this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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[–] shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit 18 points 6 months ago (1 children)

From the article:

UPDATE 5/17, 6 PM: Western Digital has confirmed that the new 2.5-inch T GB HDDs uses 6 SMR platters

SMR = shingled magnetic recording https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingled_magnetic_recording - "continuous writing of large amount of data is noticeably slower than with CMR drives"

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

They're external, you're not going to be using them for performance anyway.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

True, but to a point. Being external, it'd be something I plug in occasionally to back up large project files. I don't technically need blazing speeds but I'd still be displeased if my transfers took 10 minutes or more.

Yes, I should've added - whether the write speed matters depends on your own use case.

For my SMR drive, it's taking roughly 2GB of backup files every few hours, in the background, and there's plenty of empty space on the drive. In my case, it doesn't matter at all.

However, if you're sat at your computer, frequently transferring large files while the drive is at least half full, and you have to wait for completion... Then it'll matter.