[HN Gopher] Western Digital confirms speed crippling SN550 SSD f...
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Western Digital confirms speed crippling SN550 SSD flash change
Author : sharjeelsayed
Score : 163 points
Date : 2021-08-27 15:56 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
| donmcronald wrote:
| > For greater transparency going forward, if we make a change to
| an existing internal SSD, we commit to introducing a new model
| number whenever any related published specifications are
| impacted.
|
| I'll believe that when it happens. IMO it's fraud and after the
| SMR debacle everyone at Western Digital should know it's not ok,
| but they still tried to sneak it by everyone.
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| It's absolutely fraud, at scale and across state lines.
|
| They started selling product A, under a particular version
| number. They then substituted inferior product B _as the same
| version number_ , deceiving customers who were attempting to
| buy product A.
|
| They did this with what seems like explicit intent to trick
| customers attempting to buy product A into accepting the
| inferior product B.
|
| I think it speaks to the overt criminality of modern businesses
| that they did this.
|
| I hope we start seeing RICO and organized crime prosecutions
| against executives for this behavior.
| caconym_ wrote:
| +1
|
| I was wondering about the legality, since this seems to me to
| be bald-faced fraud and part of a consistent pattern at WD
| and other manufacturers. I guess the sticking point is
| proving that they _deliberately_ used faster components in
| earlier units to get good reviews?
|
| I'm sure they've been very careful to keep their
| conversations on this matter off the record. If only we had a
| government more interested in protecting its people from
| corporate malfeasance.
| kragen wrote:
| This kind of line-extension fraud is pretty common. Pyrex
| used to be a brand name for borosilicate glass, the kind you
| can safely heat to red heat on a Bunsen burner, and became
| popular for home baking dishes as well. At some point Corning
| started selling tempered soda-lime glass in the US as "Pyrex"
| as well, which can explode if subjected to thermal shock, a
| decision that causes several cooks per year to end up covered
| in turkey grease and glass shards. Saran was Dow's trademark
| for polyvinylidene chloride, a superior chemical protective
| layer, which became popular as a plastic wrap as a way to
| preserve food against evaporation and rancidification through
| oxygen ingress; now Dow sells Saran Wrap that contains no
| Saran, instead consisting of polyethylene, which permits
| literally a thousand times as much oxygen through. Similarly
| there are lines of Sudafed that contain no pseudoephedrine,
| Kaopectate that no longer contains kaolin or pectin (only in
| the US), and so on.
|
| In electronics, substituting inferior components after the
| initial launch of a product has become routine, and it isn't
| even always intentional fraud; the manufacturer may honestly
| believe the new, cheaper parts are equivalent to the original
| parts.
|
| I think you will see organized crime prosecutions against
| executives for this behavior, but only in PRC.
| sschueller wrote:
| They also surely didn't ship the slow units to the
| reviewers...
| theogravity wrote:
| Not surprised they'd hide it considering the WD Red CMR debacle
| where they didn't notify customers that they changed from CMR to
| SMR.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22875094
| deckard1 wrote:
| last I checked they still make you hunt for the CMR/SMR info on
| their webpage by having to _match model numbers_. Talk about
| scummy. Not to mention they did this with their NAS lineup,
| which is like hitting a hornet nest with a stick.
|
| The other thing HDD manufacturers apparently lie about is RPM.
| WD claims their WD Red are 5400 RPM when they are actually
| 7200[1]. Which just seems like a ridiculous thing to obfuscate
| if you ask me. Most consumers still think 7200 RPM is
| faster/better, and those shopping for 5400 for quiet are just
| going to get annoyed.
|
| [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/western-digital-confuses-
| everyone...
| livueta wrote:
| A little while ago I accidentally bought a couple SMR drives,
| despite knowing about the whole shitshow, despite checking
| the SNs, by mentally transposing one character at the end of
| a long SN. It's totally intentional and they can eat shit for
| it. I guess it was my just desserts for continuing to buy
| from them at all, though it's not like we're drowning in
| alternatives.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Well rather than removing SMR from the Red line, they
| introduced the Red Plus line which they pinkie promise won't
| have SMR.
|
| WD built brand loyalty and trust around the easy branding the
| created with the Blue, Green, Black, Purple, and Red lines.
| People knew what they were getting when they bought a
| particular color.
|
| Now WD is leveraging that trust to trick people into
| purchasing a lesser product. When they were called on it
| their response was "Oh well here's what you really wanted but
| now it's a different product line". This benefits them
| because customers oblivious to the controversy will still buy
| the inferior product thinking it's something else and not
| knowing better.
| willis936 wrote:
| 5400 RPM is also significantly lower power/heat and more
| reliable.
| bhj wrote:
| Sadly some WD drives specced as 5400RPM are actually
| 7200RPM. Luckily, acoustics don't lie: https://www.reddit.c
| om/r/DataHoarder/comments/ikk0rv/psa_mul...
| dragontamer wrote:
| Unfortunately... it turns out WD is lying to you about 5400
| RPM as well. A lot of those 5400 RPM drives are just lower-
| performance 7200 RPM drives. So you end up eating the
| power-costs and noise for no actual benefit.
|
| This company has consistently screwed its customers over
| for short-term gain over and over again.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| I still don't get why they lied about SMR.
|
| SMR drives aren't bad; you just need them for different
| applications and they require different software support.
|
| They knew that it was going to end up badly with storage
| arrays that were not SMR-aware.
| [deleted]
| kstrauser wrote:
| That absolutely ruined WD for me. They doubled down insisting
| that SMR is perfectly fine _for freaking NAS drives_ when it
| most certainly is not fine at all in that application. I always
| liked the WD Red series and bought lots of them, but the
| incident proved that they don 't know or care what their
| prosumer customers actually want.
| bobcall wrote:
| People need to learn to be grateful that they can buy anything
| right now. Sure, in normal times it would be an issue but things
| are different now. The swapping of these controllers is the
| difference between shipping and not shipping a product. Would you
| rather wait 6 mo or 1 year for an SSD? That is where we are at
| now and things won't be getting any better in the next year.
| Sure, maybe they should have added a sticker or SKU change, but
| that would result in further delays and shortages.
| shadilay wrote:
| This is such an obvious bait and switch. If we had a functioning
| FTC WD would be forced to refund all purchasers 2x.
| ljhsiung wrote:
| I literally just bought an SN550 last week.
|
| Any suggestions for recourse? Unlikely to be able to return it,
| since "technically" it's used.
| travoc wrote:
| The retailer should accept return of a defective product. Then
| file a warranty claim with the manufacturer. If that doesn't
| work, your credit card company might have an extended warranty
| claim procedure that you should start.
|
| Finally, start leaving bad reviews of the retailer and
| manufacturer online. If that doesn't get their attention, at
| least you might cause them to lose a few hundred thousand
| dollars in sales.
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| Talk to your credit card company if the retail outlet won't
| help you. Try to push the narrative that this is a counterfeit
| and is not the product as advertised.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| I saw this come across on ExtremeTech a few days ago. I believe
| they broke the story. It was Western Digital AND Crucial that
| were caught doing it.
|
| That means you should buy Intel or Samsung products, neither of
| whom have been caught doing this. I was going to get a WD SN850,
| thinking how nice it was that an American company beat out
| Samsung finally on performance. The first time since Intel
| reigned some years ago.
|
| But not now. I'm going with a Samsung 990 Pro when those drop
| later this year. Intel abandoned the high performance consumer
| space, but my Intel X25-M 160GB that I bought in January 2010 is
| still in-use to this day, and it was punished in my personal
| machine for 7 years straight. I would have no qualms buying
| anything they put out for laptops or any system that isn't my
| i9-11900K.
|
| It's a real shame. American companies just don't can't think past
| the next quarter. I recently read that Ford has been putting
| plastic oil pans on trucks, and I know a guy that has a brand new
| one- it cracked. I've been doing my research and was determined
| to buy domestic but found enough stuff like that, that I'm going
| with Toyota from here on out, and I've never owned one before.
|
| Crucial/Micron was one of the better quality manufacturers, it's
| a shame to see them lumped in with this scandal. Looking forward
| to an Intel Arc GPU next year paired with my Samsung 990 Pro 2TB
| SSD which will sit alongside my existing 960 1TB Pro.
|
| I'm also looking for some more external storage, and was
| determined to with Sandisk-WD. I am waiting for Thunderbolt 4
| drives or USB 4.0 as my system supports both, but the Seagate
| FireCuda USB 3.2 Gen2x2 is what I'd reach for if I needed one
| right away. I'll be skipping Sandisk.
|
| If you hate America, run a company like most of them operate. No
| quicker way to hollow out what's left of our economy. Maybe we
| can just sell each other loans and insurance.
| anakaine wrote:
| Theres an entire other story here in your comments: ford
| building vehicles with a plastic oil pan / sump. That it just
| insane, even by the standards of "engineering says it will work
| and be cheaper", particularly on a truck / 4x4 where off road
| duty can cause stones, sticks, etc to hit the sump hard. Even
| in a smaller vehicle lower clearances can cause that part of
| the vehicle to strike the road surface often enough- just have
| a look either side of your nearest speed bump.
|
| Theres likely a pro in this design for North American vehicles,
| where the pan won't rust. I still maintain, however, that at
| least a metal pan will bend or dent and be serviceable whilst a
| hardened plastic one will tend to crack or shatter.
| ep103 wrote:
| So HN, who should I be buying external HDDs from anymore? Because
| this is the last straw for me with WD
| dragontamer wrote:
| Toshiba and Seagate. Hitachi split into WD (aka HGST) and
| Toshiba.
|
| This WD dumbassery seems like its mostly on the WD side. I'm
| not aware of any dumb decisions being made on the HGST-side of
| the WD company yet. It should also be noted that Sandisk is
| also owned by WD.
| wmf wrote:
| This kind of thinking won't help you. There are three HDD
| vendors (and not many more SSD vendors) and they've all screwed
| their customers multiple times.
| TillE wrote:
| It sucks that there's no real alternative to meticulous
| research before any purchase, but that's how it is.
|
| WD's recent weirdness with the Red drives has pushed me to
| just spend the extra money for SSDs. I've been happy with
| Samsung's high-end products but I'm sure there are caveats.
| cronix wrote:
| Very happy with Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus. It's just simply blazing
| fast if you're after M.2 NVMe PCIe4. I believe they're using
| micron memory.
|
| https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sabrent-rocket-4-plus-m...
| Lammy wrote:
| > who should I be buying external HDDs from
|
| Trick question. The answer is "don't". I can't find a direct
| citation for external HDDs being the lowest parts-bin of drives
| manufactured, but the pricing tells the story enough for me.
|
| My data is valuable enough to me that I usually spend ~twice as
| much on a high-end drive and put it in my own enclosure. I
| usually go for IronWolf drives, and I'm a big fan of ICY BOX
| enclosures: https://icybox.de/en/product.php?id=297
| pickledcods wrote:
| The thing I greatly dislike about Ironwolf is that it
| displays a nonsense value for the smart attribute
| "Raw_Read_Error_Rate". I have no idea to how to extract the
| actual error rate, if any.
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| Seagate has used an odd encoded value for this for years.
| You're attempting to read a raw value, which is meant for
| Seagate's internal tools. This is all documented.
|
| smartctl knows how to parse it, it just never does by
| default (a long-standing bug that isn't high priority
| enough to fix).
|
| Do `smartctl -a -v 1,raw48:54 /dev/xxx`, or `-v 7,raw48:54`
| for raw seek.
|
| However, these values have never been useful to diagnose a
| drive as failing before data corruption appears (and it
| gets kicked of a raid), in my experience.
| pickledcods wrote:
| Thank you for the insight!
| agumonkey wrote:
| Backblaze publishes stats regularly. It's probably the nicest
| source of HDD data available on the web.
| thg wrote:
| Toshiba.
| mgerdts wrote:
| Toshiba spun off their flash storage as Kioxia. WD and Kioxia
| are considering a merger.
| babypuncher wrote:
| It's a sample size of one, but the worst recent HDD I bought
| was a Toshiba. I got it in, and within a week I was getting
| SMART warnings about a high number of reallocated sectors
| (accompanied by strange performance characteristics.
|
| I RMA'd the drive and the replacement had the exact same
| issue.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Technically that's a sample size of two.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Could be a sample size of one though. One of the most
| important things for hard drives is to keep them
| protected. If your shipping company screws up (see
| Amazon) and drops the box hard on your front porch, you
| may end up with a broken drive.
|
| AKA: The issue could very well not be the hard drive
| manufacturer, but instead the company that delivered your
| hard drives to you. I prefer to pick up hard drives
| physically from Microcenter for this reason, it means
| that I can properly "baby" those fragile drives all the
| way home.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Seconded. I have many Toshiba drives, always very happy with
| them.
| lostlogin wrote:
| After the last WD episode, I went Seagate for spinning ones.
| They have been great, although aren't the quietest.
|
| I use Samsung for solid state - their Evo series are very good.
| The m2 Pro 980s are seriously fast.
| lostlogin wrote:
| ... And now it seems Samsung are on a similar path with parts
| switching.
|
| https://hexus.net/tech/news/storage/148295-samsung-latest-
| ss...
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Seagate. They have a bad reputation for reliability, but my
| experience is that it is overblown. Keep proper backups and use
| the warranty if it fails within that period. If it fails
| outside of it chances are there are even denser drives for less
| money on the market anyway.
|
| Meanwhile, they're cheap and Seagate never pulled that SMR-in-
| NAS-disks shit that WD and a few others did.
| smoldesu wrote:
| The owners of these drives should get in contact with WD and
| demand they replace it with a top-of-the-line drive if they want
| you to keep quiet. This whole drive speed brouhahahas been
| sketchy from the start, but their sheepish admission of guilt
| here is just enterprise-grade lip service.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| If a small manufacturer did this, they'd get bankrupted and maybe
| in jail. I guess we still have a two tier system.
| mzs wrote:
| Samsung now too, wonder if this is chip shortage related:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28329386
| InitialLastName wrote:
| I suspect that we're starting to see a lot of products being
| quietly changed in subtle ways now that we're moving into ~6
| months of part shortages (for reference, 6 months is about
| normal for lag from part purchasing to consumer availability,
| with substantial variation by sector). The good way to do this
| is be open when user-visible specs have to change, or even to
| release a new model. What WD is doing is the bad way.
| shadilay wrote:
| This doesn't have anything to do with the shortages. SSD
| OEM's have been doing it for years. The real reason is the
| NAND manufactures add more layers or change nodes.
| noizejoy wrote:
| The Samsung case seems to be quite different, though. i.e. the
| replacement components don't seem to generally make things
| worse.
| crazyjncsu wrote:
| Nothing new folks. 23 years ago I bought a RIVA TNT video card
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIVA_TNT) where early models (and,
| conveniently, the ones sent to reviewers) were clocked at 110Mhz.
| They silently clocked them down to 90Mhz after a month or so
| before I got mine.
|
| "The TNT shipped later than originally planned, ran quite hot,
| and was clocked lower than Nvidia had planned at 90 MHz instead
| of 110 MHz. Originally planned specifications should have placed
| the card ahead of Voodoo2 in theoretical performance for Direct3D
| applications, but at 90 MHz it did not quite match the Voodoo2"
|
| I've been a bitter man ever since...
| deadmutex wrote:
| I am guessing behind the scenes they probably had a target of
| 110Mhz. They probably hoped to hit that by launch, and sent out
| review units a bit early. However, whatever fix they were
| trying probably didn't pan out or they found another failure
| case in edge case testing (e.g. running it long term in places
| with high ambient temps), and had to throttle them down for
| everyone.
|
| So, the critical mistake was probably sending out units too
| early.
|
| Can totally understand how infuriating it must be because you
| buy based on the benchmarks, and don't get what you think
| you're buying.
| spyder wrote:
| _" So, the critical mistake was probably sending out units
| too early."_
|
| No, the critical mistake is not telling the costumers about
| the change.
| koala_man wrote:
| > The company says that, in the future, it will also introduce a
| new model number when making any hardware changes to its products
| that impact performance.
|
| So they'll keep selling products called "Western Digital SN550"
| running at half the speed, but you'll now be able to tell them
| apart by seeing the model number update from "WDBA3V0010BNC-WRSN"
| to e.g. "WDBA3V0011BNC-WRSN"?
|
| This is very scummy.
| a9h74j wrote:
| Think how this would play with, say, a BOM going into a medical
| device. Not only on regulatory grounds, but in terms of
| _specific performance_.
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| TBF, it is common tactics for manufacturers to do this. They
| even have specific SKU for each retail store (Amazon, Target,
| Walmart, etc), including Black Friday SKUs (they are
| inferior/lower quality product intended for Black Friday/Cyber
| Monday day).
|
| Not surprisingly that WD are going down to this route.
| "Shareholders is a priority over customers" is a common
| business mantra.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Customers so often fall for it though. I've been taken in by
| Black Friday deals many times.
|
| It hurts you with rigorous buyers, but most are not that.
| cptskippy wrote:
| The different SKUs is a way to get around price matching
| because they're "not the same". Black Friday SKUs are a
| similar tactic where the retailer can offer a raincheck
| knowing that SKU will never resurface.
|
| What WD is doing hits differently and would be like LG using
| LED panels in the OLED*A line of TVs or if the Ford F-Series
| PowerStroke suddenly came with an EcoBoost engine. It betrays
| the trust people have in the line/model that WD has created.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > The different SKUs is a way to get around price matching
| because they're "not the same".
|
| So then the customer can just order from his phone right in
| front of the cashier the item he doesn't want to price-
| match?
|
| I don't get how that's helping anyone.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Stock issues and often prices in store and online don't
| match, frequently they're independent systems. Home Depot
| uses the same system and still maintains different
| prices.
| everdrive wrote:
| >including Black Friday SKUs (they are inferior/lower quality
| product intended for Black Friday/Cyber Monday day).
|
| This is news to me. Can you elaborate?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Black Friday SKUs (they are inferior/lower quality product
| intended for Black Friday/Cyber Monday day)
|
| How inferior?
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| Less inputs (like only 1 HDMI port), lower resolutions, low
| spec cpu (lagfest smart TV), etc. So inferior version of
| the same superior products.
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/black-friday-insider-
| secrets...
|
| [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/11/2
| 1/why...
| QuotedForTruth wrote:
| Usually its not easy to tell. There are often less ports
| and other obvious features, but who knows whats inside. I
| dont think anyone has ever done a component level breakdown
| like they do for storage.
|
| >These derivative models are toned down versions of
| standard ones, perhaps offering a reduced number of HDMI
| ports or lower quality components. However, it's hard to
| say -- it can even be hard to tell which specific TVs are
| derivatives, requiring a careful scan of a model number
| which could total eight or nine digits.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/11/21/wh
| y...
| cwizou wrote:
| While this happens on TVs (and other consumer goods,
| mattresses is another example of different SKUs for
| different retailers), this is not common at all for
| performance sensitive components in PC hardware industry.
|
| Making different SKUs (with same generic marketing name)
| can happen (which WD did _NOT_ do here) for good reasons,
| but most of the time you get better performance out of
| it.
|
| What WD did is really shameful and very much not the norm
| in this industry.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| The mattress business is notorious for this. Every mattress
| store offers price matching against any other mattress
| store... but only for the exact same item, by name!
|
| Let's take one manufacturer, I'll call them Sorta.
|
| One store will sell the Sorta Beautysleep, another sells the
| Sorta Quietrest, and a third has the Sorta Hamptonshire. All
| three are identical design, materials, construction, and
| appearance. The only difference is the label Sorta attaches
| before shipping to each store's distribution center.
|
| So when you ask for a price match on that first store's Sorta
| Beautysleep, no price match for you! It's an exclusive
| product available at our store only.
| awill wrote:
| I've never really understood the value of price-matching.
| Unless you have a gift card, or one store offers free
| shipping, why both with a price match? Just buy from the
| cheaper place.
| Osiris wrote:
| Some places used to offer price match plus an additional
| 10% off so it was beneficial to search for a cheaper
| price.
|
| I once did this at Lowe's by finding the item at home
| Depot for just a few cents cheaper and after buying 100
| bundles saved a bunch of money.
|
| They recently stopped doing the extra 10% off.
| handrous wrote:
| See also: "outlet mall" clothing.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > This is very scummy.
|
| That's been my overall opinion of WD in recent years.
|
| I have been a supporter of WD since the 90s when I bought my
| first 2.5GB Caviar drive. My NAS and Server are filled with WD
| Reds and my gaming PC is using an WD Black NVME. I recently
| pulled WD Green and Blues from some systems and for the first
| time in 25 years used something other than WD to replace them.
|
| WD's branding use to make it really simple to understand what
| you were buying. You knew what Green, Blue, Red, Purple, and
| Black drives were capable of and you bought accordingly.
|
| Now it seems they're leveraging that trust and comfort to fuck
| people over and for what? How does disappointing your customer
| help your brand?
|
| I can no longer trust them and I'm not going to invest the
| effort to ensure that I'm buying the right Red or Blue drive
| from them. It's sad but I'm just going to take my money
| elsewhere.
| ev1 wrote:
| I stopped trusting them when they started silently hiding SMR
| in existing CMR SKUs and it only took massive backlash and
| public calling out for them to start selling "red" and "red
| plus" HDs. Blatantly lied about it while people have raid
| arrays failing and unable to rebuild, etc.
|
| edit: pro -> plus
| sigstoat wrote:
| the red pro line significantly predates the SMR/CMR
| debacle.
|
| edit: or the plus did? well. they've successfully managed
| to confuse me, which was probably their goal. apologies.
| cptskippy wrote:
| A line Plus or Pro, was introduced as part of the fallout
| of the SMR debacle.
| ev1 wrote:
| My bad, I was confused too
|
| Red pro: CMR, "remains the same"
|
| Red plus: the new CMR SKUs that were previously sold
| under the same models as CMR and mixed SMR SKUs
|
| Red: used to be CMR now SMR
|
| as far as I can tell
| bsharitt wrote:
| Between this and the SMR NAS drive debacle, I think I'm done with
| Western Digital for the foreseeable future.
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