They were selling NAS drives using shingled magnetic recording(SMR) without providing any hint the drives were SMR. There are a number of NAS setups which SMR drives cannot be used in.
From what I know, plain WD Red drives are the only SMR drives produced by WD, and are the newest development; they just switched the names so that the old plain CMR WD Red disks became WD Red Plus.
Therefore WD Red Plus and the faster WD Red Pro models should be 100% safe, while plain WD Red ones, especially if bought less than a couple years ago are not. Corrections welcome of course.
That's only after public outcry. When first introduced, WD Red used CMR for some capacities and SMR for other capacities, like Toshiba does as well for e.g. the S300 line [0].
At least they're now documenting the technology they're using [1].
Their rebranding and name switching is not very reassuring to me. I ordered two Red Plus drives (WD101EFAX) last month, but the drives I got are labeled "Red". I remember seeing some fine print (maybe on their website or in the box I got) which said "you might get drives that look like they are Red, but we promise they totally are Red Plus ...". That said, the drives are working fine AFAICT and I honestly don't know enough about hard drives to tell the difference.
Not any hint, it was known among 5ch forum dwellers since they came out. Those disks had platter counts, disk capacities and other specs that do not coincide with CMR configurations according to them.
