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Toshiba, Seagate shipping slower SMR drives without disclosure, too

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Re: Toshiba, Seagate shipping slower SMR drives without disclosure, too

#31

Post by noisem4ker »

rasz wrote: post #22
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia has a great diagram showing the process of hard disk drive manufacturer consolidation that tells a lot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diagram_of_Hard_Disk_Driv... Now it's a perfect oligopoly: Seagate, WD, and Toshiba, just like the stories from many other industries.

Its a guaranteed 30% profit margin industry with very high patent moat. No incentives to change anything.

The article mentions thin margins and declining volume due to SSDs. I wonder where the truth lies.

Anyway, I'd rather data-starve for a couple years and save up for a big SSD rather than feed those responsible for such consumer-hostile practices.

Re: Toshiba, Seagate shipping slower SMR drives without disclosure, too

#32

Post by chx »

Nursie wrote: post #29
dannyw wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. QLC is bad but mature TLC with a DRAM cache can be an excellent choice b

QLC with a decent SLC cache seems to work just fine as well, for most consumer purposes - see drives like the sabrent Rocket-Q

I do not know whether it's actually possible but if you partitioned an 1TB Intel 660p to only 140GB and left the rest open would it make that into a 140GB SLC SSD? If so, then the 1 USD/GB for an SLC drive is an absolute bargain...

Re: Toshiba, Seagate shipping slower SMR drives without disclosure, too

#33

Post by toast0 »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #15

Is there any way small-scale ~4 drive NAS or file server systems can accommodate SMR drives in software? It looks like they're going to need to do so...

It would really be best if the drive properly identified itself, so the host os/filesystem could adapt to the drive parameters.

That said, you would want to use a log structured filesystem, with a compaction feature. You want to avoid read-modify-write on the shingled areas, it's time intesive and competes with other I/O.

Re: Toshiba, Seagate shipping slower SMR drives without disclosure, too

#34

Post by jennyyang »

speedgoose wrote: post #16
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you backup your motionless piles of sand, then? /joke Perhaps all the data you care is on the cloud, but HDDs are still important for backups. Although it's the most acceptable scenario to use an inferior SMR disk. The real issue of SMR is RAID/servers, which, of course, is what the cloud is made of...

I do my backups in the cloud, which uses hard drives for slow storage but I couldn't care less about it. The terrible reliability and performances are not my problem anymore.

What if you lose your job and can't afford to keep paying the monthly fees, or there is corruption in your backup? You won't know until you perform a disaster recovery.

Re: Toshiba, Seagate shipping slower SMR drives without disclosure, too

#35

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

segfaultbuserr wrote: post #12
Havoc wrote: post #7

Can't say I particularly care frankly. I don't see myself buying another spinning plate of rust

How do you backup your motionless piles of sand, then? /joke Perhaps all the data you care is on the cloud, but HDDs are still important for backups. Although it's the most acceptable scenario to use an inferior SMR disk. The real issue of SMR is RAID/servers, which, of course, is what the cloud is made of...

> Perhaps all the data you care is on the cloud, but HDDs are still important for backups.

Or any bulk data storage, really.

Re: Toshiba, Seagate shipping slower SMR drives without disclosure, too

#36

Post by wmf »

chx wrote: post #32
Nursie wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QLC with a decent SLC cache seems to work just fine as well, for most consumer purposes - see drives like the sabrent Rocket-Q

I do not know whether it's actually possible but if you partitioned an 1TB Intel 660p to only 140GB and left the rest open would it make that into a 140GB SLC SSD? If so, then the 1 USD/GB for an SLC drive is an absolute bargain...

If you can find an SSD with unlimited SLC cache for around 10c/GB and overprovision it by a factor of N then you'd have SLC for 30-40c/GB.

Re: Toshiba, Seagate shipping slower SMR drives without disclosure, too

#37

Post by gruez »

chx wrote: post #32
Nursie wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QLC with a decent SLC cache seems to work just fine as well, for most consumer purposes - see drives like the sabrent Rocket-Q

I do not know whether it's actually possible but if you partitioned an 1TB Intel 660p to only 140GB and left the rest open would it make that into a 140GB SLC SSD? If so, then the 1 USD/GB for an SLC drive is an absolute bargain...

I suspect in terms of actual performance, it's cheaper to get a MLC drive (eg. 970 pro) instead.

Re: Toshiba, Seagate shipping slower SMR drives without disclosure, too

#38

Post by chx »

rasz wrote: post #22
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia has a great diagram showing the process of hard disk drive manufacturer consolidation that tells a lot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diagram_of_Hard_Disk_Driv... Now it's a perfect oligopoly: Seagate, WD, and Toshiba, just like the stories from many other industries.

Its a guaranteed 30% profit margin industry with very high patent moat. No incentives to change anything.

> Its a guaranteed 30% profit margin industry

While I was surprised by that figure https://www.seagate.com/ca/en/news/news-archive/seagate-tech... this corroborates, with margin figures indeed roughly 30%-ish.

Re: Toshiba, Seagate shipping slower SMR drives without disclosure, too

#40

Post by Wowfunhappy »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #39
aasasd wrote: post #5

Is there a trusted hdd manufacturer left? I'd like to not spend several weeks on research when I again get the urge to rebuild the NAS.

HGST still has a good reputation, due to top backblaze stats.

They were bought by WD a few years back.
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