New rabbit hole SMR WD HGST 14TB DC HC620

What do I need to get a SRM host managed hard drive to work is my question.... but let me share my PEBKAC pain... if it helps any I been sick for acouple months so fun times abound...

So I picked up a WD HGST 14TB DC HC620 Hs14 Ultrastar for new or low hours for 90$, my x570 arouros elite motherboard can not see it, 3rd pin/molex trick dose not work, I have a 4 drive Orcio dock that seems to work but I get a ton of I/O errors, but I am half sure its a power brick issue it uses a 4 pin din so .....sigh. I assume its a power issue because I can transfer a few hundered GB to it fine then it dies and the USB dock reports a problem.

Will a newer enclosure support this type of hard drive? do I need SMR software to use this drive in windows 10?
I am jugglign a few hundred TB left on 10 drives to try and get up enough space to a computer(should have got an 8tb months ago I'm dumb), and well I need space now, might have to just buy a cheap 4tb to get things done short trem, but gaaa.... this is confusing and frustrating me so much.


This reminds me of the joy I felt when ACHI first landed.

According to the spec sheet for that drive, yes, it requires software changes to support the new command setsthat it uses. In addition, it IS NOT intended to be a general purpose drive. It is very specifically designed for sequentially written data.

In other words, this is NOT the kind of drive you would even want to remotely consider in a standard Windows 10 or 11 system.

https://documents.westerndigital.com...r-dc-hc620.pdf

You will also want to refer to the white paper found here:

https://documents.westerndigital.com...-managed%20SMR.

A couple of notable quotes:

Bold type is mine...

"Due to the nature of host-managed SMR design, it is not a plug-and-play implementation with legacy systems.
There are three ways to design for host-managed SMR depending on the customer’s system structure and ability
to modify their application layer."

The white paper then goes on to enumerate those three ways to design for host-managed SMR.

"As the name implies, the host manages all write operations to be in sequence by following a write pointer. Once
data is written to the zone, the write pointer increments to indicate the starting point of the next write operation
in that zone. Any out-of-order writes, or writes to areas not properly indexed for writes by associated counters,
will force the drive to abort the operation and flag an error. Recovery from such an error is the responsibility of the
controlling host. This enforcement allows host-managed SMR to deliver predictable, consistent performance.
With host-managed SMR, data is organized in a number of SMR zones ranging from one to potentially many
thousands. There are two types of SMR zones: a Sequential Write Required Zone and an optional Conventional Zone.
The Conventional Zone, which typically occupies a very small percentage of the overall drive capacity, can accept
random writes but is typically used to store metadata. The Sequential Write Required zones occupy the majority
of the overall drive capacity where the host enforces the sequential data stream of all write commands. (It should
be noted that in host-managed SMR, random read commands are supported and perform comparably to that of
standard CMR drives.)
Unlike drive-managed SMR, host-managed SMR is not backwards-compatible with legacy host storage stacks.
However, host-hanaged SMR allows enterprises to maintain control and management of storage at the host level."

hsehestedt said:

According to the spec sheet for that drive, yes, it requires software changes to support the new command setsthat it uses. In addition, it IS NOT intended to be a general purpose drive. It is very specifically designed for sequentially written data.

In other words, this is NOT the kind of drive you would even want to remotely consider in a standard Windows 10 or 11 system.

https://documents.westerndigital.com...r-dc-hc620.pdf

You will also want to refer to the white paper found here:

https://documents.westerndigital.com...-managed%20SMR.

A couple of notable quotes:

Bold type is mine...

"Due to the nature of host-managed SMR design, it is not a plug-and-play implementation with legacy systems.
There are three ways to design for host-managed SMR depending on the customer’s system structure and ability
to modify their application layer."

The white paper then goes on to enumerate those three ways to design for host-managed SMR.

"As the name implies, the host manages all write operations to be in sequence by following a write pointer. Once
data is written to the zone, the write pointer increments to indicate the starting point of the next write operation
in that zone. Any out-of-order writes, or writes to areas not properly indexed for writes by associated counters,
will force the drive to abort the operation and flag an error. Recovery from such an error is the responsibility of the
controlling host. This enforcement allows host-managed SMR to deliver predictable, consistent performance.
With host-managed SMR, data is organized in a number of SMR zones ranging from one to potentially many
thousands. There are two types of SMR zones: a Sequential Write Required Zone and an optional Conventional Zone.
The Conventional Zone, which typically occupies a very small percentage of the overall drive capacity, can accept
random writes but is typically used to store metadata. The Sequential Write Required zones occupy the majority
of the overall drive capacity where the host enforces the sequential data stream of all write commands. (It should
be noted that in host-managed SMR, random read commands are supported and perform comparably to that of
standard CMR drives.)
Unlike drive-managed SMR, host-managed SMR is not backwards-compatible with legacy host storage stacks.
However, host-hanaged SMR allows enterprises to maintain control and management of storage at the host level."

Panic attacks over data is fun. I found an old 2tb that will get me through acouple weeks. I managed to return the drive.

So bascily the industry has this new "non standard" standard thats vaguely defined in their models, so you can have the same model name but not the same model number.....I knew they were mixing server and consumer stuff up like crazy over the last few years due to them not caring about the consumer end since they buy so few drives.... but the software should be easier to find, its liek them hiding their formatting and testing tools... but I guess its only a matter of time its either integrated into OS's or a third party will build a tool.... *sigh*

Yeah, this stuff can be really frustrating at times.