I hate to defend them, but with the increasing monopolization of the shrinking hard drive market, manufacturers are brazenly pulling anti-customer moves like WD selling their RED drives with SMR tech, which causes huge problems in RAID arrays. Companies putting pressure on hard drive manufacturers, telling them their drives won't end up on the "supported" list if they pull moves like that, is about the only way to stop them misbehaving.
But it is most unusual for a vendor to specify hard disk drives bearing its own firmware as the only way to operate at a certain capacity.
Actually no. In the low-end consumer space it's unusual. In the Enterprise space it's extremely common. You're not putting any old drives in your NetApp SAN. A few years back it was common for servers not to recognize 3rd party drives at all, while now it's more common for them to just warn that your warranty and emit alert about it like your equipment is on fire...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
