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Question First SMR drive

J

john3850

Golden Member
I bought a WD blue drive that is a SMR format for bkup only then I shut it off in the bios until I need it a month later.
If I just write to the drive will the writes be much slower then the WD blue CMR drives that I am using now for bkup.
 
You might find reviews that quantify it but yes, slower writes.

Once a month backups, I'd sooner have an external that powers off rather than always getting power. I have one plugged into a hub and power strip, each having a switch to toggle rather than having to plug/unplug an external, or reboot into bios settings to put an internal online... but i use it more often than monthly, if it were only once a month, plugging and unplugging would weigh against the cost of the switchable hub and power strip, except I already had those.
 
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I have a small glass desktop desk so I shut down the sata controller and use 3 NVMe drives but a external would free up some air space in the front of the case.
Thanks
 
Extended writes to an SMR drive can be quite a bit slower compared to CMR. On the first write to a sector they will perform the same though. On the second write the old data has to be moved first, significantly slowing down the write operation. You can reset an SMR drive by performing an ATA Secure Erase. For many SMR drives, sectors can also be reset by filling them with zeros.
 
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