[GLLUG] Link two RAIDs in one LVM?

[Mike Brodbelt]

On 02/05/2020 13:48, Dr. Axel Stammler via GLLUG wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Thanks for these valuable tips, especially the one about SMR. I have 
> looked at the topic in more detail and I am really glad I did. Could you 
> suggest a way of finding non-SMR hard disk drives, especially at decent 
> prices?

Cheap is starting to mean SMR in more and more places. All the high 
capacity lines that are decent are non-SMR - WD Red Pro, WD Gold, the 
Toshiba NAS drives, WD/HGST Ultrastar drives, etc. They're also the 
expensive ones.

I think what we're really seeing here is that in the 1-6 TB desktop 
range, customers are price sensitive, and moving to SMR means the 
manufacturer can drop the platter count, which is going to reduce their 
costs. That, in and of itself is OK, but the way they've tried to hide 
this from customers is pretty underhanded, and happily seems to have 
backfired quite badly. WD in particular should never have put SMR into 
NAS drives, where it was clearly unsuitable. I'm not quite sure what 
they were thinking there - it feels like marketing were driving the 
ship, and were drunk at the wheel.

This is a list of SMR drives - known to cause problems with Synology NAS 
devices:-

https://www.synology.com/en-global/compatibility?search_by=category&category=hdds_no_ssd_trim&filter_feature=SMR&p=1

Toshiba seem to have been somewhat more honest, but have some SMR drives 
in the lineup as well. Details here:-

https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/16/toshiba-desktop-disk-drives-undocumented-shingle-magnetic-recording/

The real root cause here I think is this though:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_hard_disk_manufacturers

There's not much real competition any more, and we're now starting to 
see the results of that in the way customers are being treated... At the 
2TB drive level, they have to get the price down quite far now, as I can 
pick up a 2TB SSD for £300 or so, which is faster, smaller, lower power, 
and potentially more durable. So it's cut every corner you can....

Mike