Question CMR vs SMR for a 2tb hard drive for storage

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karthik.gems

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I currently have a 1tb Seagate Barracuda hard disk and wanted to add a 2tb hard disk in my pc.
And then came across this CMR vs SMR feature and found some people in reddit saying no to smr drives. But most of those comments are related to NAS drives.


But for me this 2tb hard disk is for storage purpose. I currently have a 1tb ssd, and a 1tb hard disk. But this hdd is filled up in months. So I decided to upgrade.

This drive is for storing few old games, personal photos+videos (currently 200gb), then some videos for youtube.

Most of the time, the hdd will be used only for accessing files and not writing often, since I will be using the ssd for exporting videos and then copy the final video into hdd for storage/backup.

So for this purpose which is better for me? CMR or SMR or would it not matter at all?

Below are the drives which I considered based on availability in my country:

  1. Seagate Barracuda 2TB (ST2000DM008 ) - 7200rpm - SMR
  2. Seagate Barracuda 2tb (ST2000DM005 ) - 5400rpm - SMR
  3. WD Blue 2tb (WD20EZRZ ) - 5400rpm - 64mb cache - CMR
  4. WD Blue 2tb (WD20EZAZ ) - 5400rpm - 256mb cache - SMR
 
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dreamteam

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I never bought anything from Toshiba or have no idea about how they handle warranty here. But I read most amazon reviews have complaints about drive failures and bad warranty.

you have to ''fight'' with your retailer for the Warranty coverage
with Seagate and WD you can register and RMA your drive directly with them.

if you read the Toshiba drives datasheet you will realize that some are rated to last 300K cycles not 600k and I saw other drawbacks I can't remember.

my advise is not to buy anything from shi*** companies that don't even have an email for customer support like EMTEC.
Yes, you first have to buy the product if you want later to get in touch with the manufacturer so you can't even ask them anything previously your purchase.
http://www.emtec-international.com/en/emtec-ct-sav
 
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karthik.gems

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you have to ''fight'' with your retailer for the Warranty coverage
with Seagate and WD you can register and RMA your drive directly with them.

if you read the Toshiba drives datasheet you will realize that some are rated to last 300K cycles not 600k and I saw other drawbacks I can't remember.

my advise is not to buy anything from shi*** companies that don't even have an email for customer support like EMTEC.
Yes, you first have to buy the product if you want later to get in touch with the manufacturer so you can't even ask them anything previously your purchase.
http://www.emtec-international.com/en/emtec-ct-sav

Guess what. I emailed Toshiba customer care and they said they could help if I already purchased and have a serial number. But I insisted on giving service center address as it was not mentioned in any of their websites. They finally gave a local company which handles their warranty. But I already had some experience with that company's warranty handling and it's a mess and unsatisfactory.
But I had 2 times issues with WD and they didn't trouble me at all. Just replaced without any hassle.

Looks like I will have to go with WD drive. Even if it's 5400rpm, there are no alternatives for my case. Thanks for your reply.
 
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dreamteam

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Guess what. I emailed Toshiba customer care and they said they could help if I already purchased and have a serial number.

that's just exactly what I have said on my previous post, Toshiba first want you to purchase their stuff and then they can provide some kind of support otherwise you are tied to dealing your local dealer.
why may you want to support a company with your money if they are just ignoring you ?

with WD they will request you to send them the drive or maybe not if it's RED NAS and you get either your full money back or a new drive.
 

dreamteam

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Yes, I already have 2 ssds and this new drive would be for photos, videos and other docs backup.

I have both and believe me that I don't feel any difference
if you need to unzip large files all day long I would recommend you to download them on one drive and unzip them on the second drive if you want to gain some speed
anyway the current drives with 5400 rpm have noting to do with the 20 years old sluggish Barracuda 5400.

I had a Sony VAIO with a Hitachi 5400 rpm drive and replaced it for a seagate Momentus 7200 rpm thinking it was gonna be better but it was even worse.
 

dreamteam

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MSI B450 Tomahawk Max | Ryzen 5 3600 | Gigabyte 2060 Super Windforce OC | Corsair Vengeance 2x8 DDR4 3200Mhz | Cooler Master MWE Gold 650W | Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVMe SSD | Seagate Barracuda

if this is your PC I can't understand why you might want to save 10-15 bucks on a new HDD.
that's roughly the difference between a Blue and Firecuda on Amazon.

also if you fill it up quickly, within 1 or 2 years you will need to buy a bigger one.
the 2TB drives are not the best bang for the money.
 

karthik.gems

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if this is your PC I can't understand why you might want to save 10-15 bucks on a new HDD.
that's roughly the difference between a Blue and Firecuda on Amazon.

In my country, WD blue 2tb is Rs.5000(~ $66) and Firecuda 2tb is Rs.9300 (~ $124).
So I could save a lot of buck for storage here.

also if you fill it up quickly, within 1 or 2 years you will need to buy a bigger one.
the 2TB drives are not the best bang for the money.

Maybe. But if it fills after a year I could buy another 2tb or more based on usage.
I prefer to have more drives atleast as backup rather than having a single large drive. If a larger drive fails, then all files are gone.
 

dreamteam

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In my country, WD blue 2tb is Rs.5000(~ $66) and Firecuda 2tb is Rs.9300 (~ $124).
So I could save a lot of buck for storage here.

what country is this ?

I prefer to have more drives atleast as backup rather than having a single large drive. If a larger drive fails, then all files are gone.

this is not a backup of anything if the drive fails you lose a huge portion of your data
do buy 2 Blue drives for the price of 1 Firecuda/ Barracuda Pro...
 

karthik.gems

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what country is this ?

India
Even in US, Firecuda 2tb is 165$. So in which country it is 10-15$ more from WD blue?

this is not a backup of anything if the drive fails you lose a huge portion of your data
do buy 2 Blue drives for the price of 1 Firecuda/ Barracuda Pro...

I already have a Seagate Barracuda 1tb in the pc. If I buy a 2tb drive, then this 1tb seagate will act as the backup of important files when necessary.
 

andrepartthree

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I know this was posted a year ago and I apologize for not having anything useful to add here but - tom's hardware forums to the rescue again :) .. you guys just saved me from pulling the trigger on a 2 TB western digital blue brand hard drive.... while it's on sale crazy cheap right now (2 TB , 7200 rpm version)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08VH8R94B/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

the negative amazon reviews alerted me that something was up, came across this weblink which seems to confirm it's an SMR drive

https://nascompares.com/answer/list-of-wd-cmr-and-smr-hard-drives-hdd/

and then this thread I'm replying to right now popped up when I did a google search to the effect of " are smr drives really all that bad?"...

... for my purposes... external offline backup of family member's windows O/S for their PC's so I can restore if ransomware or something else equally nasty freezes up their PC ... there's no way I'm going to mess with an SMR drive for that kind of thing, way too important to trust a drive with that many complaints.

So I will continue to use my ancient (but apparently more reliable go figure :p ) hard drives pulled from older PC's for backup purposes until the 2 TB black brand western digital falls to a price I'm willing to pay (which sure enough according to the link I mentioned above is CMR - unless I'm wrong? If I gave someone a bad link up there with nascompares please let me know!)

Mainly though I wanted to just say how awesome you tom's forum guys are :) ... seriously, you don't even have to be registered on the forums , I wasn't for the longest time (too lazy at first :p ) and even then I can't count the number of times you guys pop up with helpful advice on some thread if I have questions about a PC issue and I'm doing a google search on it - so basically you guys rock :)
 
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