News Toshiba Outs its List of Hard Drives With Slower SMR Technology

[Admin]

Toshiba has shared a list of all of its hard drives that leverage SMR technology.

Toshiba Outs its List of Hard Drives With Slower SMR Technology : Read more

 

[dannyboy3210]

We have a list of drives from Western Digital and now Toshiba, here's to hoping we get one from Seagate.
(I don't remember if we've gotten one yet)

 

[King_V]

Yes and no.

Seagate has stated that NONE of their NAS drives use SMR. However, they're a bit evasive with regard to desktop drives.

Seagate says Network Attached Storage and SMR don’t mix

Seagate’s IronWolf and IronWolf Pro NAS drives are all certified SMR-free.

arstechnica.com

We spoke to Belloni at some length on the topic. He did not object to allegations of SMR disks showing up unexpectedly in Seagate's desktop channels but wanted to make very clear that Seagate has no SMR IronWolf or IronWolf Pro drives and no plans to release any.

There is a bit of wiggle room, here. When we pushed Belloni on the issue of SMR drives in Seagate's desktop channel, he told us that Seagate didn't feel the need to "break it out" in that channel, since the company believes that SMR's low and bursty performance profile is appropriate for desktop use.

We do not agree with Seagate that SMR drives are appropriate in desktop builds—or that it's OK to sneak them in there without the company's usual warnings about the technology's performance profile.

With that said, we are happy to see Seagate make serious, on-the-record statements about keeping its entire NAS drive lineup SMR-free.

Of course, this was prior to WD or Toshiba coming clean.