It's been quite a discussion, WD offering a NAS series that in hindsight, isn't RAID compatible because they are shingled magnetic recording drives.... Western Digital now Explains Which HDD Models Use SMR
It does explain why there are WD Red and WD Red Pro. It was still a nasty surprise, but in retrospect I'd say experts should have expected there to be a significant reason for the Pro series to exist.
Not sure why an Expert would know, as clearly Experts didn't know. No one knew. WD Lied and now they are scrambling to recover, which is all they can do to try and get credibility back.
I didn't say know. How would they have known? Knowledge assumes real information that wasn't readily forthcoming from WD before this. I said expected. If there are two series, one cheaper, one more expensive, one should expect there to be a catch with the cheaper series. Experts knowing a whole lot about HDDs should have been able to guess much better than laymen the possible reasons for why the two series exist. While I already knew previously what the SMR tech is and some details about its weaknesses, I didn't know a whole lot. Experts, however, shouldn't readily assume anything, being experts on the subject and thus suited to consider all the options. If, before these news, I had been asked if SMR drives should serve as NAS drives just fine, I might have hesitated before answering, but experts would have likely said no way. Btw, I'm not talking about armchair experts here (that we all are) but real professionals.
Just to be clear: These are the only WD Red drives that use or have used SMR? Any previous models are non-SMR? Or should the list be extended for prior drives in that series? Because I have 4TB WD Red EFRX drives in my NAS, which I'm now curious about.
The catch with the cheaper series is that it's 5400RPM vs 7200RPM, 2 years shorter warranty and typically have smaller caches. So I wouldn't expect most people to look beyond that. Also I'm pretty sure it was the "experts" over on /r/datahoarder who obsess over hard drives that figured it out. I don't think WD has been doing this for years, it's relatively recent.
Well being that WD has more balls then Seagate who still lying out there teeth by call it TGMR when it really just SMR which are very bad for steam game library I know I have 8TB Barracuda with error, may my next drive will be an WD
WD has 'balls' by selling SMR drives as NAS drives? Go look up Seagate drives none of their SMR drives are listed for NAS use. I've known for years which Seagte drives are SMR and which are not. This WD thing is laughable because of all the tards who would harp on Seagate saying SMR is bad, it has it purposes. Now they don't say crap. Right now I have 4 WD Red drives, slightly older ones that are CMR and 4 Seagte drives which are also CMR. One of the Seagte drives is 3TB which I use as a scratch drive that has an incredible amount of use. Always research what you are buying.
Lukcily I seem to have skipped SMR Red Drives. Got a bunch EFRX Red Drives that are getting to the age where I want to replace them, and the only EFAX drives I have are 8TB - ie. above the SMR boundary.
