Did Western Digital did it again ?

[Heracles]

People here surely remember what WD did when they silently put SMR drives on the market as NAS drives and the consequence for ZFS users. Well, it looks like they did not learned how important it is to be honest with their customers :

https://www.extremetech.com/computi...t-bait-and-switching-customers-with-slow-ssds

After offering an SSD with a certain level of performance, they cut a big part of it but kept the same name.

Now that they did it twice, they will end up blacklisted permanently on my side...

 

[jgreco]

I got tired of WD SSD's mysteriously crapping out in stupid ways. I've been buying Samsung exclusively for awhile now and have yet to be disappointed in that choice, with a much larger sample set than the WD's where problems or oddities would manifest even in a small population.

 

[kherr]

I ditched WD at the drop of the SMR debacle ...... add that they advertise (and in the web site "specs" too) a CLASS spindle speed instead of ACTUAL spindle speed. If they are so embarrassed as to their product specs ...... good riddance.

I had been a 100% WD customer ....... no longer, and never again will I buy their products ....

 

[Arwen]

Recently I had to buy new drives for both my new NAS & new laptop, none of them were WD. The NAS I figured I would use Seagate, (bought 1 x 10TB Iron Wolf), and Toshiba for data storage, and have a Crucial SATA SSD for boot. Then my laptop got an Intel M.2 NVMe.

There is some understandable issues that vendors face, the original parts may not be available. Or available in the quantity they need.

But, today, there is no excuse for reducing specifications without customer notification. In the U.S. that's called false advertising and is fully supported for a lawsuit. Few people go that far, and today, the Word of the Internet actually carries more power than a lawsuit. (Except class action lawsuits, which can reach huge amounts of money.)

 

[Forza]

Read on the same page that crucial and samsung did similar crappy things :(

 

[Arwen]

Yes, just heard today that Crucial, (and Samsung), have done the same.

When will the madness end?

I guess it will end with the pocket book... which I used against WD for their WD Red SMR disaster. Not that my single pocket book will make any difference. But, perhaps over time they will start to notice that WD Reds, of all varieties are not selling well.

My last NAS had 2 x Reds, (older CMR type), and 2 x Red Pros to break up the failure rate.

Now, I guess:
- 1 x Seagate Iron Wolf, (already bought)
- 1 x Seagate Iron Wolf Pro
- 1 x Toshiba N300
- 1 x Toshiba MN series

A bit extreme, but this should really break up the failure rate. Hopefully by years.

 

[winnielinnie]

I ditched WD at the drop of the SMR debacle ...... add that they advertise (and in the web site "specs" too) a CLASS spindle speed instead of ACTUAL spindle speed.

I have difficulty understanding this.

Does it mean that drives advertised as "5900" or "5400" can actually be 7200 RPM?

Does it mean that the different drives are in fact identical, but there's a change in the firmware that instructs it to spin at 5400, 5900, or 7200 RPM?

Does it mean that using tools like smartmontools or hdparm or other drive diagnostics will only reveal to you what is advertised, but not the actual spindle speed? (E.g, if smartctl tells me "Rotation Rate: 5400 rpm", the drive may in fact be spinning at 7200 RPM?)

 

[Evertb1]

Time will learn how things develop but WD is not the party to go to for me anymore. With my last renewal of spinning drives for my FreeNAS box I bought Iron Wolfs and for SSD's it is Intell and Samsung and I just learned that Samsung is not without suspicions as well. No WD for me anymore. It take years to earn trust and you can loose it in minutes.

 

[elvisimprsntr]

I think I've been bitten by almost every manufacturer at one point or another over 30 years, with the exception of possibly one [redacted so I do not jinx myself].

I typically buy drives at the optimal price/capacity point at any particular time, thus have typically been in production/use for some period of time so I can check reviews/complaints.

 

[jgreco]

I think I've been bitten by almost every manufacturer at one point or another over 30 years,

This is really the ticket here.

Early 2000's, the Hitachi DeathStar 75GXP was the drive that literally stripped its platters. Yet by the mid 2010's, HGST was probably *the* best vendor for high capacity disks. Western Digital's WD20EARS and some of their blacks from the late 2000's had horrifying failure rates, yet today, WD makes inexpensive high capacity disks with low failure rates, and most of the large pools here are built on shucked WD EasyStores in the last 5 years or so. Seagate has had spectacular repeated runs of failures including in the early 90's with the first gen Barracudas, and stuff like the ST3000DM000 and whatever the 1.5TB model number was, back around 2010.

with the exception of possibly one [redacted so I do not jinx myself].

Was it Toshiba? Yeah, they've done better, but they're a bit player.

 

[elvisimprsntr]

Was it Toshiba? Yeah, they've done better, but they're a bit player.

You might be able to guess if you show my sig.

 

[ChrisRJ]

I just had my third Seagate Exos X16 16 TB SATA die on me in 4 months. All bought in October 2020. For the first two the Segate RMA went well, although I am not yet sure what to make out of the fact that the second replacement drive was not new but re-certified. Third RMA is currently on-going. But I must admit that I am starting to get a bit nervous.

 

[HoneyBadger]

There's another article on the same site suggesting that they switched from TLC to QLC NAND.

Western Digital Pledges Transparency, Will Replace QLC SN550 for Unhappy Buyers - ExtremeTech

If you bought an SN550 that didn't meet your performance expectations, we suggest contacting WD. Please let us know how it goes.

www.extremetech.com

 

[Forza]

There's another article on the same site suggesting that they switched from TLC to QLC NAND.

Western Digital Pledges Transparency, Will Replace QLC SN550 for Unhappy Buyers - ExtremeTech

If you bought an SN550 that didn't meet your performance expectations, we suggest contacting WD. Please let us know how it goes.

www.extremetech.com

QLC had much less longevity too. Really bad. Worse than the SMR swap

 

[no_connection]

Imagine they had added a Q to the model number and things would have been fine(ish). Now it seems like they just want to drive ppl away.
Board members probably shared with Gigabyte since they too want to slam hard into the ground.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Imagine they had added a Q to the model number and things would have been fine(ish).

I'm still holding out hope for the WD Brown line.

"WD Brown drives - At Least We're Being Honest"

 

[jgreco]

I'm still holding out hope for the WD Brown line.

"WD Brown drives - At Least We're Being Honest"

Brown ... UPS delivery of your bits? (yes I know what you *meant*, but so ripe for opportunity)

 

[Arwen]

How about WD Plutonium!

So hot it has a half life of months! And will take down other vendor's drives as a bonus!


Or we could go with Dante's circles of hell. So did WD move to the Fourth Circle (Greed), the Eighth Circle (Fraud), or the
Ninth Circle (Treachery)?

Arggg. My head is exploding, they have a presence in all 3 circles!

 

[jgreco]

You might be able to guess if you show my sig.

Mmmmmm.... Google? heh

 

[jgreco]

I just had my third Seagate Exos X16 16 TB SATA die on me in 4 months. All bought in October 2020. For the first two the Segate RMA went well, although I am not yet sure what to make out of the fact that the second replacement drive was not new but re-certified. Third RMA is currently on-going. But I must admit that I am starting to get a bit nervous.

RMA replacement drives are typically recertified unless there is insufficient stock of repaired product. If your product fails during the retailer's return period, you are better off returning the product for a refund and then buying another new one.

Sometimes you get lucky. We had a bunch of Intel 535 480GB SSD's which died due to heavy use near the end of their 5 year warranty, and Intel replaced them with brand new 545s's.