This report is the latest in a seriesВ on hard drive manufacturers slipping SMR technology into existing disk lines, with little or no notice to customers. 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.

Last night, a Western Digital executive reached out to Ars to let us know of a blog post concerning their controversial Red drives. The initial answer given was 'in general, we expect WD Red drives will be priced below WD Red Plus drives.' When asked to comment on how prices of the existing EFRX and EFAX models will shift in order to make Red less expensive than Red Plus, the only response was 'I can only comment on the at this time,' followed by 'WD Red Plus will be available in August time period.' Seagate says Network Attached Storage and SMR donвЂ™t mixДЄrs asked a senior Western Digital executive about pricing on the new Red and Red Plus lines.Western Digital gets sued for sneaking SMR disks into its NAS channel.We put Western DigitalвЂ™s dreaded SMR Red drive to the test.Western Digital wants to end any use of SMR in NAS drives Western Digital adds вЂњRed PlusвЂќ branding for non-SMR hard drives.

Wd red plus 8tb nas hard disk drive