn't recommended to buy Purples because TLER is locked to 0 on them, because for CCTV it's more important that it keeps recording than to retry if there's a write error.
>>106460093>VictoriaDo you know if it's possible to accurately test an OS drive with Victoria? Meaning, is it unnecessary to wipe a drive, connect it as a secondary, and test it that way? For Victoria, in Test & Repair, if one were to wanna test a drive the way you do, should Verify or Read be selected? Is a quick scan enough? Or does it need to be a full one?
>>106460049Yes absolutely. It's just not a genuine CMR drive, but it's not a typical SMR drive either (but it's not gonna behave like a typical SMR (with catastrophically low speeds when out of cache) due to more zones and better zone configuration. Here's the graph, it actually looks pretty good, like an actual CMR.>Any recommendations to extend its lifespan?It has a 5 min head parking timer, long enough to keep it awake via KeepHDAlive if you're worried about load/unload cycles. But 5 min is not that bad, it's not gonna accumulate hundreds of thousands of load/unload cycle under a few years like some WD Greens/Blues. >>106460065I did point out the fact that Seagate also does sneak SMRs into NAS drives, like this Ironwolf ST6000VN001 which is based on SMR Barracuda. >2) Seagate is also guilty of this. Compare this 6Tb Ironwolf model to a SMR Barracuda,>https://files.catbox.moe/xod0q4.jpgAll three manufacturers are doing this currenly. They all act the same, especially when you notice that all three of them introduce "pro" versions of each drive category (wd red pro, ironwolf pro, n300 pro) while previous manufacturers such as Fujitsu, Hitachi, Samsung, Maxtor had their own unique hdd making technologies.
>>106460093What's the big deal if drive is smr/cmr, most are used for data storage with infrequent access these days. I just got 8tb drive for nas, didn't even bother to check what kind it is.Got wd red because previous drive in nas was also wd.As long as it doesn't die on me I don't care if it's smr/cmr and I have pretty good luck with drives, never had 3.5 drive totally die on me, 2.5 is another story.
>>106460118No, it's only applicable if the drive is connected to DVR. In a desktop it's gonna behave like a regular drive. As I said before it belongs to the same disk family as WD20EARZ, WD20EFPX.>>106460153The drive needs to be uninitialized, unallocated so the OS won't interfere. Download Victoria 5.37. Look at this pic (choose read/ignore and then SCAN). Read test will reveal any bad sectors, the scan will take several hours depending on the drive size (from 3 to 16 hours). Write test will wipe out all of the data so do it before copying anything to it, but the read test alone is enough to test the drive's health.Also write and read graph must be identical speed wise. If the write speed is lower then it's SMR drive
>>106460234>The drive needs to be uninitialized, unallocatedSo just connect the drive (to be tested) to the mobo after already having the OS drive (separate one) connected and test it with Victoria? The drive to be tested doesn't need to be wiped via nwipe (or a similar program)?
>>106460227>8tb drive for nasIf it's Red Plus then you're good. It's actually a HGST drive (should make it more reliable) with reduced RPM but has WD firmware and locked head parking.>What's the big deal if drive is smr/cmr, most are used for data storageFor write once, read many it's not that crucial as long as you don't fill them completely and not modify the files too often. It's just SMR drives are inherently worse and less reliable in every aspect even when it comes to cold storage. SMR heads work in a much more complicated method, especially when working with logical zones, they are much harder to defragment, they also seem to fragment files by themselves even when nothing happens (I can show the video, where one data recovery specialist tests smr drives with PC3000 but it's in russian). They have more complex built and more fragile heads with a second-level translator module 190 that has to work several times as hard as a CMR drive head for the same kind of operation.
>>106460290Yes, if it's a secondary hard drive (new from the store) then just plug it in, don't do anything with it (like initializing etc, it must not appear in "My PC", only in disk manager as an "unitialized drive"). This is how the test should look like. If it passes the test with no warnings then initialize it, allocate, assign a letter, quick format it etc.>The drive to be tested doesn't need to be wiped via nwipeIf it's a new drive then no.
>>106460162So it wasn't a waste of a purchase then, good. Thank you very much! Hopefully something is done about WD's false advertising. Maybe some techtuber could do an exposé on it to get the ball rolling?
>>106460296ok man, thanks for reasonable explanation.
>>106460335>VictoriaDo you know of any programs like Victoria, but can operate via command line? That way, one could, hypothetically, test one drive without needing a second OS drive for the testing program. Example: on a single drive system, use SystemRescue to boot into nwipe, wipe the drive, and then use a command line equivalent of Victoria to do a proper test of the drive.
I'm too poor for cmr
SEAGATE CHADS WIN AGAIN
>>106460296>If it's Red PlusJust checked invoice, it's "red plus nas" so should be cmr.Drives are so damn expensive tho, had to shell 200€ for it, feels like such a waste.Old nas drive was WD40EZRX so actually green, though it was red. It's good drive tho. 45k hours and absolutely raped by swapping in shitty synology nas with severe lack or ram.
>>106459760I've been wondering about all this new SMR, HAMR shit coming out. Thanks for helping with this. These HDD companies are indeed lying fucks. What irks me is the larger drives they kind of bury the speed now. It's such a basic fucking question. Is it 5900 or 7200? You have to go on a scavenger hunt to find that now. Ridiculous bullshit.
>>106460401No, I've never tried anything except Victoria, it's good enough for me since I ever discovered it, does the job very well.
>>106460460I don't like WD really, just personal preference but their promotional materials are honest about tech specs.
Just buy Toshiba MG drives like a normal person?And who the fuck buys 4tb drives anyway, you can just buy SSDs at that size.
>>106460227>>1064602968tb wd is garbage unless you bought an old used helium drive. they transitioned from that to an air drive for their 8tb and 10tb lineup and it's one of the worst drives ever, extremely loud, and gets very hot. like 50c idle 70c load without active cooling.you want to get WD Red Plus for 1-6tb super silent drives, or toshiba MG if you want large drives where noise is not a concern. anything else is garbage.
>>106460745Damn I fucked it up then but it's for 4U rackmount server in basement so I don't care about noise.High power draw would suck when I did everything to keep overall consumption down, itx celeron mbo, pico psu and so on.
>>106460765hdds guzzle power, there's no way around that, you can alleviate the issue by enabling spindown but if you do zfs it'll spin the drives up to do integrity checks whenever it wants (which takes over a day on 20tb CMR drives).my simple file server with 6 helium drives uses like 80W of power and of that the mobo/network is only maybe 30w or less. if the drives are not spinning, it's only 40w. i plan on getting an odroid instead, it can idle at 5w without disks.
>>106460745>WD Red Plus drives are engineered to use less power (versus previous models) and run cooler, which reduces operating costs and helps reduce heat in thermally challenged NAS boxes.Tho man you're saying stuff that is direct opposite of what prom materials says?>>106460792>hdds guzzle powerWill post results for that 8tb wd if I get it today. I don't expect more than 4w idle spun up to be honest.My proxmox "server" which is really box of ewaste idles at 12w - 1tb 2.5hdd some slim "eco" series, j1900 mbo, 1x120, 2x80, 1x60 fans, aliexpress picopsu clone, small 19v power brick from LG monitor. We'll see how much 8tb will add to it.
fuck seagate. Wd just werks
>>106460792>my simple file server with 6 helium drivesWhat are you people storing to need that much space? I'm genuinely curious? My whole life fits in 1TB or so.
>>106460886I love Seagate as brand but their drives do feel sketchy lately.Have two identical drives in office machine, both developed bad sectors but continued working.They're over 100k hours, disregard counter in crystal, seagate rolls over after high 70k's.
>>106459760Still better than shitgate
>>106459760Honestly OP IDK why people still fuck with sub-10TB HDDs much less consumer HDDs.It's even more confusing because you are aware of the fuckyness in that sector of the market but yet you still participate.
I shouldn't worry about smr if I use a copy-on-write filesystem like btrfs, right?
I only buy the WD Red Pro and nothing below 16TB
Why are they even selling 1TB drives anymore?It's not 2015.We should have 100TB HDDs at very affordable price right now. What's going on with technology?
>>106460336I'm afraid that people are too ignorant and indiferent, plus all these big youtubers are scammers who get paid by such companies for advertising shitty products and make money from ads. I'm shocked that this topic isn't even brought up yet apart from some obscure russian tech forums where I found this info.>>106460337I also forgot to tell that it's much harder to recover data from SMR drives compared to CMRs. And SMR drives technologically work exactly like SSDs. It's basically a SSD with magnetic platters minus the speed/multithreading.>>106460460Yes WD also lies about the rpm class, many "5400" rpm WD drives actually spin at 7200. Absolute scum move. >>106460731>SSDs Not suitable for long term storage, plus SSD need refreshing at least once per year to keep your data safe. Some years ago it wasn't a problem to find a good 4-6TB non-enterprise hdd, now it's nearly impossible.>>106461842Because such tendency will also affect larger enterprise drives. For instance SMR technology gives 25-30% extra storage per platter which is a significant increase for 20TB drives. It all starts with small and seeming insignificant things. SMR plague will completely displace CMR which will become a forgotten lost technology.
>>106461979>Because such tendency will also affect larger enterprise drives.Not in the way you thinkThere are zero enterprise drives where if you just put them in a system and use them that you'll suffer from SMRSMR in enterprise is limited to host managed SMR which requires the OS to explicitly zone the HDD for it to record data with SMR.
>>106459760>buying anything but BlacksSee, now that's just asking for trouble.
>>106461955Single platter hard drives, lighter and fewer points of failure.
>>106459760I made one thread abot SMR vs CMR and the dick riding took off
>>106459778What abot these types?
>>106460899Install game to SSD.Finish it but game is bready goodOffload it to spinning rust so I don’t ever need to download it again. Have my own cloud backup. Everything hits my NAS. Use 20TB Toshiba spinning rust to backup my important files from the NAS. I honestly can’t understand people that run a single SSD in their systems and it’s shockingly common.
>>106459760OP, is TRIM a bad thing. If it is, why?
>>106459778So OP is it safe to get 8TB WD reds? Or do they have to be plus/pro?
If you're buying WD, you buy Red Plus or better.If you're buying Seagate, you buy Ironwolf Pro or betterIt's that simple. >>106460943>barracudafound your issue.>>106462288pic related
>>106462869So, I have six of those types of HDDs from WD. ALL 12TB that I Tyrone and will continue to Tyrone as long as I'm and to Tyrone them, but, they seem to be a line of HDDs made, but no definitive naming. Just a white and black disk that's actually CMR and they work pretty well.
>>106463270it will have a model number you can search to find out what type it is
>>106463270able*
>>106459760You seem to be knowledgeable about hard drives. I want to ask you something. Which HDDs above 1TB are the best bank for your buck? I'm asking because I'm considering buying a hard drive but im not sure about which one to actually get. A short list of the best hard drives for the money would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
>>106459760Tell me one (1) (四) good reason to care about how my harddisk physically saves my data to its disk.
>russianhide
>>106463277they seem to be >WD120EDBZ - Western Digital 12TB 5400RPM SATA 6Gb/s 3.5-in Hard Drive>Western Digital WD120EDBZ 12TB 5400RPM SATA 6Gb/s 256M Cache 3.5-Inch Hard Drive>Brand: Western Digital>Part Number: WD120EDBZ
These work very, very well
>>106462288Some large helium drive, most likely it's CMR. I personally don't trust helium drives.>>106462541It's sure indicator of a SMR drive, it lets the drive know which blocks are free to erase and reuse thus speeding up the process, logically (not physically since it has heads) SMR drives work just like SSDs in terms of reading and writing but it lacks the speed and cannot perform several processes simultaneously, that's why it's slow as hell. CMR doesn't benefit from TRIM at all, TRIM also might accidentally erase the existing data a will during some canning/recovering operations (such as chkdsk)>>106462708Yes, the only drawback is that you can't turn off the 5 min head parking timer (unless using software that accesses the drive before reaching the 5 min cycle).>>106463326WD10PURZ, WD10EZEX, or WD10EFRX or WD1003FZEX (if the last two are still available). These are known to last at least 10 years if used properly.Make sure the drive has no more than 64MB cache size (some enterprise drive might have 128MB cache), any of the enterprise drives new or used (HGST, WD Gold, Toshiba MG, Exos 1TB models shouldn't run hot since they have only 1 platter, fewer heads and should be more reliable based on their 5 year warranty).>>106463332CMR is the most bulletproof and reliable way and can easily last for 10-15 years. SMR is a cost cutting technological clusterfuck which is worse at every aspect, I already explained above,
>>106463326>Which HDDs above 1TB are the best bank for your buck?Sorry I missed this part. I'll copy the model names I already listed in the second. WD20EARZ, WD20EFPX, WD23PURZ, skip the 4-6TB variants unless they're enterprise class, then WD85PURZ, WD80EFPX.I'm not knowledgable about Seagate and Toshiba models. But the smaller ones with 64MB cache size or 8TB models (except for Barracuda) should work just as fine.
>>106463778>CMR is the most bulletproof and reliable way and can easily last for 10-15 years. SMR is a cost cutting technological clusterfuck which is worse at every aspect, I already explained above,SMR is just overlapping by 10-30% the data tracks like tiles of a roof because the magnetic medium can hold data more densely than magnetic heads are able to resolute during writing. It only have a order/block problem that forces you to write more, similar to flash. Other than that it changes nothing.And the future will be energy assisted writing that removes the writing problem of SMR and increase density beyond the limit of the magnetic head.
>>106459778>mfw my wd43purz which i ordered last sunday just arrivedfuck sake OP you shouldve made this thread a week earlier
this stuff is a headache I basically only buy 20TB+ Ultrastars or Toshiba MG also 20TB+ sizesI've only had 2 drives die on me 1 4TB Seagate and 1 4TB WD. SMR CMR I dunno but I stopped buying 4TB after that from anyone.
>>106463913haha, damn, a fellow nerd was telling me about his research in roofing hd's at a party like 15 years ago
>>106464163>I've only had 2 drives die on me 1 4TB Seagate and 1 4TB WD.what models were they and how long did they last?
>>106463913That's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to explaining how a SMR HDD works. >Other than that it changes nothing.No, that's the point, SMR tech works drastically differently from CMR in terms of writing, not to mention that it's a zoned device with a second-level translator (not found in any CMR which makes them simple and reliable for many decades). Unfortunately there are no lectures and tests made in english because western manufacturers and even tech youtubers are driven by greed, profit and rely on viral marketing, false advertising. Here are three videos from two professional ukrainian/russian data recovery specialists who test SMR drives with professional hardware such as PC3000 and give exhaustive explanation about why a SMR technology is the worst thing that was ever invented in terms of data storage. It's a deliberate cost cutting measure and nothing else.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67arwgtTyxA&ab_channel=Vitaliy%27Rozik%27Roziznanyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iZaIivWHkI&ab_channel=R.LABhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oohWiuO4Jw&ab_channel=R.LABI watched all of them and since then I know why I should completely avoid SMR and spread the word about its harmfulness.>>106464116It should work fine as data storage. It's not a pure SMR, rather pseudo-CMR with 3 times more buffer zones and TRIM, unlike real SMR it should handle small block writes much better without horrible speed dips (to >1MB/s).
>>106464457>it's a zoned device with a second-level translatordoesn't explain what any of this means.
>>106464457do we have a confirmed list of years when wd started to shift these drives to be smr instead of cmr? >It's not a pure SMR, rather pseudo-CMR with 3 times more buffer zones and TRIMregarding this, my wd43purz has trim like you mentioned and the manufacturing date on the label says 2023. although on second thought it might be the case that the entire production line under the same serial regardless of age is already on SMR tech as opposed to the claimed CMR. how did this fly for so long under peoples noses?
>>106464498Ok, I'll try to explain but you probably won't understand a word.1) Logical zones in a SMR drive have nothing to do with physical zones on the platter itself, they're always dynamic even at idle unlike on a CMR drive (CMR is completely static and predictable in this regard). SMR automatically fragments files even when you just read them (yes that's how ridiculous they are). That's why a SMR is complete clusterfuck and it's nearly impossible to degragment them, any extra reading and adding files actually worsens fragmentation of existing files. And that happens to a healthy SMR drive, if the drive has problems then it's 10x times as hard to recover data from it.2) CMR drive have only one translation system (physical addressing sector-track-head to logical addressing LBA), SMR disks have two translation systems (further complication). These are the classic "sector-track-head in LBA" translator and the new "sector-track-head in track" translator, and both of these translators are interconnected. Losing any of them will result in complete data loss (by the way, this is what the "fast erase" technologies of SMR disks are based on - we reset one of the translators and that's it, there is no data). Recovery will be possible only if the lost translator can be restored. This is already a task for data recovery companies, and at the moment it is quite complex and expensive.>>106464546I don't know people haven't noticed it. This WD managed to mask SMR much better than when they secretly released their first SMR Reds when people complained about Reds shitting themselves in RAID.
can't you just disassemble one and look how it's made? surely SMR and CMR will look different
>>106460464>CMR drives with 2TB per platter densityDo you know if it's safe to assume any drive 2TB or smaller is always gonna be CMR?
>>106464828>>>SMR automatically fragments files even when you just read themwhat the fuck i was unaware of this
>R*ssian schizoid threadOP, it's time to join the rest of your friends. Let's see that tripcode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWkz0wvop9woh god what now
