5 ms·

Wow, this is a horrendously bad response, no apology, no admission of guilt, probably written by the legal team. I am a total layman w.r.t Hard Drives, but it

Wow, this is a horrendously bad response, no apology, no admission of guilt, probably written by the legal team. I am a total layman w.r.t Hard Drives, but it seems pretty simple (please correct me if I'm wrong): - They used a technology that impacts performance, that allows them to make higher capacity drives for cheaper. - The technology used prohibits them from being used in certain application context (citation needed/general consensus?) - They marketed the product as being suitable for those certain application contexts, when they aren't. - They come out with a blog, telling consumers to buy their more expensive drives instead?

hlandau 6y ago
This is pretty much correct, yes.
cma 6y ago
> no omission of guilt Freudian slip?
- Sholmesy 6y ago
  Ha, fixed. Thanks
sixothree 6y ago
> They used a technology that impacts performance I feel like this is an understatement. In certain scenarios for which they were designed, because of this performance issue, they fail to work at all. Maybe that is covered by the following points but I feel like "stops responding" and "impacts performance" are very different things.
JeremyNT 6y ago
So it seems like ultimately, what they've done is to move what used to be "Red" into "Red Pro" and make "Red" a more budget oriented line (without clearly communicating this in advance). The only reason to do this is to trick customers into buying the wrong product by accident! There is literally no good faith reading of this change. If they wanted to provide better value for the people who don't mind the SMR performance characteristics, that's great, but that would involve clearly marketing the line as such, not simply redefining what "WD Red" means.
- imagetic 6y ago
  I would agree. The old reds were far more along the lines of what Red Pro is now in terms of reliability.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  For anyone who's wondering, a bit of homework with the major parts suppliers here in the UK suggests a 50-60% price increase is typical moving from (new) Red to the Red Pro of the same size.
  - magicalhippo 6y ago
    The Red Pros are 7200 RPM vs 5400 for the non-Pro Reds. That will affect heat output and noise.
    - StillBored 6y ago
      Higher RPM drives also generally have a slightly lower linear density (the TPI should generally remain the same), meaning for the same capacity they require more platters. Frequently with little in the way of throughput increases (due to said lower density). The one thing faster spinning drives do buy, is lower seek time because rotational latency tends to be the largest contributor to average seek. That is part of the reason you don't see a lot of drives spinning faster than 7200RPM these days. SSD's ate the market which wanted speed over capacity, I've been patiently waiting for 3600/4200 RPM 5.25" drives to make a comeback.. <chuckle>
- lonelappde 6y ago
  It's brand exploitation. They build a good brand, than sacrifice it for short term gain to rip off customers, while building a new brand to replace it. It's very common in the fashion industry (Gucci, etc)
  - myself248 6y ago
    Sort of like how Pyrex used to mean borosilicate glass, which has a low coefficient of thermal expansion, and is thus oven-safe. This was the case for sixtysome years. Then some douchebag decided that Pyrex wasn't a material, it was a "brand", and started slapping the name on kitchenware made of soda-lime glass, which will straight-up explode if you treat it like borosilicate.
takeda 6y ago
The worse performance is major part, but what makes it worse is that these drives regularly fail on RAID rebuilds when a lot of writing happens, which is a time when your data is most vulnerable and increasing risk of losing data.

hlandau 6y ago

This is pretty much correct, yes.

cma 6y ago

> no omission of guilt Freudian slip?

Sholmesy 6y ago
Ha, fixed. Thanks

sixothree 6y ago

> They used a technology that impacts performance I feel like this is an understatement. In certain scenarios for which they were designed, because of this performance issue, they fail to work at all. Maybe that is covered by the following points but I feel like "stops responding" and "impacts performance" are very different things.

JeremyNT 6y ago

So it seems like ultimately, what they've done is to move what used to be "Red" into "Red Pro" and make "Red" a more budget oriented line (without clearly communicating this in advance). The only reason to do this is to trick customers into buying the wrong product by accident! There is literally no good faith reading of this change. If they wanted to provide better value for the people who don't mind the SMR performance characteristics, that's great, but that would involve clearly marketing the line as such, not simply redefining what "WD Red" means.

imagetic 6y ago
I would agree. The old reds were far more along the lines of what Red Pro is now in terms of reliability.
Silhouette 6y ago
For anyone who's wondering, a bit of homework with the major parts suppliers here in the UK suggests a 50-60% price increase is typical moving from (new) Red to the Red Pro of the same size.
- magicalhippo 6y ago
  The Red Pros are 7200 RPM vs 5400 for the non-Pro Reds. That will affect heat output and noise.
  - StillBored 6y ago
    Higher RPM drives also generally have a slightly lower linear density (the TPI should generally remain the same), meaning for the same capacity they require more platters. Frequently with little in the way of throughput increases (due to said lower density). The one thing faster spinning drives do buy, is lower seek time because rotational latency tends to be the largest contributor to average seek. That is part of the reason you don't see a lot of drives spinning faster than 7200RPM these days. SSD's ate the market which wanted speed over capacity, I've been patiently waiting for 3600/4200 RPM 5.25" drives to make a comeback.. <chuckle>
lonelappde 6y ago
It's brand exploitation. They build a good brand, than sacrifice it for short term gain to rip off customers, while building a new brand to replace it. It's very common in the fashion industry (Gucci, etc)
- myself248 6y ago
  Sort of like how Pyrex used to mean borosilicate glass, which has a low coefficient of thermal expansion, and is thus oven-safe. This was the case for sixtysome years. Then some douchebag decided that Pyrex wasn't a material, it was a "brand", and started slapping the name on kitchenware made of soda-lime glass, which will straight-up explode if you treat it like borosilicate.

takeda 6y ago

The worse performance is major part, but what makes it worse is that these drives regularly fail on RAID rebuilds when a lot of writing happens, which is a time when your data is most vulnerable and increasing risk of losing data.