CMR vs SMR. How do they compare, and how much should you care?

Full comparative test of WD Blue CMR and SMR drives and a deep dive to whats going on inside. Find out how these disks compare, how much it matters and why we get the results we do. Should you consider buying SMR disks, or avoiding them? Is it even clear which is which?

I test various write, read and rewrite use cases on WD20EARZ, WD20EZAZ AND WD20EZBX drives and find out where they perform well, similarly, and badly. We also look into why we get the results we get so you can understand if, and when, you should consider Shingled Magnetic Recording drives.

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0:00 Intro
2:05 CMR vs SMR Test Overview
3:55 Peak Throughput and Large File Write tests and findings
5:57 Large File Sequential Read performance tests and findings
7:17 Mixed file sequential write tests and findings
9:00 Mixed file sequential read tests and findings
9:43 SMR architecture and what to look for in non-sequential tests
11:54 Random Write tests and findings
13:40 Non-idle workload test - Persistent Cache Saturation and performance impact
15:00 Idle workload test and findings
16:14 Conclusions and summary of findings