WD BLue 6TB CMR or SMR ? does it matter

Meridiusuk · 18 Jun 2020 at 22:16

Hi all

I have a PC with a few 6tb WD60EZRZ which are CMR and i use them in a pc that has stored videos, now i need another one but i find a lot of news about SMR been poor in the new WD60EZAZ.

The question is how bad are these drives as i store a lot of videos for daily playback and sometimes do move video files back and forth when sorting but mainly playing videos everyday.

are these drives still ok and are they still well built to last ?

thanks fro any info or help

Meridiusuk · 19 Jun 2020 at 19:10

anyone ?

mattyfez · 19 Jun 2020 at 20:45

Any old drive will be fine for video playback?

EssexBoy · 19 Jun 2020 at 20:51

If you was mainly reading from the disks it would be fine but if doing about 50/50 read\write i would get an cmr due to slow write speeds.

Meridiusuk · 20 Jun 2020 at 07:23

it seems that cmr drives are all but gone in the 6TB range and it seems this is going to happan to all large drives with every manufacture what i read

EssexBoy · 20 Jun 2020 at 12:31

Above 6tb they will be cmr for wd drives.In the future we will be moving onto hmr once we get nearer to 20tb

Meridiusuk · 20 Jun 2020 at 12:44

problem is you can not get a 8tb blue and the next best thing is a 8tb gold which are way over priced compaired to the blues. The reds are more as well and even they are smr which is what started all this.

it looks like i will just have to get the blue smr as it looks like we have no other choise becasue the other drives are a premium.

EssexBoy · 20 Jun 2020 at 14:42

wd 8tb mybook shuck the drive it is a wd white label but you will void warranty if they can prove you removed the drive if you ever needed to return as they have 3 year warranty.

Paul_RD · 20 Jun 2020 at 16:05

Meridiusuk said:
problem is you can not get a 8tb blue and the next best thing is a 8tb gold which are way over priced compaired to the blues. The reds are more as well and even they are smr which is what started all this.

it looks like i will just have to get the blue smr as it looks like we have no other choise becasue the other drives are a premium.

WD replaced my SMR-Type WD-Red 6TB with a CMR-Type WD-Red-Pro 6TB
If its just for storing video, and you want a CMR-Type drive, you could get one of the following:

WD-Red-Pro (7200 RPM) (any TB size)
WD-Red (5400 RPM) (8TB and above only)
WD-Black (7200 RPM) (any TB size, 3.5" only)

Or, you could do what EssexBoy suggested and shuck a WD external drive - it should contain either a WD-Red or a WD-White-Label (Red with a white label) and if 8TB and above, it should also be a CMR-Type drive.