Shingled drive as parity drive, one limitation

[Brucey7]

I have replaced my 6TB parity drive in one of my servers with an 8TB drive and am currently building parity.

 

One thing you shouldn't do during a parity build with a shingled drive is write more data to the array.  I tried and performance dropped to under 10MB/s after about 7GB transferred.

[garycase]

I'd have thought that was obvious, given the characteristics of shingled drives 

 

However, even with standard PMR drives it's not a good idea to actively use the array during a parity sync ... it simply slows everything down.

 

[Brucey7]

Yes it is obvious, but I it's often the most obvious things we never think of 

[garycase]

Agree ... I've had more than my share of "slap face because I couldn't believe I did that" moments 

[Brucey7]

Of course my "test" was fully planned so I could report back to other members who hadn't realised it was so obvious.  It wasn't that I hadn't thought of the obvious

[John_M]

While I'd happily use these SMR drives as data drives I'm still not convinced they are a good choice for parity. Yes, I've ready about people's positive experiences of using them that way, but I remain sceptical. And they run so hot, too.

 

[Brucey7]

I am just rebuilding another drive (larger drive) and currently my Shingled parity drive is a couple of degrees cooler than all but 2 of my data drives

 

[wgstarks]

While I'd happily use these SMR drives as data drives I'm still not convinced they are a good choice for parity. Yes, I've ready about people's positive experiences of using them that way, but I remain sceptical. And they run so hot, too.

 

So you would recommend the Helium drives for parity? They run sooo expensive.

Or maybe dual parity is the sum of both drives (2x4TB=8TB)? Doesn't seem like it would work that way, but I really know nothing about it.