WD Red SMR Updates

by Adam Armstrong June 24, 2020

written by Adam Armstrong June 24, 2020

Back in April we wrote an article (I’m aware some of you didn’t like the title) about WD’s woes with the WD Red drives being SMR when the buyers thought they were CMR. The previous article covered WD’s response to the customer outcry (this is the age where the masses can raise up their digital pitchforks and torches and make companies change, for better or worse). WD has made further clarifications around the WD Red SMR line to best serve their customers as they buy drives for the NAS devices.

WD Red SMR

As stated, when users unwittingly tried to rebuild their RAID with WD Red SMR drives there were failures and some data loss. This didn’t come from a misunderstanding of the difference in CMR and SMR technology, it came from users not knowing that they had SMR HDDs in their NAS. The initial response gave users the knowledge of which drive was which, but now the company has taken everything one step further and renamed certain lines so there will be no mistaking in the future.

First up, the WD Red line is all device-managed shingled magnetic recording (DMSMR). This is for every capacity, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, and 6TB, and is ideal for lighter SOHO workloads in a NAS. The new line of drives is the WD Red Plus. These will be all CMR drives in all capacities (1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, 6TB, 8TB, 10TB, 12TB, and 14TB). The WD Plus is aimed at more write-intensive workloads such as ZFS, and is aimed at SOHO-SMB. The WD Red Pro remains unchanged, just with the clarification that the line is all CMR.

Going forward with this clarification and renaming, customers shouldn’t accidentally buy WD Red SMR drives in the future.