Saw that line and saw that they used the following as baseline:
" We created four backup jobs, each of a MySQL database VM we use in testing that is roughly 400GB in size."
I'm talking about RAID of these disks and their performance in a RAID array, you seem to be talking about single disk drives in a single USB connection. Is performance better in a single drive writing larger sequential data on SMR? yes. Random data such as in a RAID array, I see no.
Until I find some metrics on a RAID of 5TB 2.5" disks shucked from these USB drives and used in a RAID array I can only use the metrics that have the limits of what is known about SMR and my personal experiene with 4/5TB 2.5" shucked drives in a RAID array.
I see no point in continuing this discussion as we will never come to consensus
@Stereodude. I'm bowing out of this thread.