The new node has not been in that same network until 2 days ago and that is only a temporary solution before the new node moves to my office -so the Exos actually held up well on its own 
To me, external drives generally aren’t an option. But I might someday find the time to install a 2nd HDD in that node. Maybe for now I can just add the 8TB SMR drive to another existing (full) node instead of just selling it off, so thanks for the heads up 
What about EXOS? Any detailed page with info? They are not on this list and some of them are SMR some CMR 
As far as I know:
Exos 5E8 are SMR.
Exos 7E8 and Exos X series are CMR.
You need to peek into datasheets, e.g. https://www.seagate.com/files/www-content/datasheets/pdfs/exos-5e8DS1954-2-1712US-en_US.pdf states 5E8 is an SMR drive.
I went there too, but some drives are without this information:
Another update: with around 1.5TB (it’s an 8TB drive) of free space left, the HDD is now busy 100% of the time while the node service is running. It even sometimes fails to properly stop the node service, probably due to the heavy HDD usage.
I have reduced my allocated storage in order to stop any ingress for now and will replace the HDD asap and call it a day (aka sell the SMR drive to someone who only needs archive storage). Lesson learned, feel free to quote me on that whenever someone considers getting an SMR HDD
/edit: also keep in mind that is a 3.5in enterprise class drive, not some 2.5in consumer external HDD (which might behave even worse)
Yeah I did expect it to get worse when it starts to fill up. And I think this is pretty much the best case for an SMR drive. I’m a little surprised it held up so well on its own in the first place. Thanks for your feedback, I don’t have any SMR drives in use, but it’s interesting to see that not all SMR drives are made equally. And yet they seem to eventually all run into issues. It might work if you leave 2TB of empty space, but since SMR only really adds about 25-30% in density, that really seems like a waste. Might as well buy CMR and allocate much more.
There is the distinction between SMR and DMSMR for a start. Mine are OK so far, WD 12TB elements
But you’re running multiple nodes in the same subnet/IP right?
and yes I have 5 storagenodes in there currently
edited above to change smr
Remember when you warned me about using a SMR drive and I replied that I’m eager to try it out? Guess we’re both smarter now 
A distinction that is practically irrelevant for the end user. In Germany, 21 out of the 21 listed 3.5 inch SMR drives use DMSMR.
I’m pretty sure those disks are CMR. The <=6TB external drives have WD blue drives which are SMR, but 8TB and up are the infamous white label drives which are CMR.
Everything I can read from the drives says not SMR or suggests not SMR but if I listen to it in a quiet room it goes :
-clickety-click-click-clickety-click-click-click-click-click-clickety-clickety-clickety-click-click-neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep-silence-neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep
The neeps can be hours apart between batches but often come in regular sets.
It is not the case vibrating.
(Speculation: The drives as described as CMR and PMR Helium so that doesn’t help since CMR!=PMR and also PMR and SMR are dependent technologies, so labelling an SMR drive as PMR would be technically true)
Either way they are good enough for storj so far
That doesn’t sound like the most reliable way to determine whether a drive is SMR or not. Btw, these days PMR=CMR => Not-SMR. If something is labeled as PMR it’s not SMR. If it is, we can now safely say the manufacturer is misleading to the point of lying.
Btw, if your 5 nodes all have free space, any drive would be fast enough since it’s only dealing with 1/5th of the normal load.
Last update i Used this HDDs MG06ACA10TE from Toshiba, this is Enterprice level HDD with 5y warety
and has Toshiba Persistent Write Cache Technology for Data-Loss Protection in Sudden Power-Loss Events no information from manufacture that this is SMR, but testers review was writen, that there is no SMR behavier.
The neeeeeeeeeps can very well just be head recalibrations, not neccessarily SMR cache clearing.
I used to have Hitachi 160GB PATA drives that made a real funny “meow” sound every now and then. Every time I heard it, I turned off any sound sources around me und looked for the cat…took me quite a while to figure out the real source of that meow noise…
/edit: there are already some threads out there about that…
This is undoubtedly a CMR drive
I could not find anything about EXOS X16 and SMR/CMR, so write them an email:
Official answer from Seagate:
Welcome to Seagate Support, my name is Giorgio and it is my pleasure to assist you today with your question on our Exos units. Please know that it is my goal to make you a very satisfied customer.
As for the information required, the EXOS device line has different devices with different technologies. In this case, if you are looking for a CMR drive, we can recommend the models listed in the link below from the EXOS line:
Exos 7E8:
This means, EXOS X16 is neither SMR neither CMR
Exos X16 is CMR.
Did you ask specifically about this model? If so, weird answer from Seagate, but it’s definitely CMR. I have 2 of them running already.
I could not FIND in the data sheet of Exos X16 anyting about SMR or CMR. Then i write to Seagate and said, that i want to AVOID SMR disks and would like to buy CMR. And they said - EXOS uses different technologies.
So i’m happy that you don’t have a problems with them (or do you?). And looks like that this (not SMR and not CMR) technology, does not have same problems as SMR have.
p.s. to get answer from Seagate took more then 1 week. So i’m still waiting for 2nd answer, maybe they will give me more information about this new technology.