In (very) brief, SMR disks generally perform well enough in light storage workloads, with plenty of idle time between storage requests—but they can fall catastrophically flat on their faces when hit with more demanding workloads. The ZFS filesystem, in particular, tends to present SMR disks with challenges they have difficulty handling. WD Red Plus is the new name for conventional magnetic recording (CMR)-based NAS drives in the WD Red family, including all capacities from 1TB to 14TB. These will be the choice for those whose applications require more write-intensive SMB workloads such as ZFS. WD Red Plus in 2TB, 3TB, 4TB and 6TB capacities will be available soon. Although all three remaining major hard drive vendors—Western Digital, Toshiba, and Seagate—have "submarined" SMR disks into existing channels without doing much to notify customers about it, only Western Digital has done so with disks designed specifically for NAS, or Network Attached Storage, use. We’re committed to providing the information that can help make an informed buying decision for as many uses as possible. Thank you for letting us know how we can do better. We will update our marketing materials, as well as provide more information about SMR technology, including benchmarks and ideal use cases.

WD Red NAS Hard Drive, Internal Hard Drive (2 TB to 6 TB

The company is taking a new branding initiative to clarify the technology used in its NAS drives—in the near future, "WD Red" will exclusively mean disks using Shingled Magnetic Recording technology, and "WD Red Plus" will mean disks using Conventional Magnetic Recording. Overview Ideal para sistemas NAS para home offices, usuários avançados, pequenas e médias empresas e sistemas e concumidor/comercialWe typically specify the designed-for use cases and performance parameters and don’t always talk about what’s under the hood. One of those innovations is Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) technology. This report is the latest in a series on hard drive manufacturers slipping SMR technology into existing disk lines, with little or no notice to customers. Recently, there has been a discussion regarding the recording technology used in some of our WD Red hard disk drives (HDDs). We regret any misunderstanding and want to take a few minutes to discuss the drives and provide some additional information. Our current device-managed shingled magnetic recording (DMSMR) (2TB, 3TB, 4TB, and 6TB) WD Red series will be the choice for the majority of NAS owners whose demands are lighter SOHO workloads. If you are encountering performance that is not what you expected, please consider our products designed for intensive workloads. These may include our WD Red Pro or WD Gold drives, or perhaps an Ultrastar drive. Our customer care team is ready to help and can also determine which product might be best for you.

Red Plus” branding for non-SMR hard Western Digital adds “Red Plus” branding for non-SMR hard

A Western Digital faz parceria com uma ampla gama de fornecedores de sistemas NAS para testes extensivos para garantir a compatibilidade com a maioria dos gabinetes NAS. Further Reading Lawsuit vs. Western Digital wants to end any use of SMR in NAS drivesWe're not certain whether the new, easier branding will satisfy the already-ongoing lawsuits against Western Digital, however. One US class-action lawsuit alleges that marketing any SMR disk as "NAS" disks amounts to actionable false advertising. The new branding is a big help to consumers who already know what SMR means and what its limitations are—but it's unlikely to do much to educate consumers who aren't already in the know. There's also a Red Pro line targeted to maximum-performance applications. This line is unchanged—it existed with the same branding before the SMR fiasco, and it still exists with the same branding and same models today. Understanding SMR limitations SMR is tested and proven technology that enables us to keep up with the growing volume of data for personal and business use. We are continuously innovating to advance it. SMR technology is implemented in different ways – drive-managed SMR (DMSMR), on the device itself, as in the case of our lower capacity (2TB – 6TB) WD Red HDDs, and host-managed SMR, which is used in high-capacity data center applications. Each implementation serves a different use case, ranging from personal computing to some of the largest data centers in the world. WD Red HDDs have for many years reliably powered home and small business NAS systems around the world and have been consistently validated by major NAS manufacturers. Having built this reputation, we understand that, at times, our drives may be used in system workloads far exceeding their intended uses. Additionally, some of you have recently shared that in certain, more data intensive, continuous read/write use cases, the WD Red HDD-powered NAS systems are not performing as you would expect.In broad strokes, we agree with the above quote from Western Digital's blog post announcing the new branding. The majority of consumers buying small Synology, Netgear, or other purpose-built NAS devices are likely using them intermittently, with a small number of overall users, and mostly for large files such as digital photos, movies, and music. For those consumers, an SMR-equipped Red will probably be okay—they're unlikely to push through the CMR cache, and even if they do, the SMR management firmware can probably handle the direct writes fairly well. Unfortunately for Western Digital, NAS users tend to be significantly more technical than general consumers—and they frequently hit their disks with far more difficult workloads than Western Digital apparently tested or planned for. From Red to Red Plus

WD Red 3TB 3.5 inch NAS Hard Disk Drive WD30EFRX - Scan

Last night, a Western Digital executive reached out to Ars to let us know of a blog post concerning their controversial Red drives. Due to the fact that the range of use cases for NAS has become increasingly diverse, we are now making it easier for users to match the right drive with their applications and workloads – from moderate small office/home office (SOHO) workloads to intensive small- and medium-business (SMB) use, as well as more demanding environments. The WD Red Family From a sequential performance perspective, our tests confirm that our WD Red DMSMR drives are on par with our existing CMR drives. Third-party testing also validates the performance of WD Red DMSMR drives compared with other drives under general hard drive benchmarks used in an NAS environment.