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WD responded via a blog post when the use of DM-SMR for WD Red drives was first exposed. It basically consisted of an attempt to gaslight those that bought Red
by tssva 6y ago
WD responded via a blog post when the use of DM-SMR for WD Red drives was first exposed. It basically consisted of an attempt to gaslight those that bought Red drives into believing that this is their fault for choosing drives inappropriate for the purpose they using them for.
Who could think using Red NAS drives in a NAS would be an appropriate technology choice? /s
- ashtonkem 6y agoThat blog post will go down as one of the all time worst examples of corporate crisis management.
- jldugger 6y agoI feel like boing is at least in the running here.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoI saw the headline at the time, but didn’t read the blog post because reasons. Does anyone have a link or archive link?
- bonestamp2 6y agoI believe the April 20th (bottom) section of this blog post is the post in question: https://blog.westerndigital.com/wd-red-nas-drives/ https://blog.westerndigital.com/wd-red-nas-drives/ TLDR: They suggest different RED drives should be considered for different workloads. While that may have been their intention all along, that was not communicated well at in marketing or retail, where the drive colors (red, blue, purple, etc) used to be the appropriate method for selecting the right drive for your workload/purpose. The way they have worded it, the blog is not wrong, but they left out an important fact: consumers didn't have the necessary info to make the decision they're suggesting people should have made. Even if you read the data sheets that were available at the time, one would expect the listed transfer rate was a limit that the drive was capable of, not the rate that if exceeded would cause the device to perform very poorly. Worse, there would be no way to know that was the case because the fact that they were SMR technology was previously unreleased and the drives themselves actively hid that information from the host computer (since they were "device managed" SMR). The data sheets still aren't clear on how the performance is impacted with workload, but at least they're clear about the technology they use now.
- simias 6y ago>TLDR: They suggest different RED drives should be considered for different workloads. While that may have been their intention all along, that was not communicated well at in marketing or retail, [...] I would argue that it's worth than that because they sold drives with significantly different characteristics without changing the branding. It's not even that the users weren't given enough information to make an enlightened decision, it's that users of the older WD Red drives would reasonably expect newer models to basically fit the same performance profile. It's as if nvidia suddenly started selling GTX 2080 Ti cards that are effectively rebranded 1060 under the hood.
- bonestamp2 6y agoAbsolutely. I just mean that even if consumers somehow guessed that something was different, and like you pointed out: they would have no reason to suspect that -- the information wasn't even available to decipher what that difference was. So, their cover story is completely asinine any way you look at it.
- onli 6y agohttps://blog.westerndigital.com/wd-red-nas-drives/ https://blog.westerndigital.com/wd-red-nas-drives/ - it has since been edited though.
- pfortuny 6y agoRV tyres: the best tyres in the world. Use them. (small print: not suitable for RVs).
- Lammy 6y agoPlease don't trivialize the word 'gaslight' by applying it to corporations.
- ashtonkem 6y agoWe shouldn’t trivialize gaslighting by applying it in contexts that aren’t gas lighting. In this case WD lied, obscured the information required by consumers to make an appropriate choice, then blamed the same consumers for choosing poorly based off of information that they weren’t given. That is gaslighting.