I am debating between those Western Digital portable drives that go up to 5tb that function with USB only (WD my passport) and the bigger ones (eg my book) that are bigger and need power outlet besides the USB connection.

Is there any difference in quality or durability to store media?

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[–] comrade_twisty@feddit.org 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Please read up on CMR and SMR technology. All these backup HDDs in external enclosures are inferior SMR HDDs and really terrible for most uses but the occasional backup of small chunks of data. As soon as you write larger chunks of data at once to SMR drives they slow down to a crawl.

CMR drives are sold as Seagate Ironwolf, WD Red, etc.

[–] Majestic@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Some WD red drives (particularly under 16TB) are SMR. There was a whole scandal with this and you can look up a list. WD Red Pro are always CMR and I think the plus typically are too but you can easily search up a list of SMR models.

[–] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So CMR superior to SMR?

[–] FjordDan@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 days ago

CMR is faster, but SMR is cheaper. (Very simplified.)