Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) increases hard disk drive capacity by writing overlapping tracks. In Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR), the minimal width of write tracks for HDDs is limited by the size of the write head, which is constructed to write data reliably. Conventional HDDs do not overlap tracks.
Why are SMR drives deployed despite the additional complexity that they introduce? The answer is that they increase the capacity of HDDs without increasing cost.
External USB HDDs, as well as cloud storage for archival or backup purposes, are ideal use cases for SMR drives. Today, millions of SMR drives are used as USB backup drives, as they offer more capacity without increasing the price.
RAID adapters need some optimizations in order to work with suitable SMR drives (DM or HA in drive-managed mode). This optimization is built in and available in the Microsemi Adaptec® Series 8 RAID Adapter family of products.
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