Do all drives have to be in RAID?

The only absolute requirement for matching drive specs in a RAID 10 array is that the drives must be of the same architecture, e.g., all SAS or SATA.

Is SMR drive bad?

SMR hard disks are a good choice if they are primarily used as pure data storage or if a large hard disk is to be used for a PC on which data is stored. They offer more storage capacity and are more energy efficient than CMR, which makes them ideal for archiving tasks.

Can you RAID some drives and not others?

The short answer is YES to both of your questions. You certainly do not have to put all of your HDDs into the RAID.

Is SMR good for gaming?

SMR is fine for anything but a system drive. Any drive expecting a noticeable quantity of writes should be SSD anyway. Any drive with a noticeable quantity of anything should be SSD. SMR kills write performance (no, seriously, it’s awful) for better density.

Is SMR slower than CMR?

In individual tests carried out comparing Western Digital SMR drives to CMR drives from Western Digital and Seagate, it was found that the SMR drive was slower in every typical storage benchmark when compared to the CMR drives of the same capacity.

Why isn’t RAID considered a backup?

If a file is deleted or overwritten the RAID array cannot be used to retrieve it. When a file is deleted it is deleted from all the drives. When a file is overwritten it is overwritten on all the drives. Therefor a RAID array is not a backup solution.

What are the disadvantages of SMR hard disks?

Basically, SMR hard disks are not particularly well suited if the hard disk is to be constantly and permanently doing write operations, as this can lead to a cache overflow. In this case, a hard disk with a CMR recording method should definitely be used.

How do I know if my hard drive is SMR?

There is a way to tell if the hard drive is SMR if you have it on a NAS or have the ability to access a UNIX command console. Simply enter the following command: Where sda is where you have the disk mounted (can be sdb, sdc, etc.). SMR hard drives have TRIM support, so if it is listed it is SMR.

What is the difference between SMR and PMR hard drives?

Differences between PMR and SMR Regardless of whether an HDD uses PMR or SMR, the read head only requires a small portion of the written magnetic track. When new data is written on an SMR drive, the tracks are fully readable without impacting performance.

What happens when you overwrite data on an SMR drive?

When new data is written on an SMR drive, the tracks are fully readable without impacting performance. However, when the data on an SMR drive is edited or overwritten, the write head will not overwrite the data onto the existing magnetic track.