According to the spec sheet for that drive, yes, it requires software changes to support the new command setsthat it uses. In addition, it IS NOT intended to be a general purpose drive. It is very specifically designed for sequentially written data.
In other words, this is NOT the kind of drive you would even want to remotely consider in a standard Windows 10 or 11 system.
https://documents.westerndigital.com...r-dc-hc620.pdf
You will also want to refer to the white paper found here:
https://documents.westerndigital.com...-managed%20SMR.
A couple of notable quotes:
Bold type is mine...
"Due to the nature of host-managed SMR design,
it is not a plug-and-play implementation with legacy systems.
There are three ways to design for host-managed SMR depending on the customer’s system structure and ability
to modify their application layer."
The white paper then goes on to enumerate those three ways to design for host-managed SMR.
"As the name implies,
the host manages all write operations to be in sequence by following a write pointer. Once
data is written to the zone, the write pointer increments to indicate the starting point of the next write operation
in that zone. Any out-of-order writes, or writes to areas not properly indexed for writes by associated counters,
will force the drive to abort the operation and flag an error. Recovery from such an error is the responsibility of the
controlling host. This enforcement allows host-managed SMR to deliver predictable, consistent performance.
With host-managed SMR, data is organized in a number of SMR zones ranging from one to potentially many
thousands. There are two types of SMR zones: a Sequential Write Required Zone and an optional Conventional Zone.
The Conventional Zone, which typically occupies a very small percentage of the overall drive capacity, can accept
random writes but is typically used to store metadata. The Sequential Write Required zones occupy the majority
of the overall drive capacity where the host enforces the sequential data stream of all write commands. (It should
be noted that in host-managed SMR, random read commands are supported and perform comparably to that of
standard CMR drives.)
Unlike drive-managed SMR, host-managed SMR is not backwards-compatible with legacy host storage stacks.
However, host-hanaged SMR allows enterprises to maintain control and management of storage at the host level."