gene heskett <ghesk...@shentel.net> writes: > I carefully note, the use of Helium and its problems is very carefully > ignored.
I suppose helium is not required for SMR drives and could be used in CMR drives too... Western Digital at least claims to have solved the leaking problem with helium and since they've been making those drives for over a decade, I think it's solved. Really a shame how the whole SMR mess happened. For the last decade or so I thought I can just double the size of my little "stuff" server (mirrored 1 TB drives) by bigger 2.5" drives. But no, first they came out with fat 2 TB drives and then the slim drives all went SMR. There was a time when suitable drives were available but I wasn't shopping then. So instead of replacing just the drives, I replaced everything. The new server is way faster and has a lot more storage but it's also noisier and slower to wake due to the 3.5" drives.
