On Thu, Dec 03, 2015 at 03:32:11PM +0000, lejeczek wrote:
> 
> I wonder if there is a user/admin who tried SMR drive and could
> share his/her thoughts on them?
> 

Did not try and will not try.

All published reports indicate that write performance is erratic (and quite reduced
compared to conventional storage), making them unsuitable to our main application
of recording experiment data in near-real time.

These SMR disks are marketed by Seagate as "archive" media, but because they
are very new there is no failure statistics, and the failure modes are not well
understood (if a spot of disk platter goes bad, do I lose just a few sectors, like
on normal disks, or do I lose everything, like on a self-bricked SSD?). So does
the reduces cost compensate for the added risk of data loss?

You can also read the reviews at newegg and elsewhere.

K.O.

P.S. FUD check:
Fear - check,
Uncertainty - check,
Deception - hopefully not.

-- 
Konstantin Olchanski
Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow!
Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca
Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada