News Seagate launches 5TB mobile hard drive

It is a shingled drive. I would avoid these for at least another 2 years until the initial bugs with the multiple cache levels are ironed out (these drives have the usual 128MB cache on interface, then some non-SMR storage on the SMR platters as cache, then the actual data on the SMR tracks; drive moves data from non-SMR regions to SMR section when the drive is "idle"). Obviously moving data between cache and actual tracks could lead to data loss if there are some bugs in firmware - thus waiting for at least 2 more years until initial bugs in first few generations are fixed.

Also these drives can have wildly varying results depending on the filesystem, for example here is the Linux side of the things :
http://blog.schmorp.de/2015-10-08-smr-archive-drives-fast-now.html

PS: The Shingled drive part is kinda hidden in specs :
http://www.seagate.com/www-content/...files/barracuda-2-5-final-ds1907-1-1609gb.pdf
It is hiding under the term "Multi-Tier Caching Technology™" (probably).

 

Thanks for the links.

I've sworn off SMR drives (I've got 6 of the things, and returned a further 2, so I speak from experience) because of all the grief they've given me. Problem is, I've also sworn off Western Digital high-capacity drives after ordering 8x6TB drives at work, and two of them having 6TB stickers on, but actually being 5TB! So when it comes to high-capacity disks, I'm a bit restricted.

SMR drives could have been great. Instead, they were a monumental PITA.

 

It was not so hidden in the press release, when they announced these 5TB, 15mm, 2.5" drives :
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10757...5-mobile-hard-drives-with-up-to-5-tb-capacity