Seagate says Network Attached Storage and SMR don’t mix

Enlarge / Our set of eight 12TB IronWolf disks is free of SMR—and Seagate says every other IronWolf disk is, too.

Jim Salter

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Seagate Corporate Communications lead Greg Belloni reached out to us today in the wake of our earlier coverage of SMR disks showing up unannounced and in unexpected places.

Belloni confirmed that Seagate is using SMR technology in some desktop hard drives but stressed that the company is not “submarining” SMR disks into NAS (Network Attached Storage) channels.

Seagate confirms that we do not utilize Shingled Magnetic Recording technology (SMR) in any IronWolf or IronWolf Pro drives—purpose-built for NAS solutions. Seagate always recommends to use the right drive for the right application.

We spoke to Belloni at some length on the topic. He did not object to allegations of SMR disks showing up unexpectedly in Seagate’s desktop channels but wanted to make very clear that Seagate has no SMR IronWolf or IronWolf Pro drives and no plans to release any.

Seagate only produces NAS drives that are CMR. We do not have any SMR drives in our IronWolf and IronWolf Pro drives, which are NAS solutions. As Jason mentioned in his email to you, we don’t recommend SMR for NAS […] I was just hoping that we could correct that, to make it a little more clear that Seagate is not producing NAS drives with SMR technology. […] Seagate will always recommend the correct drive technology for the right application.

There is a bit of wiggle room, here. When

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