While the reds are the poster child for this problem, WD having pushed them into NAS channels, the problem is SMR drives aren't suitable for RAID systems.
They're really really slow and because they need to rewrite lots of data for every write request, they tend to get reported as timed out to the RAID controller, which can cause issues like attempted verification of data or just lots of waiting depending on how the controller handles problematic writes. SMR drives are fine for single drive or JBOD stuff where you just need a lot of dumb storage - they're just slow.
Seagate says they don't push SMR into consumer channels, so WD did another stupid - like the head park problem on the greens. I don't know what Hitachi does these days.
I remember WD clearly marketed the Reds for use in surveillance systems where a camera feed gets written on a disk, and the Golds for use in demanding environments like RAID. As the Reds were cheaper, I remember users saying how smart they were, getting a Red for their desktop or NAS instead of paying for a Black, and that the Red was as good as a Black when it clearly wasn't. I don't know whether WD endorsed this at some point, but I would blame end user stupidity for buying a Red for something else than a surveillance system after WD claimed that this is its official designated use.
With the Greens it was such a stupid idea, like the Gretta meme of the day. Again, I would blame user stupidity thinking that you can save the environment by trusting an inferior cheaper product with your data.
Hitachi is owned by WD now, but I think their products are pretty soiid. Their Ultrastar line is used in servers and RAID and gets good reviews, I think it's the equivalent or even the same as Golds.
The Red drives were always NAS units, the purple was surveillance. Are you thinking of the Blue line, which is the "cheaper black" units? Those are terrible drives, I just toss them when I get one. Every one I had would lose it's format or have other weird issues.
As far as the green units, there's nothing wrong with them for data storage. The main difference is they rotate slower, and consume less power. The big problem came from the overly aggressive head parking, which was something like 10 seconds of inactivity. You'd wind up with a drive that parked thousands of times in 6 months, and it would die. I went through probably a half-dozen of those in a year before just getting them RMA'd once more and selling them.
Toshiba was the other manufacturer I was thinking of, not Hitachi.
I have messed the colors. Still, I wouldn't trust a red, purple or green due to their marketing towards a specific use that doesn't make sense to me. I wouldn't rule out a Blue for casual use, but I would go for Black or Gold if I wanted reliability and some heavy operation.
I don't trust the Toshiba drives, they don't fail at spectacular rates but they can be finicky, hopefully their more expensive line might be better.
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