In late November 2016 they updated their documentation at: http://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/seagate-laptop-fam/laptop-sshd/en-us/docs/100802299d.pdf
Quote of the Changelog for Revision D of the tech spec: page 5: Add MTC bullet & change Perpendicular recording to SMR"
So I checked out all pages just to find on page 8 ( Recording and Interface Technology) Recording method: Perpendicular
Surely they wrote in the changelog that they changes Page 5, so let's see what they wrote on page 5:
• Shingled magnetic recording with perpendicular magnetic recording heads/media.
Wait - What ?
Does that mean that Seagate can classify every SMR Drive as PMR now ?
This is pretty serious as there are still issues with using SMR drives on Linux Kernels higher that 3.19 (Search for: Seagate Archive 8TB HDD and Linux).
Also it would be far more transparent for the buyer to know that SMR drives are having hard times getting large write jobs.
Does anyone with more technical depth with ("SMR" vs. "PMR" vs "SMR on PMR Heads/Media") can clear these things up ?