Jun 4, 2025
Once you start archiving you never stop 😍😍
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Once you start archiving you never stop 😍😍
Think you could ramble about hard drives? I think your old blog was actually what got me to buy my first HDD
oough yeah OF COURSE I can ramble about hard drives!!!!! i could ramble for days about hard drives. but I’ll spare you that, and stick to a particular subtopic instead
let’s talk about CMR and SMR! what these terms mean, what the differences are between them, and why it’s important to know which your HDD uses before you buy it!
HDD OVERVIEW
HDDs, or hard disk drives, are data storage devices that have moving mechanical parts.
In HDDs, data is physically recorded using magnetic tracks on the disk.
CMR and SMR are both different methods for writing data onto an HDD.
There are pros and cons to each, and you’ll have to choose one based on what’s best for your use case, so let’s go over the differences!
CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording)
CMR, or Conventional Magnetic Recording, has been around longer as a means of writing data to hard disks.
On a CMR drive, data is written side-by-side, with small gaps in between to avoid overlapping.
With CMR, you can rewrite data to an existing track without affecting the tracks around it. This helps with random read/write operations, as opposed to writes that happen sequentially.
The general consensus amongst datahoarders and other such tech nerds is that CMR drives should be used for servers. This is because they excel at handling high transfer rates and moving around large amounts of data.
SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording)
SMR, or Shingled Magnetic Recording, is a relatively new technology for writing data to HDDs.
In SMR drives, data is written sequentially onto a track. Then that track is partially overlapped over another track of data, creating a pattern similar to the shingles on a house roof:
By removing the gaps previously found in CMR drives, SMR drives increase their storage capacity by utilizing more of the disk’s magnetic surface.
In general, SMR drives shine when used for backup and archival purposes, as infrequent drive access allows stable drive performance at a lower cost.
However, the overlapping tracks in SMR hard drives means that every time new data is added, old data gets overwritten. To keep that data from being permanently lost, the hard drive has to add it again.
This overwriting process takes time, and if the SMR hard drive has a lot of big files to store, it can spend a lot of time writing and rewriting data which can ultimately affect performance.
To keep SMR hard drives from becoming too slow, they need downtime to complete the rewriting process. Thus, they are generally less efficient for servers and/or other processes that are constantly reading and writing data without significant or reliable pause.
TLDR:
if you’re using your hard drive primarily to backup data and you won’t be messing around with it much once it’s archived, SMR can save you a few bucks. but if you’re running a server or otherwise have need for a lot of read/write operations without much downtime, go for CMR !
The tale of Rumpelstilzchen (rumpelstiltskin) has lost any and all meaning in our world. Ten seconds after Rumpelstilzchen tells the queen he won’t take her firstborn if she guesses his name correctly she would just call Mark Zuckerberg and would not only receive the name but also birth certificate, search history, preferences in bed, bank account details and every single password he ever used. And not only wouldn’t she find that creepy at all but she would probably congratulate Zuckerberg on his business model which ‘benefits the whole kingdom’.
I FUCKING LOVE M-DISC !
I WANT PILES UPON PILES OF OPTICAL MEDIA VIRTUALY IMMUNE TO BITROT !
Neat video-game rom archive. Use this instead of sketchy websites. I've played so many PC/Phone emulatable games thanks to whoever maintains this. 🙏 Thank You.
In hindsight making my biggest hobby something that involves a federal crime was probably a bad idea. Like how the hell am I supposed to use this during job interviews
dude a while back you got me interested in data hoarding, do you know how one can get started out with this?
can you be a little more specific? are you wondering about, like, the hardware requirements? or the hoarding of the data itself and where to get said data?
either way, my first bit of advice for anyone entering the datahoarding world is to invest in a NAS server…….I know you can technically get by with external hard drives, but a server makes everything SO much easier and more efficient. once you set it up you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it
This was the server I started off with:
https://www.newegg.com/synology-ds220/p/N82E16822108743
Buy Synology 2 bay NAS DiskStation DS220+ (Diskless) with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!
I’ve found Synology to be both VERY beginner friendly, and also capable of expanding into much more advanced territory once you know what you’re doing. This little server only has 2 bays, but it’s cost friendly and easy to setup and use! You can easily hoard terabytes of data in one of these and run something like a Plex media server for yourself and friends + family, no problem
My only word of caution is to remember that there’s only 2 bays. Without getting overly technical, just know that the second hard drive to be added to a Synology server will automatically create a RAID, and use that second drive for redundancy.
IN SIMPLER TERMS: if you get a 2-bay NAS. make sure when you pick out your first HDD that it has the max amount of storage you feel you are going to use. The second HDD you add will NOT add ANY storage—instead, the server will use this second drive for data protection.
For example, you get your little 2bay server. Cool! You buy your first HDD, and it’s 8 terabytes. Unless you upgrade to another server with more drive bays, your NAS will only be able to have that 8 TB max storage. You can (and should!) buy another HDD for the second bay — let’s say this one is also 8 TB. You may be thinking now you will have 16 TB total? Nope ! That second drive will be allocated entirely for protecting the data on your first drive. It’s only AFTER that second drive, the third drive and onwards, that you can begin expanding your storage pool.
Just something to keep in mind! I didn’t know that when I got my 2 bay, and I was bummed as hell when I added my second HDD and got no storage out of it. For a lot of users, the need to expand isn’t as great as mine was, so maybe that initial 8 terabytes is all that’s ever needed. But I needed to invest In more bays, so that I could store more data
The digital weight we all carry. 💾😢 This sad little USB is full of memories, unfinished projects, and… so many PDFs. Relatable for students, writers, and digital hoarders everywhere. What's taking up space on your drive?
Feel the digital melancholy. This relatable design features a cute, anthropomorphic USB stick with sad, expressive eyes, sitting forgotten a
Feel the digital melancholy. This relatable design features a cute, anthropomorphic USB stick with sad, expressive eyes, sitting forgotten a