From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On 1/3/26 01:04, Lars Poulsen wrote:

A month ago I decided that I needed to replace the hardware under my
Linux Server/Workstation. As I was gaming out the migration, I realized
that the hard drives were 10-15 years old, and SMART declared them to
be "Pre-Fail - Old Age", so I bought a couple of new 2TB Seagate
Barracuda drives to fit in two of the 3 HDD slots in the "new" 5 year
old chassis, leaving the last one for future expansion. The system disk
is a 500GB SDD drive.

That leaves me with a handful of 1TB drives from this system and 2
Windows boxes that were 10-15 years old and whose CPUs were too
old for Windows-11. My thought is that I ought to make a NAS with
mirrored drives out of them. Even if they are nearing end-of-life, they should work OK in a RAID-1 confuguration.

1) Is that a reasonable thought?

That depends on electricity costs, but my old PCs run at idle > 40
watts, it just isn't cost-effective to use them as an always on device
when a Pi idles at 2 watts. This assumes UK electricity prices, or similar.

I do put old HDDs in an old PC and use it for backup + archive stuff. It
is only on for very short periods, so electricity cost doesn't matter. I
just use standard Ubuntu. For NAS I use a rPi4 with SSD + 2.5" hdd, but
I don't need a huge amount of storage.

If I were doing it today, I would get a rPi5 with a dual NVME hat, or
maybe a couple of Pis with an NVME each.




--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On 2026-01-03, c186282 wrote:

On 1/2/26 21:00, Nuno Silva wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Lars Poulsen wrote:

A month ago I decided that I needed to replace the hardware under my
Linux Server/Workstation. As I was gaming out the migration, I realized
that the hard drives were 10-15 years old, and SMART declared them to
be "Pre-Fail - Old Age", so I bought a couple of new 2TB Seagate
Barracuda drives [...]

Where is the CMR cut-off in Seagate's Barracuda offering, between 1 and
2 TB or between 2 and 3 TB?

You can get WD Golds up to 20tb ... Blacks up to 10tb.

Yeah, but it's a shame that some other product lines which used to have
decent offerings now don't.

In this specific case, IIRC at least 1TB 3.5" and 1 and 2 TB 2.5" under
the "Barracuda" line would be SMR, last I checked.

With WD, yes, I think I recall I'd probably have to buy from the Black
line now. Or at least one time the only good offering in a store was a
WD Black.

And yea, DOES pay to run SMART every so often.

(While I can't say I have much experience in this area,)

And to run it through time, right from when the disk starts being used,
so that you can see variations, not just what gets flagged by the
utility checking SMART data. Check what you want logged regularly if
using smartd, for example.
--
Nuno Silva
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On 1/3/26 07:28, Nuno Silva wrote:

On 2026-01-03, c186282 wrote:

On 1/2/26 21:00, Nuno Silva wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Lars Poulsen wrote:

A month ago I decided that I needed to replace the hardware under my
Linux Server/Workstation. As I was gaming out the migration, I realized >>>> that the hard drives were 10-15 years old, and SMART declared them to
be "Pre-Fail - Old Age", so I bought a couple of new 2TB Seagate
Barracuda drives [...]

Where is the CMR cut-off in Seagate's Barracuda offering, between 1 and
2 TB or between 2 and 3 TB?

You can get WD Golds up to 20tb ... Blacks up to 10tb.

Yeah, but it's a shame that some other product lines which used to have decent offerings now don't.

In this specific case, IIRC at least 1TB 3.5" and 1 and 2 TB 2.5" under
the "Barracuda" line would be SMR, last I checked.

With WD, yes, I think I recall I'd probably have to buy from the Black
line now. Or at least one time the only good offering in a store was a
WD Black.

I have some Golds and Blacks ... all very good.
Technically the Blacks are faster, but as we
were talking NAS here the I/O to the client
boxes and NAS processing overhead pretty much nukes
any speed advantage a drive may have. RELIABILITY,
not so much speed, is paramount for an NAS box.

And yea, DOES pay to run SMART every so often.

(While I can't say I have much experience in this area,)

And to run it through time, right from when the disk starts being used,
so that you can see variations, not just what gets flagged by the
utility checking SMART data. Check what you want logged regularly if
using smartd, for example.

Well, the 'standard report' isn't THAT long. Some
of the stats are oddly framed however, hard to tell
what it considers to be 'normal'.

I do agree that new drives should be tested in order
to get a base line. A monthly test thereafter. Do
not think it'd be SO hard to write an app that can
compare saved reports and look for trends, and most
especially check for certain keywords. Then it all
can be automated, out of yer hair, UNLESS something
is going seriously wrong. I did a very crude version
of that some years ago, just looking for a few FAIL-
related keywords. If found, it sent me an e-mail.
Caught two or three dying drives before they died.

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On 2026-01-03, Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Lars Poulsen wrote:

A month ago I decided that I needed to replace the hardware under my
Linux Server/Workstation. As I was gaming out the migration, I realized
that the hard drives were 10-15 years old, and SMART declared them to
be "Pre-Fail - Old Age", so I bought a couple of new 2TB Seagate
Barracuda drives [...]

Where is the CMR cut-off in Seagate's Barracuda offering, between 1 and
2 TB or between 2 and 3 TB?

Oh, the things I don't know. I had to look up CMR. (It's like "organic farming"- we used to just call it "farming".)

https://www.seagate.com/products/cmr-smr-list/

Branding is tricky. I thought that "Barracuda" was a premium brand,
but apparently that no longer applies. The good stuff is now "Barracuda
Pro".

"Barracuda Pro" is all CMR, up to 10TB and above.
Plain "Barracuda" is SMR (shingled recording) from 2TB and up,
i.e. it is now a "consumer" brand.
--
Lars Poulsen - an old geek in Santa Barbara, California
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On 2026-01-03, Lars Poulsen wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Lars Poulsen wrote:

A month ago I decided that I needed to replace the hardware under my
Linux Server/Workstation. As I was gaming out the migration, I realized
that the hard drives were 10-15 years old, and SMART declared them to
be "Pre-Fail - Old Age", so I bought a couple of new 2TB Seagate
Barracuda drives [...]

Where is the CMR cut-off in Seagate's Barracuda offering, between 1 and
2 TB or between 2 and 3 TB?

Oh, the things I don't know. I had to look up CMR. (It's like "organic farming"- we used to just call it "farming".)

https://www.seagate.com/products/cmr-smr-list/

Branding is tricky. I thought that "Barracuda" was a premium brand,
but apparently that no longer applies. The good stuff is now "Barracuda
Pro".

"Barracuda Pro" is all CMR, up to 10TB and above.
Plain "Barracuda" is SMR (shingled recording) from 2TB and up,
i.e. it is now a "consumer" brand.

Oh, that looks even worse than I thought, I misremembered.

If you're using these on a NAS, I guess that unless they're old enough
to be CMR, or you have some plan to handle SMR, or certainty that it
won't be an issue, you probably want to return these and get CMR ones if possible.

Even without NAS, there will be performance degradation. With NAS and
RAID, one issue that broke out with Western Digital not disclosing the
SMR nature of drives (and worse, branding some of them as appropriate
for such uses?) is that the slowness may be perceived as a drive failure
in such systems.

I've read people explain (on the gentoo-user mailing-list, IIRC) that
one can take advantage of SMR if it's host-managed, besides there being filesystems more adequate for use with SMR. But, unless this is part of
your plan, it's probably better to avoid it?
--
Nuno Silva
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On 2026-01-03, Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Lars Poulsen wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Lars Poulsen wrote:

A month ago I decided that I needed to replace the hardware under my
Linux Server/Workstation. As I was gaming out the migration, I realized >>>> that the hard drives were 10-15 years old, and SMART declared them to
be "Pre-Fail - Old Age", so I bought a couple of new 2TB Seagate
Barracuda drives [...]

Where is the CMR cut-off in Seagate's Barracuda offering, between 1 and
2 TB or between 2 and 3 TB?

Oh, the things I don't know. I had to look up CMR. (It's like "organic
farming"- we used to just call it "farming".)

https://www.seagate.com/products/cmr-smr-list/

Branding is tricky. I thought that "Barracuda" was a premium brand,
but apparently that no longer applies. The good stuff is now "Barracuda
Pro".

"Barracuda Pro" is all CMR, up to 10TB and above.
Plain "Barracuda" is SMR (shingled recording) from 2TB and up,
i.e. it is now a "consumer" brand.

Oh, that looks even worse than I thought, I misremembered.

If you're using these on a NAS, I guess that unless they're old enough
to be CMR, or you have some plan to handle SMR, or certainty that it
won't be an issue, you probably want to return these and get CMR ones if possible.

Even without NAS, there will be performance degradation. With NAS and
RAID, one issue that broke out with Western Digital not disclosing the
SMR nature of drives (and worse, branding some of them as appropriate
for such uses?) is that the slowness may be perceived as a drive failure
in such systems.

I've read people explain (on the gentoo-user mailing-list, IIRC) that
one can take advantage of SMR if it's host-managed, besides there being filesystems more adequate for use with SMR. But, unless this is part of
your plan, it's probably better to avoid it?

I thought I had done some homework by asking Edge AI to compare field operational qualities between WD and Seagate. The answers never
mentioned CMR vs SMR. I did not open the boxes yet, so I could send
them back to Amazon and postpone the physical rebuild for another
week, must that feels like procrastination.

I am hoping that newer drives will have onboard firmware that do ECC correction, error counting and remapping, so that I can monitor it
and catch degradation with SMARTCTL. Is that realistic?

Two replace two 2TB SMR drives with either two 4TB will double the
price of the new drives.

2TB Barracuda $71
4TB Barracuda $193
14TB Barracuda Pro $400

And there are and endless variation of Seagate HDD brands:
- Constellation
- Enterprise Capacity
- Pipeline
- Skyhawk Lite
- Skyhawk
- Skyhawk SV
- Skyhawk Pro
- Ironwolf
- Ironwolf Pro
.. and more. But while the Skyhawk are mostly CMR, they are
advertized SOLELY for video surveillance applications and with
data recovery algoriths that allow repairs of glitches in video
data, so I would not touch them for my general purpose storage.
While the non-pro Barracudas and Ironwolf are supposed to have 4TB
variants, those seem not to be available on Amazon right now,
except as "renewed", and I don't think I'd want that.
--
Lars Poulsen - an old geek in Santa Barbara, California
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 14:09:02 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:

Oh, the things I don't know. I had to look up CMR. (It's like
"organic farming"- we used to just call it "farming".)

Except rCLOrganicrCY is a trade mark, donrCOt you know? So you need to
license it, and pass a certification to do so.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On 2026-01-03, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 14:09:02 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:

Oh, the things I don't know. I had to look up CMR. (It's like
"organic farming"- we used to just call it "farming".)

Except rCLOrganicrCY is a trade mark, donrCOt you know? So you need to license it, and pass a certification to do so.

I wonder how much in royalties organic chemists have to pay
in order to talk about their profession...
--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On Sat, 03 Jan 2026 22:45:37 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 14:09:02 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:

Oh, the things I don't know. I had to look up CMR. (It's like
"organic farming"- we used to just call it "farming".)

Except rCLOrganicrCY is a trade mark, donrCOt you know? So you need to
license it, and pass a certification to do so.

I wonder how much in royalties organic chemists have to pay in order
to talk about their profession...

Particularly since rCLOrganicrCY farming is supposed to be rCLchemical-freerCY ... or something ...
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On 2026-01-03, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 14:09:02 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:

Oh, the things I don't know. I had to look up CMR. (It's like
"organic farming"- we used to just call it "farming".)

Except rCLOrganicrCY is a trade mark, donrCOt you know? So you need to license it, and pass a certification to do so.

Besides that it probably shouldn't have been granted to begin with, how
would such a trademark be enforceable?

One thing is calling your record company or computer business "Apple",
another thing is using an adjective as trademark, even if it were not
common to use "organic" to describe farming or produce, I'm not so
convinced it'd be easy to enforce.
--
Nuno Silva
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On 2026-01-03, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 03 Jan 2026 22:45:37 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 14:09:02 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:

Oh, the things I don't know. I had to look up CMR. (It's like
"organic farming"- we used to just call it "farming".)

Except rCLOrganicrCY is a trade mark, donrCOt you know? So you need to
license it, and pass a certification to do so.

I wonder how much in royalties organic chemists have to pay in order
to talk about their profession...

Particularly since rCLOrganicrCY farming is supposed to be rCLchemical-freerCY
... or something ...

What I want to know is: What is inorganic food?
Maybe it's a good source of iron...
--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On Sun, 04 Jan 2026 04:39:14 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

Particularly since rCLOrganicrCY farming is supposed to be
rCLchemical-freerCY ... or something ...

What I want to know is: What is inorganic food? Maybe it's a good
source of iron...

I wonder what they would do if you set up a shop where the goods were rCLguaranteed organic-freerCY ...
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc



On 1/3/26 20:39, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 03 Jan 2026 22:45:37 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 14:09:02 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:

Oh, the things I don't know. I had to look up CMR. (It's like
"organic farming"- we used to just call it "farming".)

Except rCLOrganicrCY is a trade mark, donrCOt you know? So you need to >>>> license it, and pass a certification to do so.

I wonder how much in royalties organic chemists have to pay in order
to talk about their profession...

Particularly since rCLOrganicrCY farming is supposed to be rCLchemical-freerCY
... or something ...

What I want to know is: What is inorganic food?
Maybe it's a good source of iron...

Some people eat clay. This illness or confusion is called "pica".
They seem to get some copper from it...

bliss
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On Sun, 04 Jan 2026 04:39:14 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

What I want to know is: What is inorganic food?
Maybe it's a good source of iron...

Something imported from China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melamine

I don't think the adulterated milk made it to the US but they killed off
some cats and dogs.

https://www.petage.com/10-years-later-examining-the-pet-food-industry-a- decade-after-the-widespread-melamine-contamination/

Even that is technically organic.

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 21:10:08 -0800, Bobbie Sellers wrote:

Some people eat clay. This illness or confusion is called "pica".
They seem to get some copper from it...

Kaopectate used to be primarily kaolin. I don't know why they went to a bismuth compound.

Kaolin did replace zeolite in QuikClot. Zeolite was exothermic and was something like cauterizing the wound with a hot poker, Kaolin is gentler.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On Sun, 04 Jan 2026 01:26:32 +0000, Nuno Silva wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 14:09:02 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:

Oh, the things I don't know. I had to look up CMR. (It's like "organic
farming"- we used to just call it "farming".)

Except rCLOrganicrCY is a trade mark, donrCOt you know? So you need to
license it, and pass a certification to do so.

Besides that it probably shouldn't have been granted to begin with, how
would such a trademark be enforceable?

One thing is calling your record company or computer business "Apple", another thing is using an adjective as trademark, even if it were not
common to use "organic" to describe farming or produce, I'm not so
convinced it'd be easy to enforce.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McIntosh_(apple)#Cultural_significance

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

On 2026-01-04 06:10, Bobbie Sellers wrote:

On 1/3/26 20:39, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 03 Jan 2026 22:45:37 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

On 2026-01-03, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 14:09:02 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:

Oh, the things I don't know. I had to look up CMR. (It's like
"organic farming"- we used to just call it "farming".)

Except rCLOrganicrCY is a trade mark, donrCOt you know? So you need to >>>>> license it, and pass a certification to do so.

I wonder how much in royalties organic chemists have to pay in order
to talk about their profession...

Particularly since rCLOrganicrCY farming is supposed to be rCLchemical-freerCY
... or something ...

What I want to know is: What is inorganic food?

Water.

Maybe it's a good source of iron...

-a-a-a-aSome people eat clay. This illness or confusion is called "pica".
-a-a-a-aThey seem to get some copper from it...

Today? It was the fashion on the XVII. You can see it in the picture
"Las meninas" by Diego Vel|izquez.

<https://www.bbc.com/mundo/vert-cul-54802890> (Spanish)
--
Cheers, Carlos.
ESEfc-Efc+, EUEfc-Efc|;
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2