Interesting video talking about shingling...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IRjFZ9xEj8

allan:

 

For Seagate drives, there are a number of statements online indicating that the Ironwolf and Ironwolf Pro ranges are not shingled.

 

I hope that's right, I have 5 8TB Ironwolfs in my NAS.

Mark:

 

A reasonable rule of thumb for if a drive is shingled or not, is the amount of cache on the drive ... 256MB+ is a good sign it's a shingled drive.

 

allan:

 

For Seagate drives, there are a number of statements online indicating that the Ironwolf and Ironwolf Pro ranges are not shingled.

 

From Amazon:

Seagate IronWolf 6TB NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD – CMR 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 5600 RPM 256MB Cache

Alan's link to the synology site indicates that that drive is approved by them so it is unlikely to be shingled.

I am not setting out to criticise Mark here I am just illustrating that it is difficult to be sure.

I may buy one of those drives and use dd to try to copy a shingled WD Red drive that is in my zfs array.

 

I am not setting out to criticise Mark here I am just illustrating that it is difficult to be sure.

 

I don't mind criticism at all :-)   Was just pointing out that shingled drives tend to have more cache on them (since they need it to give the illusion of performance), drives usually came with 64 or 128MB of cache, then shingled drives started being swapped into the same product families (naughty WD!) but they came with extra cache.

Also to be honest if you drop a drive into a NAS the write back cache should probably be off unless you have external UPS and the NAS shutdown nicely during a power outage.

Mark:

I am not setting out to criticise Mark here I am just illustrating that it is difficult to be sure.

I don't mind criticism at all :-)   Was just pointing out that shingled drives tend to have more cache on them (since they need it to give the illusion of performance), drives usually came with 64 or 128MB of cache, then shingled drives started being swapped into the same product families (naughty WD!) but they came with extra cache.

Also to be honest if you drop a drive into a NAS the write back cache should probably be off unless you have external UPS and the NAS shutdown nicely during a power outage.

concordnz:

Nope - Increased cache is NOT a guideline/warning.
Please don't use this as a rule of thumb.- you will confuse yourself.
- all manufacturers are increasing their caches on both SMR & CMR as ram costs have dropped.
WD Red 8Tb & 10Tb have increased to 256mb cache & these are definitely CMR (good)

Fair enough .. I've not progressed beyond 2TB drives at home anyway, and the last purchase was to find a non-SMR replacement in that size and spindle speed for the RAID set, I found cache size helped narrow it down which of the models superseding it were actually SMR in a period when WD weren't making it easy info to find.

concordnz: Western Digital CMR/SMR info is easy to find.
( This stuff is not a secret).

It appears though that as recently as April this year, it was a secret. WD only admitted it when the information was released by others.

As recently as March this year WD wrote:

“Just a quick note. The only SMR drive that Western Digital will have in production is our 20TB hard enterprise hard drives and even these will not be rolled out into the channel. All of our current range of hard drives are based on CMR Conventional Magnetic Recording. [Blocks & Files emboldening.] With SMR Western Digital would make it very clear as that format of hard drive requires a lot of technological tweaks in customer systems.”

It is hard to read that and avoid the conclusion that WD have not been honest and straight with their customers.

The blocks and files blog reported it a couple of months ago and their report was highlighted in theregister.

It was only after that revelation that WD admitted what they had been doing.

That was when they updated their data sheets.

So, how much do you believe their current claims?

Refs:

https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/14/wd-red-nas-drives-shingled-magnetic-recording/

https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/24/western-digital-smr-drives-policy-change/

Mark:

 

A reasonable rule of thumb for if a drive is shingled or not, is the amount of cache on the drive ... 256MB+ is a good sign it's a shingled drive.

 

I found another update for this:

The Toshiba P300 range has recently been disclosed as being shingled and that comes with a 64MB cache.

jpoc:

 

Mark:

 

A reasonable rule of thumb for if a drive is shingled or not, is the amount of cache on the drive ... 256MB+ is a good sign it's a shingled drive.

 

 

I found another update for this:

 

The Toshiba P300 range has recently been disclosed as being shingled and that comes with a 64MB cache.

 

 

 

Are we playing "I can prove you wrong" ? 😀

P300 500GB to 3TB is non-shingled with 64MB

P300 4TB and 6TB is shingled with 128MB

So nyyaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh  😋

Lolz I thought this was some conspiracy about people using shingles on their driveway!

Mark:

 

Are we playing "I can prove you wrong" ? 😀

 

 

 

P300 500GB to 3TB is non-shingled with 64MB

 

P300 4TB and 6TB is shingled with 128MB

 

Not at all, it all just goes to show how weird this whole situation is.

I have a Toshiba X300 6TB drive and there is a little matrix in the documentation that shows the available drives.

The N300 and X300 ranges are listed as having 128MB cache and the P300 range is shown as 64MB.

It almost looks as though the people talking or writing about their own company's products do not actually know this information.

What are their customers supposed to do?

jpoc:

 

What are their customers supposed to do?

 

Most of these big companies could not care less about any customer not buying drives by the tens of thousands!  Mere home users basically just have to accept what they are given and like it! 😬

Or file class action lawsuits so the lawyers can stay fat.