Storage Solutions Requesting suggestions on HDD options (CMR or SMR) and why choose either

ryu_88

ryu_88

Disciple
Hey TE Community,

I am looking to add a hard drive to my pc, but not really sure which way to go. Right now my pc is running on two Kingston A2000 nvme ssd's, and I could definitely use a HDD to offload all the rarely used files to. I am looking for a 1TB hdd, preferably 7200rpm or higher.

After some basic research on HDD's i've come across information that mentioned CMR HDD's are the way to go, but I cannot seem to find any reasonable options for hdd's with this technology available here in india.

Requesting help from the community on which type of HDD to get, and whether CMR is really worth it as opposed to regular SMR HDD's like the WD Blue or Toshiba P300 or Seagate Barracuda. Budget ~5k.
From reading other's experiences with regular SMR hdd's and how often they went bad (high error rates and etc.), I would rather go for a HDD which isn't inclined to go bad after just a year or two of usage, I wouldn't mind investing a little more for a great option which would last for a long time without many errors.


Thanks in advance.
 
For HDDs now a days higher the capacity higher the R/W speeds. For your use case I think you should go with external HDD. 1TB external drives are available for 4K or so. Check your local market too.
Check this thread. 2 TB Seagate External HDD - 4000/-
 
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If it's less often used files, SMR vs CMR won't really matter. That said, most 1 TB general purpose drives should be CMR. Like silverstar mentioned, the Barracuda is CMR, and the WD you linked to appears to be CMR as well. You can check by checking the model number with that line's datasheet. Here's the datasheet for the WD Blue, for example: link.

WD and Seagate seem to be more forthcoming with this information; I've found Toshiba to have a lot of gaps in declaring which drives are CMR or SMR, and many lines' datasheets have that missing as well.
 
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