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Updated in May 2026. This article was originally published in 2020 in response to the then-ongoing WD Red SMR controversy. We have added the development of the situation from 2020 to the present, the current list of affected models, a practical procedure for checking whether your drive uses SMR, and a section on what SMR means for data recovery. The technical explanation of the recording principle remains unchanged—physics hasn’t changed.

SMR-related inquiries come into our lab on a continuous basis, year after year. Clients most often ask whether the technology might apply to their particular drive, or why their RAID array unexpectedly slowed down or got stuck during a rebuild. For some use cases—especially RAID arrays and NAS units—SMR may not be the right fit, which is why it is worth understanding what SMR actually is and which drives are affected.

This is currently the only comprehensive solution for data recovery from NVMe SSD drives. The portfolio also includes support for SATA, IDE and USB drives, flash drives, RAID and soon also SAS drives.

This article was written in 2020 and much of the information is outdated. You can find the current and significantly more detailed version here: Ransomware and Data Recovery – What Actually Works and When It's Too Late.

Ransomware paralyzes personal and business computers. We'll help you deal with the problem.

Backing up data is as important today as it was years ago. Although the current data backup capabilities are within everyone's reach, people still underestimate data backup.

For users, a new breakthrough, higher capacity and speed. For a data recovery specialist, various new types of NAND memories, controllers and firmware. Of course, modern high-capacity NAND memories do not only concern SSDs and flash drives, but also mobile phones and memory cards. Manufacturers at CES presented the innovations of all these storage media.

50 TB on a single drive would really make life hard for data recovery. And what about RAID built on these drives?

When should you send your data medium to data recovery experts? And when can you try to recover the data yourself?

Will Pocket SSD replace current USB flash drives? Data recovery from SSD might probably be even more complicated.

One of the first peripherals for USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 designed by WD. Will there be new challenges in the area of ​​data recovery from SSD ?

The NAND memory market grows by leaps and bounds. Our SSD and mobile devices data recovery industry must keep pace with it.