If the drive receives a shut down message from the OS, it's not idle anymore and won't reshingle anything... It's only blackouts/sudden power loss that's a problem, but that is the same with all drives.
wierd_w wrote on 2025-03-01, 01:48:No, there are/were some WD Blue 1tb laptop drives in CMR. […]
No, there are/were some WD Blue 1tb laptop drives in CMR.
that is exactly what I put in the previously mentioned Lenovo.
[take for instance, WD10TPVT. This is a Scorpio Blue 1TB, and came out in 2011. SMR did not hit shelves until 2013.]
https://techgage.com/article/western_digital_ … d_drive_review/
Thanx 4 info.
So when there will be 2TB SD cards,I will reach same capacity for a laptop,because for now I upgraded them the way 2TB HDD(until knowing all the scary facts about how hazardous is to by a WD20SPZX advertised as a laptop HDD...& I never had cn a laptop,which is never put off,nor never sleeps...,so I will probably remember SMR as Scary Magnetic Recording...)+1TB SD card,so when there will be 2TB SD cards,I can do 1TB CMR HDD+2TB SD card setups,which will be quite more expensive,but without that constant fear,my OS drive can die in any moment,which is,y I avoided SSD...
So they in fact invented a spinning SSD,because the usage limitations for SSD & SMR HDD r about the same-write 1ce,never rewrite.
I thought for long time,how can they advertise,SSDs last longer than HDDs(they really advertise this,when selling SSDs,I meet with it very often) & how can they hope for replacing all HDDs by SSDs...if they just did not sabotaged HDDs to make them die sooner than SSDs to move sells to SSD completely.
Also it is was hidden for long time,that SSDs have limited write cycles & dies @ 1ce,when the started with them,they were incredibly expensive & no mention about TBW,but fortunately I found those data sooner,than I bought an SSD.
With the SMR I was not so lucky,I just thought,it is some more compressed write technology,& till I found,those r in fact HDDs with built-in auto-destruct,I bought 5 of them & installed 12 OSs on 3 of them & now I just know,I just wasted time for nothing & I must consider these OSs as a living dead.
Most of those OSs r just for reason of collecting them(like Longhorn builds) & r not normally used,just if i have a visitor wishing to c some OS never cn b4,I boot it & show it...So what now with the existing installs...Maybe decommission it from normal use & only use it as SW-exhibits & build something else for normal use...The biggest problem is obviously the normal use of Windows 7 partition...
& this is then that sabotage of HDDs to make people want SSDs,so they sold SMR HDDs marketted as system drives for laptops or even NAS drives(in this case,they r @ least constantly powered on,so reshindling cannot be interrupted) to ensure high failure rates for HDD with 85% people unaware,wtf SMR is & not knowing the difference,ordinary humans will distrust HDDs @ all & blindly trust SSDs...
Maybe this was the only reason to introduce SMR HDDs,because otherwise no1 would chose SSDs as system drives with HDDs lasting much longer,so they needed to make a lot of short-living HDDs & spread them enough to convince most of people,that HDDs r unreliable,thus move to SSDs.
This could not be done otherwise,so probably the only meaning of introducing SMR always was just to make customers distrust in HDDs & then satisfy their removal from the market @ all,so they was made for making end of HDDs @ all in customer sector.
Is'n this a biggest deception @ all in history of IT?
Probably SMR was invented,when som1 followed an order like:"SSDs r not bestseller on the market,people trust HDDs,made some HDDs,that r worse than SSDs & spread them round the world...".
& BTW I am sure,no mainstream media will ever admit,SMR "Laptop" HDDs r totally unusable for laptops,they will probably even never uncover to the mainstream,it is so huge difference between HDDs & HDDs,that 1 kind of them is better & 1 is worse than SSDs,because peaple must think,all HDDs r bad to make them buy SSDs.
They will finally win,when we,who r remembering good HDDs(CMR) will die out,then they will probably lie to the young people,that all HDDs was this kind of crap & they should be glad for SSDs,because...& then they will be telling them stories about HDDs told in the way,as we r remembering floppies & we have jokes like "If U wish 99% probability,Your data will survive on a floppy disk,copy it to 99 floppies." & we can probably tell the same about SMR HDDs,but when we will be all dead & no1 will remember CMR,they will spread such jokes regarding HDDs generally & then in an SSD-only era people will only know last 10 years of the history @ all,because all older data will be lost...
Terrible...
The winners E/P the history...
MikeSG wrote on 2025-03-01, 10:41:If the drive receives a shut down message from the OS, it's not idle anymore and won't reshingle anything... It's only blackouts/sudden power loss that's a problem, but that is the same with all drives.
Thanx.
Compared to all things,U must avoid(SMR,4Kn...),when U r selecting a replacement/upgrade HW for Your Legacy system,deal with blackouts is easy:
For laptops with sufficient batterry capacity left it is most easy.
For desktops & laptops with dead battery a UPS is must have(maybe with exception for those,who have their own power plant on/in their house,which also includes battery with proper warning signalling,if it is low).
As it is hazardous to use internet without an antivirus,it is same hazardous to plug a PC directly to a wall socket.
It is an essential protection of Your PC,if U love it,U will never let it work without a battery backup & surge protection,so if it has its own functional battery(laptop),plug it via a surge protector & if it has no ist own battery,or its battery is not functional,plug it via an UPS.
Since I had 1st desktop,I also had UPS & never broke this essential security law,same as I never surfed the internet without an antivirus.
---
BTW,when reshindling is interrupted for example by power down signal from the OS,does the drive remember,where it ended & continues from then,or after turned on,it starts over from 0?
---
& I have question about SSD,as here was mentioned,NTFS is not good for it,do it help,if I disable indexing,or it is better to chose FAT32?
I dislike ExFAT for compatibility reasons & for low reliability of this fs,as it has no backup of file allocation table & I also use FAT32 in my smartphones,as I had troubles with ExFAT,it often got corrupted,since I am using FAT32 on SD cards,no problem,phones dies,SD cards survives,the only 1,which died,was ExFAT.
---
On the OSs already on SMR HDDs,I did the same as for those on SSDs:
•Disabled indexing.
•Disabled page file.
•Disabled hibernation.
•Limited system restore to minimum.
•Maximized RAM.
•Disabled HDD Power Down.
•Set automatic suspend to sleep mode to 8hrs.
•Disabled Windows Update.
•Disabled automatic updates for everything except antivirus & Firefox.
My understanding of the workings of smr is that it writes its shingled tracks in blocks, typically 32MB-256MB in size. It has a CMR cache where the writes go to first, then the controller rewrites shingled blocks containing the updated LBA’s in sequence.
The TRIM thing comes into play where the controller can discard a shingle block when all of the LBAs it contains has been discarded, so that it does not need to rewrite it and can maintain a pool of empty shingle blocks it can write to immediately.
The shingle blocks do not need to be in order, the controller remaps their LBAs to the correct order.
The data being copied over from CMR cache to SMR blocks in the background *should* not cause data loss on shutdown, as the disk caches gets flushed and the device gets a power down command.
Power loss during operation, however, might have more serious side effects. I am glad to say I do not know first hand, since I do not own one. The above isnt rooting for smr, I also think its shit.
st31276a wrote on 2025-03-03, 15:13:My understanding of the workings of smr is that it writes its shingled tracks in blocks, typically 32MB-256MB in size. It has a […]
My understanding of the workings of smr is that it writes its shingled tracks in blocks, typically 32MB-256MB in size. It has a CMR cache where the writes go to first, then the controller rewrites shingled blocks containing the updated LBA’s in sequence.
The TRIM thing comes into play where the controller can discard a shingle block when all of the LBAs it contains has been discarded, so that it does not need to rewrite it and can maintain a pool of empty shingle blocks it can write to immediately.
The shingle blocks do not need to be in order, the controller remaps their LBAs to the correct order.
The data being copied over from CMR cache to SMR blocks in the background *should* not cause data loss on shutdown, as the disk caches gets flushed and the device gets a power down command.
Power loss during operation, however, might have more serious side effects. I am glad to say I do not know first hand, since I do not own one. The above isnt rooting for smr, I also think its shit.
Thanx.
So it has at least some little failsafes.
But of course I will retain in mind,that these r shitty tech & for next projects I should avoid use them as system drives.
Very much, do that.
But dont hate on SSDs. Those are perfectly OK tech if you treat it right.
wierd_w wrote on 2025-03-04, 18:57:Very much, do that.
But dont hate on SSDs. Those are perfectly OK tech if you treat it right.
I do not h8 SSDs,I just bought 1,I am just afraid to use them for system(Win32/64),any HDD @ least warns by wierd sounds:"I am about to die!",but SSDs worx fully,no warning & in any second they can die all @ 1ce & swapping can be minimized,but not avoided @ all & @ least few programs & system processes will produce temp files & cause overwriting & eventually kill the SSD,but for a data drive y not,I am just about to put movies & series to the SSD to be played on TV repeatedly,but I will put there my favorite 1s & I will just add there,not overwrite the SSD...
& of course I will keep a backup on HDD(s).
SSD for system volume can be just fine if you can mitigate the 'I want to constantly write there!' Dysfunction.
On windows this is a lot harder to do, but not impossible. Moving the swapfile off of it is a good start, along with the browser cache and changing the temp folder envirionment variable.
Sadly, a lot of what windows does or wants to do, does not play nice. (Which i've already waxed on.)
Other OSes though, are different fish.
On linux at least, you can mitigate almost all of it with proper extended tune2fs parameters for stripe and stride, combined with judicious use of tmpfs mounts, but you need to know what you're doing.
Such mitigations work even for 'trash tier' flash devices, like SDCards.
I used to drive a modified chromebook, that was crippled with only 16gb of internal emmc storage. I had to use the microsd slot for / and /home (with the emmc as /boot, and hosting the bootloader)
When I first set it up, I was naive about just how destructive certain normal activities, like web browsing, were, and I killed the card in about 6mo of use.
That got me looking down the rabbit hole, and that is when I learned about setting stripe and stride. The model I had was very crippled with 2gb of ram, so excessive use of tmpfs was a rough sell. I had to set the size quite small, and tell the browser not to exceed that size--
But, after these changes, I was able to use, and even do some light gaming on an identical replacement card, that survived the rest of that chromebook's lifespan. (Which was several years!)
Those mitigations make HUGE differences in longevity and access performance.
A real shame microsoft doesnt expose similar options.
wierd_w wrote on 2025-03-04, 20:00:SSD for system volume can be just fine if you can mitigate the 'I want to constantly write there!' Dysfunction. […]
SSD for system volume can be just fine if you can mitigate the 'I want to constantly write there!' Dysfunction.
On windows this is a lot harder to do, but not impossible. Moving the swapfile off of it is a good start, along with the browser cache and changing the temp folder envirionment variable.
Sadly, a lot of what windows does or wants to do, does not play nice. (Which i've already waxed on.)
Other OSes though, are different fish.
On linux at least, you can mitigate almost all of it with proper extended tune2fs parameters for stripe and stride, combined with judicious use of tmpfs mounts, but you need to know what you're doing.
Such mitigations work even for 'trash tier' flash devices, like SDCards.
I used to drive a modified chromebook, that was crippled with only 16gb of internal emmc storage. I had to use the microsd slot for / and /home (with the emmc as /boot, and hosting the bootloader)
When I first set it up, I was naive about just how destructive certain normal activities, like web browsing, were, and I killed the card in about 6mo of use.
That got me looking down the rabbit hole, and that is when I learned about setting stripe and stride. The model I had was very crippled with 2gb of ram, so excessive use of tmpfs was a rough sell. I had to set the size quite small, and tell the browser not to exceed that size--
But, after these changes, I was able to use, and even do some light gaming on an identical replacement card, that survived the rest of that chromebook's lifespan. (Which was several years!)
Those mitigations make HUGE differences in longevity and access performance.
A real shame microsoft doesnt expose similar options.
Thanx,I will try to use this for machines,to which a HDD does not fit in & these must be flash-only,like Asus EeePC 901,or for other occassions,where there will be a reason for an SSD as a single drive,but if I can put 2+ hard drives to a machine,it is much easier to just use HDD for Windows & SSDs/SDs for data & I have almost none experiences with Linux.
Where we r talking about mitigating some downsides of SSDs & SMR HDDs,I think,we may talk about total avoiding of those downsides by using old good CMR HDD for Windows,or more precisely for Win32,as Win16/DOS are really not flash-killers.
For systems with IDE+SATA I even prefere to use an IDE HDD for Windows & SATA for data,because IDE HDDs are much more reliable than SATA 1s,I could rely on them for 30 years,for which I am using them & I am quite satisfied with them & these r always 512n,always CMR,no emulation-totally native access...If can use IDE HDD for system,I never hesitate to do so,then I add data drives to SATA combining the reliability of non-RoHS fully Legacy IDE HDDs for Windows & storage capacity for archiving of SATA drives for data,so this is the best of both worlds,which is only available on some P4 MoBos,that also is,y I love these MoBos with both,IDE & SATA.
& to not forget,IDE HDDs also has 1 more quality:as they r noicy,I always hear the heads & I always know their condition,I hear healthy or unhealthy sounds of the heads,thus I always know the condition of an IDE drive,I miss it on todays silent HDDs & of course on SSDs completely.
It is much more comfortable to just listen to the heads & be perfectly aware of the health of my HDD,than have to check by some specialized utility,how many writes left until the dead of the SSD silent as dead even when alive,or count writes,or so.
& also I dislike that silence,I need to hear the HDD,I do not feel good,when a PC is silent like a diskless terminal,thus if I can,I have @ least 1 HDD in a comp.,I can have SSDs there too,but I need to have @ least 1 HDD in it too even for the for me natural sound of a computer, @ least for the system I need a drive,which is talking to me...
Speaking of SSDs, I have had good luck with Samsungs. Knock off brands and especially knock offs of knock off brands tend to fail fast and hard.
Although, I heard they took a wrong turn with the 980 series, so caveat emptor…
& I also heard/read an information,that SSDs loses data for shorter time unpowered than SD/CF/USB flash drives.
While SD/CF/USB flash drives loses data after about 5 years of not being powered,SSDs loses data after 1 year of not being powered, also 1 user wrote it here,is it true,SSDs withstand less time without power than cheaper removable flash media?