Toshiba clarifies which of its HDDs use SMR

Lately, there's been some controversy about Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) after the discovery that all HDD makers are now selling SMR-based HDDs without explicitly listing this on the specification sheet. This pissed off enthusiasts as SMR-based HDDs have much worse write performance than non-SMR HDDs.

WD confirmed which of its HDDs use SMR, while Seagate doesn't feel the need to share this. The latter did promise not to use SMR-based HDDs for its NAS HDDs.

The latest news is that Toshiba has published a press release to clarify which of its disks use SMR:

The introduction of Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) technology has enabled HDD manufacturers, such as Toshiba, to increase the capacity of their spinning platter drives beyond that of existing approaches. SMR technology is recognized as having an impact on write-speeds in drives where this technology is used, especially in the case of continuous random writing. For this reason, Toshiba products are carefully tailored to specific workloads and use cases.

For example, in use cases such as network-attached storage (NAS), where continuous random writing regularly occurs, Toshiba’s current product line for consumers features the N300, which does not use SMR.

The P300 / DT02 / DT02-V Desktop PC & Surveillance Hard Drive range of products, which are the product line for client drive application, such as all-in-one PCs, desktop PCs, and surveillance.

In the current range, the following drives do use SMR technology:

P300 6TB

P300 4TB

DT02 6TB

DT02 4TB

DT02-V 6TB

DT02-V 4TB

The L200 / MQ04 Laptop PC Hard Drive range of products,, which are the product line for client drive application, such as notebook PC, game consoles, and external enclosures, etc.

The following drives also use SMR technology:

L200 2TB

L200 1TB

MQ04 2TB

MQ04 1TB