What WD Red Plus Means for the Industry

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Saw the offset image around 7:57 Sorry about that one guys!

[@tanmaypanadi1414]

thank you for the video .

[@czdot]

@ServeTheHomeVideo you are WAY too nice to WD. They have actively tried to screw over their customers.

[@Apex180]

SMR should not be in a NAS drive at all. This is just them trying to cover their arse. What it means is they can raise the price on the drives we use to buy just because they can.

[@ljonesj]

im with you they should not need plus red they should just remove smr totaly from the nas lineup completely

[@tehbeard]

I was about to say, shoving it off to Small Office/Home Office is just feeding it to people who couldn't hold WD's ass over fire with litigation for selling what IS a faulty product that doesn't work as advertised (here referring to drive rebuilds/performance in a sensible time span).

[@ljonesj]

well i just bought a seagate iron wolf as seagate on there nas drives dont do smr they do have it in the other consumer lines which im ok with if wd does that im ok with it but smr has no place in a nas even thou i use unraid which smr would not be a thing to hurt it i just dont want in the system

[@gsuberland]

They're utterly useless for anything but JBOD. Even if you get decent speeds in general RAID/ZFS use because of CMR caching, they'll bloat your rebuild times to the point where the risk of complete data loss skyrockets. Calling them "NAS optimised" is a complete and utter lie.

[@bbaovanc]

Graham Sutherland how long would a rebuild take on SMR?

[@RN1441]

This reaction from WD puts everyone on notice that they have no qualms about changing the fundamental characteristics of their drive series in a negative way without disclosure. By re-segmenting the line rather than withdrawing the SMR drives from the red category we can be assured that before too long WD will decide that they can release a sub class of WD black drives or even WD gold drives that cut corners and it's going to be buyer beware. I will treat all WD products accordingly going forward.

[@kenzieduckmoo]

yeah, the subclass of black drives are blue or green :)

[@namyun2743]

@@kenzieduckmoo SMR is already in their Black series of drives. Their 2.5" drives over 500gb are already SMR.

[@RN1441]

@@namyun2743 Holy hell you're right. They have injected SMR in to the black line already which they market as "WD Black hard drives are designed for desktop PC and power users who demand performance..." What scumbags.

[@TheFourthWinchester]

Some model of WD Black is also smr. Won't be surprised if more are also smr.

[@Starscreamious]

The fact that this is WD's solution to the problem actually pisses me off. Anyone who previously has been buying WD Red drives for years... that product line just got killed off unceremoniously. I'm hoping the lawsuit to kick SMR out of WD's NAS line succeeds. This is bs.

[@ronch550]

They should kick SMR, period. I wouldn't want it even as my media drive.

[@Starscreamious]

@@ronch550 I don't think SMR is going anywhere.

[@ronch550]

@@Starscreamious yeah man. It's a bad band-aid solution. Give it 2-3 years and people will be complaining in droves. Even now I think there are class action lawsuits already. "Here at Seagate, we think it's important to get the right drive for the right application." Pfftt!!! I never heard that line before SMR came along!! It's obviously a carefully worded statement to make SMR look like it fits normal desktop applications very well. Well, I think SMR fits nothing well. No hard disk doesn't get written to again. What, is it a CD-R now?? 😠

[@Starscreamious]

@@ronch550 I mean it does work it's just slow af right? Could be okay for a video collection. Not sure about anything else though.

[@ronch550]

@@Starscreamious even if it's just a video collection, what if you delete some videos and replace them with new ones? I do that sometimes. Could take forever. This week I got a WD40EZAZ (WD Blue SMR) by mistake after I ordered a WD40EZRZ (WD Blue CMR). Seller said they no longer have the WD40EZRZ in stock. I thought about just accepting it but I decided to return it and just add a few bucks more to get a WD Red Plus WD40EFZX (CMR). I guess I did the right thing. These are supposedly cooler, vibrate less, and quieter.

[@gsuberland]

The critical issue here isn't general write speeds, but rebuild times during a RAID failure, particularly with ZFS. Turning several hours into several days raises the risk of total data loss to an unacceptable level. These drives are completely unfit for use in a RAID/NAS environment and they should never have been marketed as such. Trying to shoehorn them into a new market tier - even worse, reusing a trusted brand name for SMR and shifting CMR drives into the new tier - while continuing to associate them with their NAS-optimised range is just disingenuous on their part. As someone who owns a lot of WD Red Pro drives I'm supremely disappointed in how WD have handled this debacle. I've lost all confidence in the brand and I'll be buying Seagate next time unless HGST re-enter the market.

[@joejane9977]

HGST is WD. HGST (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) was a manufacturer of hard disk drives, solid-state drives, and external storage products and services. It was initially a subsidiary of Hitachi, formed through its acquisition of IBM's disk drive business. It was acquired by Western Digital in 2012. However, until October 2015, it was required to operate autonomously from the remainder of the company due to conditions imposed by Chinese regulators

[@maniacm6]

Can they just not put SMR on a NAS series of drives? Needing to explain to people that the NAS series of drives has drives that are bad for NAS is the problem from the beginning. Just make a new series or put the in a not NAS colour.

[@leexgx]

Still have the stuff going on in usa as this won't make them law suits go away as they are still using smr in as Nas ready wd red when they are not suitable for RAID/zfs due to long rebuild times

[@tanmaypanadi1414]

@@leexgx that is the headache for builders and other companies to deals with in their drive qualification for the NAs market

[@TheAnoniemo]

From someone who watches STH mainly on KZbin: Thanks for the video!

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Thanks for the feedback! I did not know we had a YT only audience. I always thought most YT viewers were main site readers. You made my evening.

[@tanmaypanadi1414]

@@ServeTheHomeVideo i am also youtube only unless i have some specific need to read and learn at my own pace i mostly have videos que with me working and answering email on the side

[@michaeljaques77]

They should have just shifted SMR drives out of the red lineup which would have been the easiest way to head off any chance of confusion. At this point, what is the real technological difference between a SMR red or SMR black drive?

[@s1mph0ny]

There really isn't a difference, except the blacks are typically lower platter counts, and they have 7200rpm rotation speed.

[@7rich79]

Another minor gripe is that you can't simply look at the model number and say "oh, that's the CMR or that's the SMR line", as there are WD Reds with EFAX in the model name, and WD Red Plus with EFAX in the model number.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

We have had several readers bring up that point. It is also what may have caused test matrices to miss this one as we discussed in the third piece of this series.

[@azmodanpc]

Yup, cmr disks with capacities>6tb are sold with EFAX model number. SMR garbage is sold with EFAX but with capacities 2-6 TB. When you've got to do an excel spreadsheet to avoid being shafted, it's time to call a spade a spade.

[@LanceThumping]

These drives absolutely should've been under another line, they are not fit for NAS usage. This is clearly a tactic to be able to raise the price of the standard CMR drives and capture the uninformed into buying cheaper lower quality products.

[@tanmaypanadi1414]

also a good way to not admit guilt for the lawsuit

[@alistairblaire6001]

I'm not super familiar with this topic, but doesn't this all mean that we're going to see price creep for CMR drives? It looks to me like WD played its customers, and now they're going to get away with it because the CMR drives will cost more and the industry will follow.

[@RedBearAK]

We need to boycott WD until they completely remove SMR drives from any NAS related drive line and swear they’ll never do anything like that again. Period. This “plus” nonsense is not an acceptable solution. You’ve stated the reasons quite clearly. Massive consumer confusion.

[@paulfairchild8942]

True but I get nervous about IronWolf because a lot of folks complain of them being noisy compared to WD Red. I have 20+ Red drives (thankfully all CMR)...

[@billoday]

It’s going to be a long time before I do business with WD after this.

[@peterpain6625]

I rather wonder why someone at wd and even in other companies thought they could get away with this? How far "off" are those people from reality?

[@bloodcarver913]

Greed rules out all other concerns it seems

[@MatthewDowell]

I would prefer not to wait for a class-action to work it's way through. I purchased 6 WD Red that had SMR directly from the WD online store, and I contacted their customer support. At this point it seems like they are going to replace those with PMR WD Reds of equivalent capacity, but I won't know for sure until customer service business hours open up again tomorrow. It's still going to be a real pain migrating replacement drives in my NAS.

[@azmodanpc]

And that's the bare minimum they've could have done. Geez louise the wasted time spent on rebuilding alone is massive. Penny pinchers till the end.

[@StingyGeek]

Honestly, I just feel WD have utterly trashed their brand. They knew, or should have known, that SMR was entirely inappropriate for a NAS environment. They didn't label to get away with it and make a saving. They were caught out - because a SMR drive is entirely inappropriate for a NAS environment. I don't trust them now with my data in this environment. This is a technical issue. They have used a marketing fix. The appropriate response is to say 1) we should never have put this technology near a NAS product, 2) we will not going forward, 3) anyone who has a SMR drive in the RED line is entitled to a new PRO level drive, and customers can keep the old drive. That's the sort of response that would have gone down well with the community.

[@Shenepoy]

This video seem too lax to wd, they done bad and now trying to hide it. Its like selling 100% chocolate and then making it 60% chocolate and selling it branded the same as 100% and then making the 100% chocolate a premium chocolate

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

It may seem lax, but if WD had done this segmentation at the outset, presenting DM-SMR, intended markets, caveats with ZFS, all at the outset, people may not have been happy, but at least it is clear. Our part in the process is to get clear information to our readers/ viewers and I have been pretty strong pushing for that. In terms of remedies now that better segmentation and information is available, we will let others decide how to handle it.

[@tanmaypanadi1414]

@@ServeTheHomeVideo cool , i dont have a better solution for it either

[@katrinabryce]

@@tanmaypanadi1414 The better solution is to put the SMR drives in something like a WD Brown range that competes with Seagate Archive.

[@tanmaypanadi1414]

@@katrinabryce as long as its not in the Nas list i am fine with anything

[@ferdievanschalkwyk1669]

They should have rebranded the SMR drives RED-lite. That should at least get people asking questions about if it is right for them. The vanilla Red drives were of a certain standard along with the client expectation they need to live up to. They should not mess with that. They just tried to save face, instead of addressing the damage they have done to their reputation.

[@chaos.corner]

*Any* of their drives should be labelled if they use this technology, not just the reds. I'm not against SMR if the customer is informed and able to choose to spend more for CMR if it suits their needs. Seems like WD was trying to use sawdust as filler in their flour.

[@ossme]

Give it a few years, and suddenly, the Red Plus will have SMR drives.

[@advertslaxxor]

Yeah, and then they'll say, "Oh, you thought it was a CMR drive? Thats the Red Plus Pro line!"

[@azmodanpc]

And the WD Red Pros will be the only ones with CMR. Well played WD, go home, you're greedy af.

[@Mindphaser1]

That's why always check the specs before buy. Don't trust WD.

[@TrueThanny]

You are giving way, way too much credit to WD here. Simply marketing an SMR drive as a "NAS" drive is wrong. SMR is entirely inappropriate for NAS. Making WD Red drives, marketed as "NAS" drives, is entirely unacceptable. Most people who buy drives for NAS are not going to know what the hell SMR or CMR is. They know they want drives appropriate for a NAS, so they'll get the cheapest option they can for that. Which means they'll think that WD Red is a good fit, which is wrong. WD Red with SMR is not a good fit for any NAS. SMR certainly shows it's worst colors with ZFS, but it's still bad for any redundant array, which means any NAS. Moreover, the price of WD Red drives _did not drop_ when they started using SMR. That means they were just making a cash grab - make the product cheaper and worse, but charge the same - and they shouldn't be forgiven for that. Overall, they've shown they can't be trusted, which means I won't be buying a WD product anytime soon.

[@deth3021]

I find it more telling that they added a red plus instead of a red light.

[@majorwhose]

The other question is, is Western Digital going to work with the NAS vendors to help optimize the current SMR drives? They are kinda going in the right direction with the new family of drives, but there are people that have purchased the SMR drives. Also is WD going to work with existing customers with SMR drives so that they can migrate off of the SMR drives to the CMR drives? I doubt this, but you never know.

[@Apex180]

Nothing to "optimize" DSMR is not suited for NAS use.

[@berndeckenfels]

majorwhose they state this in the article quoted in the video

[@nemesis851_]

Checked my 10 drives I bought last year, and I'm fortunate (all EFRX, phew). Informed the National retail store where I bought them, and showed the Class Action suits, and how the Reds were STILL (at that time) on their site, being marketed as NAS use drives. Recommending different wording.

[@turbo2ltr]

Wish I could get WD to swap out the SMR 6TB reds I bought in Jan for a new NAS drive.

[@katanasteel]

The red plus has less disk cache, which is why I think most picked the efax over efrx drives

[@rfekztjpkrpd4988]

They might signal DMSMR going forward, but I guess the bigger signal might be what the market accepts and what gets bought. The issue that I see: the write rates on the existing drives are already quite low. So making higher capacity drives with same low write rate seems just stupid. Who would buy a 14TB drive that are a pain to fill?

[@tanmaypanadi1414]

you would be suprised i have few people in my life you dont bother looking at the drive speed or quality and just look at the density. (price/gb)

[@pianoplayer88key]

I was just thinking .... instead of "WD Red" and "WD Red Plus" what about "WD Red Lite" and "WD Red"? (if they want to retain red)

[@s1mph0ny]

At this point, they could just replace their whole lineup with "WD Puke", and then call the actually good drive "WD Pro Plus Gamer RGB"

[@Chrissy4605]

Just checked WD.com and there was no WD Red Plus NAS drive to be found.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

That was mentioned in the video and on the main site article. We checked just before pushing the article and video live abut 5 days after the announcement, and the WD website was still marketing the DM-SMR drives for SMB use. You would have to look at the Blog then tie-out with the specs to see the difference in segmentation.

[@waynetaylor2784]

Well in Australia Consumer Law states if an item is sold and is not fit for use sold as, consumer entitled too full refund or exchanged for unit fit for advertised purpose.

[@wiel-spin]

Should have made(kept?) them Purple again because SMR is perfect for that.

[@feliciaxedine9402]

Hey, Patrick, I know this isn't in the same vein as all the other comments decrying SMR technology, but if I wanted to make an Archive server/NAS, would SMR be a good option? Is there a way to make it work with RAID or any other sort of architecture? I know that WD has made blog posts on how "Dropbox loves SMR", but is there a way to deploy a safe and reliable Multiple Drive SMR based "Archive" NAS (media server, family video storage, system image storage, ect.) at home (or at the home office) that makes sense? I.e. Would the things needed to make such a thing work wipe out any cost benefits? (Like if an Optane or SSD cache drive is required, does the increased cost of adding one along with the other disadvantages make things more costly than just going with just all WD RED Plus/Pro drives in the first place?)

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Host-managed SMR works well with many storage solutions. I still would not use with ZFS just yet. If you are asking the question, I would probably stick to CMR drives since you have a higher chance of a better outcome. SMR is not bad so long as it is disclosed and implemented properly, but it does add additional considerations as you mention.

[@feliciaxedine9402]

@@ServeTheHomeVideo Thanks for the reply! What systems/solutions would use SMR most effectively (for someone with a small budget and low expertise)? I've seen reports that unRAID deals with DMSMR just fine. Right now I can see that a 6TB WD60EFAX is half the price of its CMR counterpart on newegg, so it could be compelling for a write-once use-case. But if something along the lines of Raid 1 is the only viable way to use them, I'm not sure what's the point of WD even having them labeled as "Red" drives. I guess I just wanted to know more about what are the logical options for the use of SMR at this point in time for a SOHO outfit like myself. I'm not the best at this sort of server/storage tech (I'm a more build-your-own-pc and bumble through own IT problems kind of girl), so understanding more on the possibilities of SMR and how to utilize is interesting to me, though all my search results are being drowned out by all this "WD RED SMR Bad" vids out there right now! Thanks again, I'm very thankful for your response, and it'll help me look into things further.

[@mr.needmoremhz4148]

If someone asked I would tell them, but most people either do research before they buy/build something others just buy pre-build solutions with suggested HDD. So it's up to those vendors to suggest them. And to explain the reason in a way that it doesn't feel like your "upselling" them.

[@wbdill]

Is there any issue with using DSMR with NTFS?

[@gedavids84]

Only issue I've had is they're slow to write to because of the nature of DMSMR. I keep all my games on a pair of the cheapest Seagate DMSMR 2TB drives money could buy.

[@gedavids84]

What is SOHO in the context of this video?

[@John-gm8ty]

this is CLEARLY deceptive marketing and sales.

[@danieledwards3376]

So at some point will they slither SMR into the Red Plus line and we'll have to deal with the fallout then start buying Red Plus Plus? Not that I'm bitter...

[@adrianTNT]

3:02 I vote to label SMR drives as "WD Brown" :))

[@cenata]

It means that I'm not buying WD anymore! Instead of apologizing and completely removing SMR from the Red series, they basically repeated what they said in the original blog post - "Buy or more expensive products".

[@TheScorpio32]

man patrick what kind of a camera do you use, you always look super krisp on 4K, i can say that about a handful of youtubers :D gettin your A+ game early on.

[@unicaller1]

WD Brown line! Perfect for DMSMR....

[@uss_04]

They should have brought back Green for these SMRs.

[@azmodanpc]

The Green brand is so toxic right now because of the massive shenanigans those drives caused (I had 3 of mines fail and I bought three, great ratio) that a Brown line is fitting for these SMR abortions.

[@nickylee4510]

I bought a Nas qnap from a computer store.After I install only notice that they giving me both diffrent type..1 with plus and other without plus..may I know it's ok for using as nas raid for 2 bay?

[@davidklapouch1032]

Check the full model name on the drives as that what matters, the SMR drives are the 2TB-6TB models with EFAX at the end of the model, models ending in EFRX are CMR, and sizes other than 2TB-6TB are all CMR.

[@jcamp9293]

My plan is I give up on any WD NAS drives and only go with Ironwolf or Ironwolf Pro. It should no longer be a decision. WD was way too sneaky on SMR, and their decision to keep the red platform on any SMR's. Those should be sold as archive drives.

[@GrahamTriggsUK]

Whilst it's good that WD (eventually) made a clear demarcation between these are SMR and these are CMR drivers, my big problem with this isn't that Red Plus might be "expendable" (everything can ultimately be expendable), it's that they left SMR in the old CMR branding, and created a new branding for the CMR drives. This is still ultimately confusing and problematic for users who purchased CMR Red drives in the past, and now might by Red (rather than Red Plus) thinking they are getting a like for like replacement, when they are not. However they would have had to work it, they should have moved the SMR drives into a subbrand.

[@B4dD0GGy]

Great video thanks for the update

[@Pheatrix]

I'm voting with my wallet. Because of the tiny amount of players it might not do much, but that's pretty much all I can do and I'm telling all my friend also to avoid WD. I don't think they handled this situation the right way and if I can avoid it I'm not going to buy any drives (SSD & HDD) from them anymore.

[@bbaovanc]

What company will you switch to? I’m considering not buying from WD anymore as well

[@tanmaypanadi1414]

@@bbaovanc segate (edit:degate) is the only other player or you go to ssd market

[@KuraIthys]

@@tanmaypanadi1414 Seagate already ruined their reputation with me 20 years ago, and what they did is far, FAR worse (IMO) than this. Since WD and Seagate is all there is (SSD is unaffordable for my purposes), I'm stuck with it. I guess, given I need to be more consistent with backups, I'll use mixed pairs of WD and Seagate drives, but... Eh. The whole market feels like a mess.

[@PiperTube]

The process of their RMA in Canada works like this. They offer the older FRX model drive with 64kb cache. They DO NOT offer the pro drive as a replacement. You ship the FAX model drives with the RMA number to an address near Toronto like I did on June 16th. The order was delivered by FedEx and signed for. The drives are now missing which means they say they now have to investigate what happened to my $900+ CDN worth of drives. The RMA process expires on July 12th. Replacement drives are not shipped out until the returned drives are verified. I've now ordered Seagate Pro drives to replace the 4 WD drives. Western Digital is a brand which I will never be buying again. I will now be waiting months for the Class action lawsuit as to whether I get anything in compensation for this fiasco.

[@MadClowdz]

I bought 2 8TB WD Red Plus drives for my always-on, headless home media server. One is fine so far (3 weeks) and the other was DOA...wouldn't initialize, beeped when spinning up, and surface scan showed bad sector after bad sector. Doing an exchange with Newegg. The one that works fine was from Amazon, FWIW...of course now we have supply and price issues due to chia farming but whatever, lol...

[@vascovalente3929]

Great video, thank you so much

[@hacked2123]

Anyone looking to get rid of some SMR drives? I could use them in my setup

[@tjb_altf4]

The only reason they are keeping SMR in Red lineup is because moving them out would be effectively admitting guilt in the upcoming lawsuit. I'm sure they will reset their lineup into something that makes sense once that is settled

[@ralmslb]

This very poor attitude from WD is the reason I've switched back to Seagate

[@xWood4000]

I don't think the WD Red SMR hard drives should be sold at all. Maybe they could make the WD plus the default and call the SMR drives WD Red Lite or something atleast

[@Hfil66]

The issue is wider than simply whose responsibility is it to know what they are buying. If WD abusing their reputation to seel products to people who believe they are buying one think but are in fact buying something else (whoever's fault that misunderstanding might be), that inability to properly manage expectations on their products and have the product meet the expectation they allowed the customer to have will ultimately hurt WD's reputation. A dissatisfied customer is a dissatisfied customer, and simply blaming the customer for their own unrealistic expectation will not remove the underlying fact that you have a dissatisfied customer.

[@BeefIngot]

Isn't red plus smr from 2 to 6

[@WooShell]

I don't get why WD doesn't ditch SMR at all. It's slow and causes problems in many usage scenarios, and they apparently don't make use of the purported space advantage either - or why would their biggest drives still be CMR? I'm even quite sad that Seagate jumped on the SMR train, after years of explicitly marketing their SMR-freeness even in the biggest drives.

[@ronch550]

I ordered a WD40EZRZ (Blue CMR) but got a WD40EZAZ (Blue SMR) instead. I've been trying to convince myself that maybe it's not so bad but I couldn't take it. I really had to avoid SMR. So I sent it back and I just added a little bit more to get a WD40EFZX (Red Plus CMR). Much better and actual peace of mind.

[@MrMiryks]

step 1. insert subpar technology in your premium product line 2. wait for the angry costumer's reaction 3. create a new PLUS premium product line with the previous technology and sell it for an even higher price and embrace the prise for being clear about your product line. 4. profit

[@aednichols]

As it turns out, the Red line was never updated beyond 6 TB 4:40

[@lookalikehuuh]

Does RED Plus mean extra money for what we should have been getting all along?

[@azmodanpc]

foo sure. Same product, a PLUS (or PRO, like Apple) and tada! the price skyrockets.

[@OmegaDrifters]

Great job on this video and imho the right message. Trust once lost...

[@Saturn2888]

I ran WD Green drives in my NAS because they were cheap. This was long before the Red drives were a thing. Those gave me a horrible impression of ZFS and NASs in general. I regulated it to a backup machine rather than a network-attached storage device that would allow data sharing :(.

[@wazza-au]

I think that my advice to people who ask what drives to buy for their NAS, from now on, will fall back to "Get something other than WD. They're just too deceptive as a company to trust anymore. Yeah, other companies *may* do dodgy things, but WD has been proven to lie." Shame because I've used Reds in my own setup. I really liked them.

[@joejane9977]

the problem besides SMR/Dsmr. is NO effective warranty on 90% of these drives. if it not retail boxed it is not covered by the manufacture. if you by a bare drive it is warranted only by the seller. so if you bought it from newegg then you need too get warranted service from newegg.

[@x3roxide]

what it "means" is that i'll be buying seagate iron-wolf drives from now on. it was deceptive and VERY deliberate. SMR should have been sold as a new budget line. Instead they slipped them into WD Red line hoping no one would notice.

[@stargatedoom]

The majority of the drives Ive used in builds over my life have been WD. I don't feel this was done to hide information from consumers. Im content with the way they handled the situation by disclosure and switching out drives for those who have asked after they noticed it didn't work with ZFS. I will still buy their drives in the future.

[@azmodanpc]

After how many months and how much pushback? Gee thanks for the heads-up, they knew and tried to sell as many smr with the (still) valued RED branding.When caught red handed and after receiving some very pissed phone calls, voilà, stick a plus and increase the price. Problem solved. Sickening. I hope this class action lawsuits costs them millions in lawyers. These morons only understand money.

[@JeroenvandenBerg82]

I'm an informed consumer, and every now and then a fellow sysadmin or customer will ask me for advice and I would just advise them to get other brand drives. It's just the simpler option, then I don't have to explain what the differences SMR and CMR are and why they should not buy any WD red drives but WD red plus drives because they are $20,- more and "they are all nas drives" it's a mess. WD get your sh!t together and yank those SMR out of the NAS line NOW because this is gonna hurt sales in the long run just like Seagate with their deathstars/failacuda, swap any failed drives with non SMR drives and even users that have "fine" working drives but want to swap them just to be on the safe side.

[@riopato2009]

Most normie consumers are most likely going to buy dm-smr drives because they are relatively cheaper than the cmr drives and most would baulk at the prices of the wd red pro drives. If anyone asks me about the differences between the drives, I generally just tell them the 8TB drives are the "sweet spot" for Nas storage right now. I say right now since it has been quite some time WD has yet to release any 8TB NAS drives that are DM-SMR and there really aren't any cheaper alternatives except for Seagate Iron Wolfs. Toshiba is usually not even on these people's radar all because of marketing.

[@niklasp.5847]

Well a wd Red Lite would be way better so nobody gets confused

[@camberwellcarrot420]

I hope there are substantial monetary consequences to WD for their attempt to defraud.

[@dans79vet]

WG will just use the “Plus” line to charge extra. I bought a WD 4tb RX drive on amazon(FR) and paid 145€ for this specific part. The package arrived and was marked RX until I opened the anti-static bag to realize the drive was AX. 4tb AX drives sell for 125€. Drive was sent back the next day. These drives should not of been put in the Red line up and other makers should avoid following this template. Let their base spec nas drives get better reviews then the base WD reds.

[@XSpImmaLion]

Deceptive marketing, I hope the company loses the lawsuit because then perhaps they have a chance of switching leadership and going back on track. They are burning brand, trust and goodwill that was built through years because of some incredibly stupid, misguided and quite frankly petty grab for money that makes no sense for a company of this size. It's also a pretty bad misunderstanding of their own market it seems. I'm planning to upgrade my NAS hdds next year or so, WD fell down from the list with this whole thing.

[@dalgrim]

WD should simply remove the SMR/DM-SMR drives from the red line. Make a new line with a new color, I mean they have red, black , blue, purple, etc.

[@MrMacroVision]

any computer shop worth their salt will not stock SMR drives at all

[@intheprettypink]

This just seems super scummy to keep SMR in the NAS lineup. By keeping it in the "lowest" tier of NAS drives and starting a new tier, they can effectively just charge more for the CMR / PMR versions. No thanks WD.

[@philindeblanc]

Its not that consumers should be more "informed", its that people in general should ALWAYS question what is presented. This way they can be more informed more first hand, not some second hand or worse info. BTW, I watched the video, and I either wasnt paying full attention or you simply didnt mention it, but other than confusion, I did not get the difference between CMR or DMR, and then later mixed with DSMR. This video only made things more confusing, BUT, did alert me that there is a difference. And I know the marketing BS played and why I searched for the difference in the first place.

[@pilsen8920]

Still completely unacceptable someone that bought a red series is going to go to replace it and not know about their deception and get a product extremely unsuitable.

[@merlingt1]

There should be no SMR in the RED product line period. I will never be purchasing or recommending them in the future. It doesn't help that their Red line is overrated crap too. I have had 5/8 of their drives fail prematurely and show metal corrosion or reaction in the pads connecting the controller (this is in a temperature controlled environment).

[@postbreak]

What WD Red Plus means I will actively avoid WD at all costs, including any brand WD owns. They burned the consumers and now I'm voting with my wallet.

[@intuitivme]

Why would I buy a RED today? It makes no sense if I use RAID.

[@advertslaxxor]

How about this instead: Don't buy WD. I won't say any kind of SMR drives should not be NAS drives; they should at least be marked clearly and with efforts to allow compatability before. They could be great in some circumstances, for example, serving video files, security recording, etc. etc. etc; but they are clearly not general purpose drives. Perhaps at some point we can get a SSD/SMR hybrid. 512GB flash, 12tb HDD or something like that.

[@falcon81701]

Yes it was shameful of WD to act so secretive about its use of SMR. They blatantly withheld information which is the same as lying. I just picked up 4x 8tb wd red plus drives but maybe I should have gone Seagates.

[@Robert-ug5hx]

This is ridiculous having another line of drives to confuse things

[@JonathanSwiftUK]

This is a bit of a disaster really. On their site they now use those terms next to the drive - will all consumers really understand what that means. But most people buy from resellers - who probably won't communicate this to buyers, and won't explain what different drives are suitable for. Since there were CMR drives with the same size, they should have dumped SMR altogether. All they've done now is confuse things further.

[@Vaheen]

if "WD Red" still says NAS, the WD (and other manufacturers) deserve legal action, Adding a PLUS line does not sold this problem at all. I have been a loyal WD buyer for the last 15 years, now I doubt I will ever buy their drives again ... they have lost my trust completely

[@christopherstaples6758]

shot myself in the foot going 4tb reds ( best bang / $ ) I should have gone 8tb still CMR , now I have 96 useless drives in my zfs raidz3 , that would take 192 weeks to swap out the disks ,,, unless I got another 4x racks

[@tanmaypanadi1414]

good luck man ,i hope you dont loose any data.

[@iankester-haney3315]

So, they still label them as Red drives. They still refuse to truly acknowledge the issue. Red was supposed to be a premium line with higher prices for NAS features. This bifurcation is bullshit as SMR is not fit for purpose in NAS and no RED drive should have it. Not on a marked up specialty drive like RED. I'll stick with Seagate IronWolf drives and not trust WD again.

[@Quettesh]

Not good enough. Red line always has been used for NAS and people will still buy them for that use. Not everyone understands the difference. It is still false advertisement for people who are not that experienced.

[@thephaze3]

Your shirt is very distracting. So much screen door! interesting none the less

[@VladMcCain]

Since everyone that is in the know hates shingles... WD... why you do this?

[@azmodanpc]

The skeeviness never ends. Now plus is "standard" and plain wd red is garbage and unusable in mid level nas environments (when it was advertised as such for ages) . Way to go WD, a career in politics is next.

[@leexgx]

should be removed and be put under to WD Green brand as that's all Its good for really (you shouldn't trust your data with smr especially for what wd red smr is Ment for) hopefully wd will just phase out wd red and only have plus and pro if they know what's good for them (instead of trying to milk money from unsuspecting buyers who know wd red is what they need but actually isn't)

[@youtubegaveawaymychannelname]

Not green.. These hunks of junk serve no purpose other than low-cost. They should be in the budget blue line. Green at least had power saving optimizations in mind.

[@leexgx]

@@youtubegaveawaymychannelname they are already in some blue models, SMR should have his own colour type, green isn't used any more on hdds so be perfect fit for low performance drive if they have lots of writes happen in one go but disk must state smr on the label and box if it's retail

[@valdius85]

I think WD lost the respect of the technicians that order their products in bulk. People might still buy it, but they will do extra work to find alternatives. I know I will do that for my future NAS. I do not like companies acting like that. I'm tired of Apple's style of dealing with customers like peasants.

[@DaystromDataConcepts]

WD have gotten away with fraudulent marketing as far as I'm concerned. Red's are for NAS use. Thats how they promoted the drives and why they charge more for those than their Blue desktop line. WD, stop calling the base model WD Red's because they are not suitable for NAS operation, being SMR. Further, what were you thinking by slipping SMR drives into the Red line in the first place! Your reputation stands on reliability and dependability, and by selling NAS users short, you damage that reputation. I have always been a WD user over Seagate. However, the way I feel about WD's behaviour, I wish I could afford to replace my array of 4 WD Red's with Ironwolf's.

[@chucktodd7329]

my God! how many words can he use without saying anything.

[@wildmanjeff42]

WD has not had the quality it used to in my experience in the past 5 years. I am glad I had already switched to Seagate for my Freenas server. WD did some shady crap trying to push off cheaper products as the same quality Red line drives.

[@tanmaypanadi1414]

to be fare wd got caught thats why this is a thing if segate had tried it and was noticed first it would be their problem to deal with

[@paulstubbs2778]

Wow, are WD really making me want to go elsewhere. It used to be simple, use red for NAS, now they have all this extra crap to contend with.

[@universalcode786]

WD needs to sort it for now I’m thinking for nas WD red crap seagate wolf good simple!

[@noenken]

This is basically them doubling down. Which is the worst thing they could do. SMR drives are still labeled WD Red and they are actually making this the default now. For NAS! ... I'm sorry but I'm not buying from this company anymore. I don't think I can trust them at this point.