Just by coincidence I've bought a 3TB Toshiba P300 Red HDD. What System are you planning to install it in ? Details please.
This type of drive may also be affected in the same way as your reference to "Special handling. Purchased from EBay too.
Mine is a 3.5" Model and I've installed it in my "Ubuntu 14.04" PC that I use for long term storage. I have used the Linus "disk" utility to short format the drive with an Ext4 file system, without any problems so far. The formatted capacity of the single partition is bit over 3 TB, and Ext4 gets over the file size limitations of the older Ext3/Ext2 systems.
Through put rates are average Read rate:156.0 MB/s and an average write of 147.5 MB/s - 15.64 Millisec seek time. (100 MB file sizes) - Actual performance seems quicker. The motherboard is a SATA 1and I'm using traditional SATA Cables. The drive can perform a lot quicker. supporting SATA 6 interfaces.
Generally Modern Hard drives are in effect their own Self-contained sub systems. Its a "Red" so its supposed to really be in a "NAT" system - i.e. continuous operation with the minimum of start/stop cycles. I have seen a few queries regarding WD 3TB Red Drive(s) not being seen by the system Bios in Apple computers ? - I checked the BIOS Drive listing before powering up the PC - It was there no probs. Advanced Format refers to HD's with Sectors spanning greater that 512/528 Bytes per track.
Temperature: Normal use Temps hover at about 32/35 Degrees C. (The PC is a dual core Banger !)
The Wiki is here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format
CAT III
The packaging although Cardboard is quite substantial in case it needs to be returned.