We don’t use SMR drives, so they are not in the report. We have tested them and found them to inefficient in our environment as deletions and rewrites are very slow. Since people are allowed to delete their data without penalty in our system, SMR drives don’t make sense.
SMR drives are good for write once data archive based applications where data deletion is basically zero.

1. We’ve talked in past reviews about the HGST drives. They are great.
2. Yes, the WDC drives are looking excellent. The price is generally still high, but as is normal, coming down over time. I’m sure we’ll add more.
3. Our systems are built to withstand drive failure. So whether a drive fails at 1% or 2% is of little consequence at our size and when we are buying tens of thousands of drives at a time.

2. The WDC numbers are also compelling, but you don’t use them as much. Any plans to test more of them?

3. Why the preference for Seagate over HGST? Better ROI cost-wise?

Wow, quite a long test! I remember those testing drives were mentioned in around Jun. 2021, and did not expect that they were still under test. Anyway, thanks for sharing those data constantly to the community! :-)

We have been testing a Seagate 18TB drive model over the last few months, but we don’t report in testing units because they are, well, testing units. Over the next year we expect to have more 18 and 20 TB units in-house and operational.