That's interesting. My old server about 10 years ago had a Seagate black which died. I replaced it with a Seagate green. I notice things started slowing down and down when the disc writes got heavy. It could freeze up for minutes at a time, then recover without any errors. It took me weeks to realise what was happening because… Because I don't actually know why. In hindsight it was obvious. Maybe the Seagate green was a SMR drive. Either way, it was nasty and caused a lot of frustration.

A quick check just now and it seems that the Seagate green were SMR. Fuckers never put that on the box did they. Bastards.