Been finding some good deals on 2.5 disks lately, but have never bought one before. Have a couple of 3.5 disks on the other hand in my Unraid server. Wondering how much it matters wether I get a 2.5 or not? What form factor do you prefer/usually go for?

  • ddh@lemmy.sdf.org
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    5 months ago

    SMR is a relatively new disk format technology that makes drives cheaper but writes slower, which can be noticeably bad in a NAS, especially if you are using a write-intensive RAID type. Most disk manufacturers will have drives meant for NAS like WD Red or Seagate Ironwolf, and they are almost all CMR and not SMR.

    • ultimitchow@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      i have had SMR drives slow to about 2MB/s with sustained sequential writes. “noticeably bad” really undersells how terrible they are.

    • Stowaway@midwest.social
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      5 months ago

      WD reds I believe are smr, wd red pros are cmr, or at least that was a thing for a while that WD did silently.

      • ddh@lemmy.sdf.org
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        5 months ago

        Indeed, it’s worth explicitly checking every drive you buy if you are using it in a NAS.