Hi, On Thu, Jul 30, 2026 at 07:17:01AM -0600, Casey Deccio wrote: > Seagate BarraCuda 5TB Internal Hard Drive HDD – 2.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s 5400 RPM > 128MB
Almost all high capacity 2.5" SATA drives are SMR (shingled magnetic recording) and are really intended for use in laptops, not for serious server purposes. I haven't checked this model but I would be very surprised if it's not SMR, and the 5.4kRPM also suggests not for server use. SMR drives have a write cache and after this write cache is filled, the write performance is absolutely terrible. A lot of people find them unsuitable for use in RAID arrays (or zfs pools) because even the periodic scrub can't complete in a reasonable time period. This could easily explain the very low performance under write load here. Have you used these models of drive before with a better performance outcome? Consumer-level SATA SSDs will definitely perform better though the cost will be eye-watering (in comparison) for 3x ~4TB or 3x ~8TB. This is an issue I have struggled with myself - very very hard to find decently performing 2.5" SATA drives. Thanks, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
