Thanks to the many available 3.0 lanes, an above-average number of NVMe SSDs with full bandwidth can be used. Due to the high prices at the upper end of the capacity range, I was keen to experiment with two SSDs and, when I saw a very good offer from Mindfactory at the time of purchase, I was tempted to buy something that was quite unfamiliar to me:

Two MS200s from Mega Electronics (MS200200TTM), a South Korean manufacturer like Samsung that uses Micron or Intel NAND. These PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSDs with 2 TB capacity were repeatedly offered at bargain prices for a while, and the data sheets look good: fast DDR4 DRAM cache, high TBW, good write and read performance – everything as desired.

I’ve read quite a few comments about “Mega Fastro Kaputto,” and the 1 TB version is said to have been prone to failure – but I haven’t noticed anything unusual with my model so far.

It’s important to mention that the MS200 is double-sided and therefore doesn’t fit into every M.2 slot. You have to be careful with mobile devices or expansion cards, and this also plays a role in the compatibility of passive heat sinks. For example, only single-sided M.2 SSDs fit on the expansion card I use.

NVMe-SSDs

• Two MS200 with 2 TB each from Mega Electronics, on the motherboard under the passive heat sinks of the board
• Two Samsung 970 Evo Plus with 2 TB each*, on an x8 expansion card (x4x4 bifurcation*) including JEYI passive heat sinks
• One Samsung 970 Evo Plus with 500 GB*, also on the motherboard

⧉ MEGA Electronics

⧉ Samsung

⧉ JEYI

SATA-SSDs

• Three Samsung SM863a Enterprise SSDs, each with a capacity of 480 GB
• One Samsung 840 with 250 GB for a parallel installation of Windows 11 Professional

⧉ Samsung

⧉ Samsung

HDDs

• Two WD Red drives, each with 4 TB*, 3.5″, SATA – RAID1
• Two Toshiba drives, each with 2 TB*, 3.5″, SATA – RAID1
• One Seagate Barracuda with 500 GB, 2.5″, USB 3.0 internal data HDD for Windows 11
• One Toshiba with 1 TB, 2.5″, USB 3.0 internal – Images and SMB

⧉ WD

⧉ Toshiba

⧉ Sabrent

Der Beitrag <h5>TR-Server #4: </h5><h3><b>Storage – Ola NVMe!</b></h3> erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

There used to be many hard drive manufacturers, but today there are only a few. Three have survived the flood of solid state drives, which are generally better from a technical standpoint: Western Digital (including the formerly independent manufacturer HGST), Seagate, and Toshiba. My favorites have always been WD and HGST, as these manufacturers have proven to be durable and generally reliable. I have never used Toshiba extensively in the 3.5″ range and therefore have little experience with them. I have had some bad experiences with Seagate, so I avoid products from this company.

In one area, hard drives remain unbeatable compared to SSDs: € per TB of storage capacity. This ratio can and could be improved even further by purchasing external hard drives and “shucking” them—that is, removing the internal 3.5″ standard drive with SATA interface from the respective manufacturer and using it elsewhere, for example in a NAS or storage server. Depending on the purchase price, this is a relatively inexpensive way to obtain new hard drives with large capacities.

The disadvantage is that in the event of a defect, the warranty may not be honored, and external hard drives generally have rather short warranty periods. Almost always, “lower-end” or inferior model variants of retail versions are now installed, often with special, slowing firmware (“white label”).

Nevertheless, the price difference compared to a single hard drive has been so high in some cases, especially in recent years, that it has been possible to overlook this.

What always remains?

Everything except the hard drive itself. So the enclosure, the circuit board to convert SATA to USB, and the 12-volt power supply. If you’ve “shucked” a few hard drives, you’ll accumulate quite a bit over time. I’ve collected various models of external hard drives from WD, 13 enclosures in total.

One day, I wanted to reuse one of these enclosures by installing a 6 TB hard drive from HGST*. If you’ve taken these enclosures apart a few times, reassembling them is a breeze. After connecting it to power and a computer, I was disappointed to find that the hard drive wasn’t recognized!

What?!

Yes, seriously. Western Digital has ensured that the actually quite generic controller boards in these enclosures only work with Western Digital hard drives. Especially since HGST has been part of WD for quite some time, not even that works. I tried installing a WD Blue – it worked right away.

After a frustrating search, I found posts from other users who were just as frustrated. But there was light at the end of the tunnel: there are models that work with everything out of the box, then there are those that require a small modification to work, and those that allow you to flash different, open firmware.

And that’s what this post is about – how to ensure that the controller accepts all hard drives. I can speak for three types of external WD hard drive enclosures.

First, the problem I stumbled upon:

The enclosure was from a 4 TB hard drive, type WD MyBook* – model number “WDBFJK0040HBK-04.” Purchased around 2015, refurbished. After doing some research, I was optimistic that I would be able to make full use of this enclosure.

Western Digital used an ASM1051W from ASMedia (an ASUS subsidiary) as the controller, apparently with a data connection to an external SPI chip from Winbond.

⧉ WD

Hobbyists have discovered that if the controller cannot communicate with the SPI flash, it behaves like any other generic ASMedia chip as a fallback. Jackpot.

There is little to lose, so what needs to be done?
Simply cut the connection to the rest of the board at pins 1 and 2 of the Winbond SPI chip. To do this, I carefully cut through the two pins from the side with a pair of electronics side cutters and then used the blade of a utility knife to gently lift the now-separated contacts until I could see a gap with the naked eye. Theoretically, pin 1 would have been sufficient, but this way is safer.

Then I put everything back together again and lo and behold:

Success. I then ran tests with a Seagate and a Toshiba hard drive, and everything works. I then modified the remaining three cases of this type that I own.

The model that runs by default

There are obviously several revisions of the controller boards in the various models. Next, I disassembled the housing of a WD Elements with the model number “WDBWLG0080HBK-0B” that used to have 8 TB. The controller installed there was a JMicron JMS579 with SPI flash from Winbond. This combination can be problematic or unproblematic. In this model, the hard drive from HGST ran without any modifications.

⧉ WD

However, there are reports that some versions with this controller do not work. If this specific controller is installed and only WD hard drives are recognized, flashing open firmware should remedy the problem.

JMS579 – Flash firmware

First, I came across this post:

From there, I continued to search until I found a “turnkey solution.” This originally came from a Chinese forum in Chinese and was translated into English by a helpful user.

This archive contains everything you need to reflash a WD enclosure with this controller (the English tutorial is also included as a PDF):
Download at Mediafire
Download at Archive.org

Conclusion

It is truly incomprehensible why the hardware is deliberately turned into potential electronic waste. There must be limits somewhere, and I cannot imagine that Western Digital’s public image is positively influenced in any way by such a design.

I was able to make all of the non-functioning enclosures in my possession workable by flashing the firmware or modifying the SPI flash.

Unfortunately, there are also reports of newer revisions for which there seems to be no solution at the moment. The WD MyBook Duo* enclosures generally do not appear to be modifiable. It’s a shame, as I own several of them – still in operation with WD hard drives.

Der Beitrag External 3.5″ hard drives from WD and their deliberate incompatibilities erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

An often overlooked option:
Any mobile device with a built-in optical drive can be equipped with an additional data storage device instead. CDs and DVDs are no longer really used these days, and more storage space is always useful.

This is so easy to do because optical drives have long used the “Slimline” connection internally, and since 2.5″ data carriers such as optical drives only need 5 volts to work, they can be easily adapted to function. In principle, this Slimline connection is a greatly shortened version of the standard SATA connection.

Lenovo, for example, originally designed the so-called “UltraBay” for this purpose. With even more possibilities. This type of adapter* should fit into almost any standard notebook with an optical drive:

You can install any type of 2.5″ SSD or hard drive there, but you have to pay attention to the standard height.
Hard drives are also available in thicknesses greater than “normal”!

Der Beitrag More storage space in legacy mobile devices erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

What is it and why is it important?
All hard drive manufacturers were caught some time ago using SMR technology in hard drives without disclosing it. This caused quite a stir, and since then it has become more obvious which technology a hard drive uses.

But let’s start at the beginning:
What exactly is CMR or SMR?

CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording)

The classic method, which has been the standard for many years. Here, data tracks do NOT overlap, which ensures consistently high performance when reading and, above all, writing data.

The following sub-technologies fall into this category (non-overlapping data tracks):

• LMR (Longitudinal Magnetic Recording)
  Older technology, less efficient layout. Replaced by PMR.
   
• PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording)
  The de facto standard for hard drives for a long time.
   
• CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording)
  Basically the same as “PMR”
   
• EAMR (Energy-Assisted Magnetic Recording)
  Improved CMR, e.g. through:
  -> HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording), Heat
  -> MAMR (Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording), Microwaves
  -> ePMR (Energy-Enhanced PMR), Energy

SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording)

With this newer technology, which is considered critical, the data tracks overlap, which has some disadvantages. More on that in a moment. The technology is used to store even more data in the same space, thereby reducing costs. These subtypes of SMR exist:

• SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording)
  Overlapping data tracks. Their management differs and is divided into:
  -> DM-SMR (Device-Managed SMR), the hard drive itself controls
  -> HM-SMR (Host-Managed SMR), the host computer controls
  -> HA-SMR (Host-Aware SMR), The host computer is “aware” that SMR is being used and behaves accordingly.

So what’s the problem?

There are several, here are the most important ones:

• SMR makes data recovery considerably more difficult.
• Completely unsuitable for RAID systems; even the smallest data changes require large sections to be rewritten, during which time the hard drive is virtually unavailable for other tasks.
• Write performance is significantly worse.
• Latencies are also noticeably worse.

Conclusion

When in doubt, only buy CMR hard drives—you can’t go wrong with those. Unfortunately, this isn’t as transparent as one would like it to be. Here you can see which hard drive sizes work with CMR technology: NAS Compares

With very few exceptions, ALL external 2.5″ hard drives over 1 TB (e.g., the WD_Black Game Drive with 5 TB capacity*) use SMR technology. Therefore, these can be excluded across the board.

Der Beitrag CMR or SMR – A brief guide to hard drive technology erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.