Re: [gentoo-user] Testing a used hard drive to make SURE it is good.

[Dale]

Wols Lists wrote:
> On 16/06/20 08:34, Dale wrote:
>> Right now, I'm backing up to a 8TB external drive, sadly it is a SMR
>> drive but it works.  As I go along, I'll be breaking down my backups.
>> Example.  I may have my Documents directory, which includes my camera
>> pics, backed up to one drive.  I may have videos backed up to another
>> drive.  Other directories may have to be on other drives.  The biggest
>> things I don't want to lose:  Camera pics that could not be replaced
>> except with a backup.  Videos, some of which are no longer available.
>> That requires a large drive.  It currently is approaching 6TBs and I
>> have several videos in other locations that are not included in that.
>> Documents which would be hard to recreate.  Since I have all my emails
>> locally, I don't want to lose those either.  Just a bit ago, I was
>> searching for posts regarding smartctl.  I got quite a few hits.
> Streaming to an SMR should be fine. Doing a cp to a new directory, or
> writing a .tar file, or stuff like that.
>
> What is NOT fine is anything that is likely to result in a lot of
> head-seeking as files and directories get modified ...
>
> Remember that when backing up - so a btrfs with snapshots, or an lvm
> snapshot with rsync in place, is most definitely not a good idea with SMR.
>
> Cheers,
> Wol

Yea, I've read up on them a bit.  They have uses where they work fine
and one can't really tell the difference between it and a PMR/CMR drive.
In my case, it works OK but I have to leave it on a little bit after I
complete my backups and even unmount it.  There was a thread on this
where I asked why I could feel the heads bumping around for a while
after my backup was done.  I think it was Rich that guessed it was a SMR
drive.  Before that, never heard of the thing.  For the small backups I
do every day or two, it works fine.  After some research, it was
discovered that Rich guessed right.  SMR it is. 

I purposely made sure the drive I recently bought was not a SMR drive
tho.  I don't want /home on that, or any other file system for my OS. 
Honestly, I don't plan to buy any SMR drives in the near future.  Maybe
when all the Linux tools figure out how to deal with and manage them. 

I might add, I don't have LVM on that drive.  I read it does not work
well with LVM, RAID etc as you say.  Most likely, that drive will always
be a external drive for backups or something.  If it ever finds itself
on the OS or /home, it'll be a last resort. 

Dale

:-)  :-)