I wasn't aware that they'd backtracked on this. Instead I thought they'd introduced a new line called "Red Pro" which avoids SMR drives. Either way, their normal Red drives are shit for NAS enclosures unless (as you say) you don't plan to use RAID with them.
Another thing incidentally they've been found out for recently is claiming that some drives are 5400rpm when they're actually 7200rpm. They even doctored the firmware to report the slower spindle speed. May not sound like a massive deal, but if you're buying a lot of drives to pack into an enclosure that will be on 24/7, the additional heat output and power drain of the drives may come as an unwelcome surprise.
Anyway, until they stop all this fucking around, I'm avoiding WD drives until they can learn how to tell the truth and market their stuff with some degree of honesty.
Possibly, worth a look. Though think the USB3 may be for connecting it to a computer as an external drive, but to be honest no idea since it's an odd little device.
Good news, it's in the UK at Atherstone RDC, hopefully arrive soon enough.
Not sure about anything with this device to be honest!
I will find out when it arrives and I'll give it a thorough review, then probably brick it installing Open-WRT.
Been stung for customs. That adds £13.58 to the total (£8 handing fee!!).
Anyone else seen an increase in customs charges lately on stuff from China?
I've had many very expensive items slip through without checks or charges in the past. Lately I've had a couple of relatively cheap things (<£50) get charges added.
Not sure if these Chinese sellers have started declaring things correctly and not as £2 and a gift!
WiFi was working fine.
Device is now bricked after I tried to install OpenWRT :'D
I'll have to wait until I'm near my soldering iron to attach a serial adapter and sort it out.
Chanced it. Like the fool I am.
Confident I'll be able to at least return it to the state I got it in though. Maybe. We'll see. Already created a dispute on aliexpress since it wasn't functioning right at the start.
Currently trying to get a refund for the device and using it as a USB drive with a RPi 2 as the USB bit seems to run separately from the network side of things.
I've unsurprisingly come to the conclusion that it isn't the 90s and I can't cope with 100mbit transfer speeds.
I think a RPi 4 instead will be what I end up going for. Gigabit network and USB 3. May as well just order one now.