It is a complex discussion. Maybe it is easier to split it into two questions
- What real life stress does a Storj Node have?
- Can a SMR drive handle these requirements?
But to answer the second question, we first need to answer the first.
And the only real data I could found to answer the first question is in this thread:
which shows around 19gb a day ingress best case.
Some quick and probably wrong math:
That is average of 1800kbit/s.
19456 / 2mb (file size) * 4 (operations per file) = 38912 / 24 / 60 / 60 = 0.45 operations per second
I guess a SMR can handle this but I am happy to be proven wrong on both, my maths and my guessing 