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- #SEAGATE EXPANSION 8TB CRYSTAL DISKMARK ARCHIVE#
- #SEAGATE EXPANSION 8TB CRYSTAL DISKMARK SOFTWARE#
- #SEAGATE EXPANSION 8TB CRYSTAL DISKMARK CODE#
- #SEAGATE EXPANSION 8TB CRYSTAL DISKMARK SERIES#
To show this stark difference we compared two Seagate Archive HDDs (SMR) and two HGST He8 HDDs (PMR), both configured in RAID1. In this case the results clearly show that this implementation of SMR is not a good fit for RAID. Many contend that NAS shares tend to be very read-focused during normal operation. While that’s true, the exception is when a drive fails and a RAID rebuild has to occur. StorageReview strongly recommends against such usage, as at this time SMR drives are not designed to cope with sustained write behavior. With the attractively low price per TB that the Seagate Archive 8TB HDD has, it can be difficult to not consider purchasing a set for NAS storage. The circuit board is equipped with an LSI controller chip and 128MB of cache from the Nanya DRAM. Once the five small screws have been removed, you can open up the drive and remove the circuit board from the body of the Seagate Archive HDD. On the rear of the drive, there are power and SATA connectors. The sides of the Seagate Archive HDD feature a total of four screw holes, which allows us to mount the drive.
#SEAGATE EXPANSION 8TB CRYSTAL DISKMARK CODE#
The label simply supplies the product name, company logo, and a QR code that navigates to the product website. That front of the drive features a product label with the Seagate colors (black, teal, and white) with a very clean and slick looking design. The Seagate Archive HDD sports the usual standard hard drive design of a silver top cover and black metal body.
![seagate expansion 8tb crystal diskmark seagate expansion 8tb crystal diskmark](https://www.nikktech.com/main/images/pics/reviews/seagate/backup_plus_hub_8tb/backup_plus_hub_8tba.jpg)
#SEAGATE EXPANSION 8TB CRYSTAL DISKMARK SOFTWARE#
There is also a fundamental limitation with either approach when considering traditional software or hardware RAID configurations, as SMR drives generally speaking should not be used in that way.
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The trade off however is that performance can at times be unpredictable, as the drive is forced to run its background processes with no input or communication with the OS. The drive leverages an on-drive cache (roughly 20GB) to handle inbound writes, in addition to internal systems for meta data tables and background processes like garbage collection, not unlike an SSD. No commercially available OSs support SMR today, it’s something being built in to some cloud-scale providers who run their own storage stacks. With the Seagate Archive being drive managed, the drive has no such requirement and thus can be used in any OS greatly increasing its versatility.
![seagate expansion 8tb crystal diskmark seagate expansion 8tb crystal diskmark](https://c1.neweggimages.com/ProductImageCompressAll1280/22-184-953-V07.jpg)
In that case the host knows there’s an SMR drive in place and can manage it effectively for predictable performance but this requires an OS that is SMR aware. The way Seagate deploys SMR in the Archive drive is what’s called “drive managed.” There are other SMR meta data management methodologies that rely on the host file system to manage the drive. The idea of data retrieval being important, more important than write performance, is a critical foundation to understanding this implementation of SMR. In this case, as the name implies, the drives are intended for use in large-scale data centers where density, power consumption, data integrity and data retrieval are paramount.
#SEAGATE EXPANSION 8TB CRYSTAL DISKMARK SERIES#
This new series of Archive HDDs isn’t a general purpose drive however, that duty is aligned with the Enterprise Capacity family. Seagate uses Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) to change the way tracks are laid out on the platters, which drives higher platter density. Second, the methodology to get to that 8TB is new to the market. First, the massive 8TB capacity is Seagate’s highest to date. The Seagate Archive HDD represents several major advancements in hard drive technology for the company.