Far_Marsupial6303B
DM-SMR is Drive Managed-SMR. All the write/read activity is handled by the onboard electronics.
HM-SMR is Host Managed-SMR. All write/read activity is handled by specialized external hardware and software. They’re far from the capabilities of most home users today.
The current 26TB WD Ultrastar and upcoming 28TB WD drives are HM-SMR. The upcoming 30TB Seagate is also HM-SMR.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/13z7w96/lets_discuss_dmsmr_hmsmr_hasmr_and_dropbox/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/146hb9k/information_about_cmr_to_smr_manufacturer/
Your MaxDigitalData (MDD) drive is likely CMR because they’re almost surely used enterprise drives. However, be careful as there was a user whose drive was HM-SMR and unusable.
MDD is a division of GoHardDrive and IMO, are drives that GoHardDrive doesn’t want to sell under their own name. Also Avolusion (externals) is a division of GoHardDrive and has been reported to contain used drives.
For completeness, I’ll add the only other type of generally available drive category currently available, surveillance drives, which are designed/tweaked for 24/7 writes.
Seagate Skyhawk - All CMR
Seagate Skyhawk AI - All CMR
Seagate Skyhawk Lite - All SMR
WD Purple - All CMR
WD Purple Pro - All CMR
Toshiba S300 - All CMR
Two thumbs up to those who are posting that NAS and by inferred extension, Enterprise drives aren’t necessarily any better for home use.
However, since NAS/Enterprise labeling is now 98% marketing, there really isn’t much of a decision necessary today. Other than the handful of drive lines HTWingNut posted and another handful of specialized surveillance drives, everything else is NAS or Enterprise.
+1
You’ve listed all the 3.5" consumer drives. Though WD Red is listed as a NAS drive.
Barring an unfounded conspiracy, there is no >8TB DM-SMR drive drives. There are >8TB HM-SMR drives in the NAS and Enterprise lines, but they require specialized hardware and software.
In addition for completeness, all consumer 2.5" Seagate and WD drive >500GB are SMR. The 9.5mm Toshiba L200 1TB is CMR, but the 7mm model is SMR.
I’m on Windows so I use Everything as my search and VVV (Virtual Volumes View) for an offline searchable database. I also keep copies of TV show episode and apperances lists from Wikipedia.
With my drive organization, which is a variation on animal, vegetable. mineral*, I can find anything within seconds as long as I know something about it. More below.
*Animal, vegetable, mineral is based on the idea that everything can be primarily catagorized into one of those three catagories. So in my case, if I know a movie is by a certain director, stars a certain actress or was a certain type of show, I can go directly to that drive or folder.
I don’t use RAID because I like to keep my drives separate and just do a 1:1 swapout when one fails without any rebuild time. This does leave a lot of unused slack space and I do have to upgrade my drive size every so often, but by that time I’m ready to retire my active drives to backup anyway.
I have two backups. An exact set of mirror drives and my second backup is spread over 3 & 4TB drives. Unfortunately I don’t have anywhere to store them physically offsite and could is too expensive for my 200TB raw hoard. Everything is verified after copy and every few years, re-verify the integrity of the files with ViceVersa to ensure they’re bit of for bit accurate. Unfortunately, I didn’t save the HASH(es) the first go around, but am now doing it during the re-verify and initial copy.
Note: Always copy, never move your files and always verify! Odd things can happen if you move! There are those that say, correctly that a move on the same drive just rewrites the location to the File Allocation Table, but I still never move unless the file is completely unimportant.
For finding duplicates, Czwaka is highly recommended here for all file types. I’ve been using Video Duplicator for years and will continue to use it since I have the Pro version.
My drive organization, is 20 dedicated drives ranging from 8-14TB. Each drive/set of drives is for:
Directors - Alpha by name
Actresses - Alpha by name
Music - Sub categorized into groups/soloists and type of show (Reality, Variety, Special)
Variety Shows
Reality Shows
Specials/Documentaries/Shorts/Collections
Movies with sequels - Regardless of director
In Teracopy, choose your files, Test and save a HASH. You’ll need a program like MD5Checker to compare the HASH.
I like ViceVersa for comparing drives/directories. The free version should be fine unless you have non-English file names. https://www.tgrmn.com/free/
9. r/techsupport exists.
r/Datahoarder is not a sub for tech support,
r/techsupport is for posts which could have been a google search, e.g. a post with CrystalDiskInfo screenshots with the title “is my drive ok?”. Literally every question about SMART status. A**udio recordings of “is this click noise normal?” More technical questions are allowed, e.g. “what is the optimal ZFS configuration of a 24 disk array” or “how else can i automate the archiving of this [thing]”