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Seagate Ironwolf is cmr on the lower end line making it cheaper than the analogous WD Red Plus line. Given the price and that Seagate hasn’t recently fucked consumers I would recommend those drives instead.

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Yeah, anything non-SMR and with RAID-focused firmware should be fine. For WD specifically that means Red Plus not Red, because Red has SMR. Seagate Ironwolves should be just fine, but I haven't bought any since the WD version was cheaper at the time I was purchasing.

I've got one of each (wd red/ironwolf) in my Nas at the moment both still going strong 4 years later.

If it's 4 years old, that WD Red is from before WD pulled the SMR shenanigans.

The TLDR is they switched the WD Red drives from CMR to SMR technology without announcing it or noting it on drive specifications, and then when they got caught they announced the WD Red Plus line which became their cheapest CMR drives with NAS -focused firmware.

So before this, WD Red was just fine, but for new purchases, we have to specify WD Red Plus, not just WD Red.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/311182-red-alert-wd-su...

That's good to know, I've still got 2 spare bays to fill!

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