Been finding some good deals on 2.5 disks lately, but have never bought one before. Have a couple of 3.5 disks on the other hand in my Unraid server. Wondering how much it matters wether I get a 2.5 or not? What form factor do you prefer/usually go for?
SMR is a relatively new disk format technology that makes drives cheaper but writes slower, which can be noticeably bad in a NAS, especially if you are using a write-intensive RAID type. Most disk manufacturers will have drives meant for NAS like WD Red or Seagate Ironwolf, and they are almost all CMR and not SMR.
i have had SMR drives slow to about 2MB/s with sustained sequential writes. “noticeably bad” really undersells how terrible they are.
WD reds I believe are smr, wd red pros are cmr, or at least that was a thing for a while that WD did silently.
Indeed, it’s worth explicitly checking every drive you buy if you are using it in a NAS.
Important note; some WD Reds are still SMR. You have to check which specific type.