Western Digital initially launched their Red lineup of exhausting disk drives for network-attached storage gadgets again in 2012. The product stack later expanded to service skilled NAS items with the Red Pro. These drives have historically supplied very predictable efficiency traits, due to using standard magnetic recording (CMR). More not too long ago, with the appearance of shingled magnetic recording (SMR), WD started providing drive-managed variations within the direct-attached storage (DAS) house for shoppers, and host-managed variations for datacenters.
Towards the center of 2019, WD silently launched WD Red exhausting drives (2-6TB capacities) primarily based on drive-managed SMR. There was no fanfare or press-release, and the looks of the drives out there was not observed by the tech press. Almost a yr after the drives appeared on the cabinets, the voice of consumers dissatisfied with the efficiency of the SMR drives of their NAS items reached ranges that WD might not ignore. In reality, as quickly as we heard in regards to the widespread utilization of SMR in sure WD Red capacities, we took these drives off our advisable HDDs record.
Finally, after beginning to make amends in the direction of the top of April 2020, Western Digital has gone one step additional ultimately, and cleaned up their NAS drive branding to make it clear which drives are SMR-based. Re-organizing their Red portfolio, the vanilla WD Red household has change into a pure SMR lineup. Meanwhile a brand new model, the Red Plus, will embody the 5400 RPM CMR exhausting drives that the WD Red model was beforehand identified for. Finally, the Red Pro lineup stays unchanged, with 7200 RPM CMR drives for prime efficiency configurations.
WD NAS Hard Drives for Consumer / SOHO / SMB Systems (Source: Western Digital Blog)
While Western Digital (and shoppers) ought to have by no means ended up on this scenario within the first place, it is nonetheless an essential change to WD’s lineup that restores some badly-needed readability to their product strains. The technical and efficiency variations between CMR and SMR drives are important, and having the 2 used interchangeably within the Red line – in a lineup that beforehand did not include any SMR drives to start with – was all the time going to be an issue.
In explicit, a have a look at varied threads in NAS boards signifies that the majority prospects of those SMR Red drives confronted issues with sure RAID and ZFS operations. The typical client use-case for NAS drives – even simply 1-Eight bays – could embody RAID rebuilds, RAID expansions, and common scrubbing operations. The nature of drive-managed SMR makes it unsuitable for these forms of configurations.
It was additionally not clear what WD hoped to attain by utilizing SMR for lower-capacity drives. Certain capability factors, such because the 2TB and 4TB, have one much less platter within the SMR model in comparison with the CMR, which ought to end in lowered manufacturing prices. But the trade-offs related to harming drive efficiency in sure NAS configurations – and subsequently ruining the repute of Red drives within the minds of shoppers – ought to have been thought of.
In any case, it appears possible that the lower-capacity SMR WD Red drives had been launched extra as a beta check for the eventual launch of SMR-based high-capacity drives. Perhaps, the launch of those drives below a distinct branding – say, Red Archive, as a substitute of polluting the WD Red branding, would have been higher from a advertising and marketing perspective.
As SMR grew to become entrenched within the client house, it was maybe inevitable that NAS drives using the know-how would seem out there. However within the course of, WD has missed a golden probability to teach shoppers on conditions the place SMR drives make sense in NAS items.
For our half, whereas the up to date branding scenario is a…
