The main problem with this is not that WD has decided to start using SMR technology on their WD Red drivers, but the fact that they did not warn him, not even on the disc sheet. It would be the equivalent of buying a high performance SSD and finding yourself using cheap NAND QLC chips.
WD acknowledges that its WD Network uses SMR technology
Why is this important? SMR technology is new, and it's being used for power increase storage capacity on hard drive platters compared to those that use standard recording (CMR), but the side-effect is that these hard drives do not work well under certain workloads.
Similarly, some users have reported problems when trying to build disk RAID systems, that is users with WD Red Drives RAID can be exposed to data loss. Similarly, some lamented that their plans did not allow them to add a WD Red car to existing RAID programs.
Following these problems, a source contacted Western Digital to ask why, and the manufacturer provided the following statement:
"All of our WD Red Driving machines are designed to meet or exceed the work requirements and specifications of NAS and ordinary NAS business and small business. -2-6TB WD Red Drives are Device Managed SMMs (DMSMR), while 8-14TB drivers use CMRs. "
What problems does this cause?
A quick overview of the specified sheet of these hard drives confirms that there is a marked decrease in performance between the 2-6 TB models running at 150 MB / s and the 8-14 TB models running at 210 MB / s, and this addresses the theoretical data as you already know that over time actual performance data is running low.
Part of the blame for low performance is because low driving skills use fewer cones, but SMR technology probably has something to do with this, because this technology is more pronounced, when poor performance of random learning tasks is performed, and this is something WD does not show up on its page.
Aside from working, and as we've mentioned before with user tests, this type of recording technology presents problems with certain RAID programs, and users may find themselves in a position to be unable to retrieve corrupt RAID, or It also allows us to integrate a disk into an existing RAID.
Why doesn't WD release this information?
It has just been one of the fact that the manufacturer did not specify that these hard drives use the SMR technology on the specified sheet, because as soon as the user can, they would have made the decision not to purchase these hard drives if they knew. However, this technology allows the manufacturer to save a lot on production costs, but this is not reflected in the price of discs.
In other words, WD sells discs at the same price and without realizing the change, so to speak they make a lot of money and users get a very bad product.
