It's not like the disk is divided into SMR and non-SMR zones. Adjacent tracks that already contain data must always be re-written. So, these driveswork well if managed in one of two ways:

* Append-only * Only use every other track

If used like that, they can be considered just another hard drive, with an unusually large gap between tracks.

But if you try to pack on as much data as the drive will hold, and then modify parts in the middle, the drive is going to have a bad time.