How to tell if a new HDD is SMR or CMR

TV2 said:

I have always used WD black drives, they are great. I took a chance on this Toshiba for price and I have been pleased.

I have a couple of 640GB Blacks running in a 2009 rig right now. Nary a problem, still good on tests.

Before SSDs I used to buy WD Velociraptors for my OS drive.
I still have the original WD 36GB Raptor, and it still works.

That's helpful.
Yikes! ALL the 2.5's are SMR

SIW2 said:

I got a 2tb smr without knowing what it was. It is very odd. The first 200gb is very quick for a mechanical disk, then it slows the further across the disk you go. The last 500gb is like molasses.

Avoid.

Yes, agreed. The reason for the thread.

I was first aware of this in a thread I was on with jumanji where he warned about the difficulties in data recovery on a SMR drive. That is when I first realized they existed.

I'm sure there are uses for these drives, but I want to avoid them for performance and maintenance reasons.

itsme1 said:

Performance Hard Drive | Toshiba X300 Performance Storage HDD

Recording Technology CMR (all capacities)

It is interesting that my 5GB drive does not show up on any of these lists. I wonder if it was binned?

TV2 said:

It is interesting that my 5GB drive does not show up on any of these lists. I wonder if it was binned?

Here... you owe me $5 for going through this whole list.

List of WD CMR and SMR hard drives (HDD) – NAS Compares

Paul Black said:

Hello @TV2,

Does this help? => How To Tell A Difference Between DM-SMR And Non-SMR (CMR) Drives (HDD) – Compare

At the bottom of the page at your link... is a link to this...

The actual CMR/SMR list.
I can't find a way to "search" or sort that list. Seems ya just have to scroll through.
Even though the link says WD drives... the list has all brands of drives.

List of WD CMR and SMR hard drives (HDD) – NAS Compares