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Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM”
- tapper 6y agoFuck Western Digital!
- chrisseaton 6y agoI think the TLDR is that Western Digital are selling faster drives marketed as being slower than they actually are, presumably due to lack of supply for the demand of the slower drives part of the market or something like that. You'd think nobody would mind until you remember some people want lower power and noise. Ideally these people would be buying based on those actual metrics, rather than the RPM as a proxy for them, if that's what they really wanted, but I don’t know if that’s on the data sheets.
- dawnerd 6y agoCouldn’t they just software limit the speed? I’m sure they thought of it but it seems on the surface like an easy problem to solve for.
- wmf 6y agoDrives don't support this; they're designed to operate at a single fixed RPM.
- gruez 6y agohttps://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ikk0rv/psa_multiple_wd_5400rpm_drives_are_actually/ https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ikk0rv/psa_mul... >You cannot just run a drive at a different RPM (except for idling, different RPM while reading/writing requires different read head calibrations and glide height, etc.).
- AnssiH 6y ago> Ideally these people would be buying based on those actual metrics, rather than the RPM as a proxy for them, if that's what they really wanted, but I don’t know if that’s on the data sheets. Power use and acoustics are listed in WD datasheets, but I guess they might not be well comparable to values from other manufacturers.
- smnrchrds 6y ago> Power use and acoustics are listed in WD datasheets Given the fact that they lied about RPM on their datasheets, why should anyone believe other pieces of information on their datasheets are correct?
- AnssiH 6y agoThey seem to have lied elsewhere like in store pages (per other HN comments), but the datasheets specifically only mention "Performance Class" being "5400 RPM Class", which may be misleading but is not a lie IMO.
- murgindrag 6y agoWell, I'm looking for a 19dB-class hard drive. That class spans anything between 14dB and 60dB. That's the general noise class, you know.
- ksec 6y agoWondering why this isn't the top Comment. Personally the only metric I care about now on HDD is reliability.
- mokus 6y agoMaybe I should apply to WD and fill my resume with things like “25-years-class experience as distinguished-class engineer-class for HGST-class employer”.
- chrisseaton 6y agoDo you realise in that on the context of this story that would mean you had more then 25 years of experience, so they’d be happy.
- Klinky 6y agoMaybe salary negotiations is a better time to bring it up. "100K Class" salary request, with the actual figure being 33%~ higher.
- RachelF 6y agoThat's what happens when you have little competition. Right now the high capacity, non-SSD hard drive market is a duopoly between WD and Seagate. Customers have little choice.
- bfuclusion 6y agoSSD volumetric capacity already exceeds spinning disk, and we're just waiting for the price to come down. The horse's dealer's competition wasn't more stables, it was the car.
- katbyte 6y agoSSDs expire, large long term r/w storage where speed isn’t important rust still wins
- tuatoru 6y ago... rust on tape, that is.
- bleepblorp 6y agoSSD prices have remained stubbornly high for some strange reason or other. Indeed, they've gone up since the pandemic started. The small number of suppliers for flash memory might have something to do with this.
- HeadsUpHigh 6y agoThey are dropping by ~20-30% YoY
- ha5u 6y agoThe German-language forum that the article mentions has been doing some great detective work: https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/threads/crystaldiskinfo-zeigt-fakewert-an-alle-wd-my-book-8tb-drehen-anscheind-mit-7-200rpm.1235655/ https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/threads/crystaldiskinf... The conclusion on page 4 of the above thread: > Non-Pro RED = 5400rpm according to data sheet > Pro Red = 7200rpm according to data sheet > Internal both 7200rpm and 120Hz. > Apparently all WD / HGST helium plates have real 7200rpm, no matter what it says. Simply absurd, if true. Here, for example, is a screenshot of WD's WD100EFAX store page: https://imgur.com/HseW9Pa https://imgur.com/HseW9Pa No mention of an RPM "class". The spec sheet does refer to it as "5400 RPM Class", but with no further description of what the term means: https://media.flixcar.com/f360cdn/Western_Digital-3805661149-eng_spec_data_sheet_2879-800002.pdf https://media.flixcar.com/f360cdn/Western_Digital-3805661149... What a world when you can't even trust the spec sheet. What's next, 10 watt class drives that pull 20 watts? 3-year class warranties?
- smnrchrds 6y ago> What a world when you can't even trust the spec sheet. What's next, 10 watt class drives that pull 20 watts? 3-year class warranties? Just like how internet speeds are advertised ("Up to 300 Mb/s").
- orbital-decay 6y agoThere's a solid technical reason for that though, as ISPs have no control over the performance of your connection's remote part. Sure, it leaves plenty of room for abuse, but this is a necessary disclaimer, not some slippery marketing.
- readams 6y agoIt also includes the fact that their network may be oversubscribed.
- throw0101a 6y ago
- qalmakka 6y agoAfter all this news of false advertisement and lower quality drives from WD, I'm glad I bought Seagate drives, even if only because Amazon had a big fat discount on Barracudas the day I was shopping for some spinning rust.
- jyrkesh 6y agoSeagate mea culpa'd afterwards, but they still tried to pull the same crap with SMR until they were caught. There's an order or two of magnitude less data and benchmarks on the Toshiba drives, but I just bought Toshiba 6x6TBs for a NAS build because I couldn't stomach buying WD or Seagate (or HGST which is just WD now). EDIT: Forgot to say, the drives have been great. It's only been 6 months or so, but they've been performant, no bad sectors yet.
- bleepblorp 6y agoSome Toshiba drives have un-disclosed SMR: https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/16/toshiba-desktop-disk-drives-undocumented-shingle-magnetic-recording/ https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/16/toshiba-desktop-disk-d...
- bleepblorp 6y agoI wouldn't touch a Barracuda with a WD SMR drive duct taped to a 50' pole. The only way to get good hard drives these days is to buy from the enterprise lines e.g. WD Gold or Seagate Exos. They're extremely expensive, but this is the only way to get the kind of quality that used to be standard a few years ago.
- kohtatsu 6y agoYou fell directly in line with what they wanted. It's reasonable to expect companies to honour their spec sheets, and to not lie in their firmware. Once they're caught doing otherwise it's important to hold them accountable, not throw our hands up and pay up anyway.
- 6y ago
- fouc 6y agoThis sort of misrepresentation should be outright illegal. Why does it feel like big corporations are just getting more blatantly evil these days?
- boomboomsubban 6y agoThis is already what they did with "KB/MB/GB/TB." Evil, but not any more blatant.
- throw0101a 6y ago> This is already what they did with "KB/MB/GB/TB." The 'confusion' as to whether the "K" prefix meant a factor of 10^3 or 2^10 goes back decades. In 1961 a book says "it is more usual to express the speed in bits or kilobits (1,000 bits) per second"; an IBM 1410 manual says ""The 40K core array requires 40,000 valid five-position addresses from 0,000 to 39,999." In 1962 an ACM paper referred to a "4K IBM 1401" which had 4000 characters of storage, but in 1964 Amdahl wrote a paper that had 1K meaning 1024. Academics went back and forth a bit it seems. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_binary_prefixes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_binary_prefixes For hard drives specifically, a 1974 example has Mbytes in the 10^6 sense. Further examples often have drives using the base-10 sense of the prefix (including the first 5 ¼ inch floppy), while memory chips using the base-2 sense of the prefix. The powers-of-1024 nomenclature of kibi/mebi/etc was introduced in 1995, with IEEE mandating SI prefixes only be used for powers-of-1000 in 1997. The IEC follows suit a couple of years later. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix
- userbinator 6y agoIn 1962 an ACM paper referred to a "4K IBM 1401" which had 4000 characters of storage, but in 1964 Amdahl wrote a paper that had 1K meaning 1024. That's easy to explain, as a 1401 is actually a decimal computer.
- throw0101a 6y ago
- Havoc 6y ago>That increase in noise and power is what got many users on the trail of Western Digital's fake 5,400rpm spindle speed in the first place I'm amazed that there are people that would pick this up. I genuinely wouldn't notice a drive being a tiny bit louder/hotter
- p1mrx 6y agoEarth does have a lot of people.
- MaulingMonkey 6y agoYou might not notice a drive being a tiny bit louder/hotter, but you might notice if you've got an entire NAS rack full of 'em. Don't shout at your JBODs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4
- ars 6y agoI've always been told that drives in the same enclosure should all spin at the same RPM. Exactly because of the issue in that video: if there are different RPMs they shake each other and cause problems. I've never actually tested if this is true, but I've always made sure to honor it. If in fact it is true, that this lie by Western digital is even worse.
- magicalhippo 6y agoIt's not just about volume, but about noise profile. Sounds of equal power can be perceived very differently due to which frequencies they contain.
- userbinator 6y agoIt seems like they want customers to compare their 7200RPM drives to competitors' 5400RPM ones, but the power consumption numbers in the datasheet show the actual differences. For many years, the WD Green series didn't even specify the RPM. I hate marketing...
- m463 6y agoI was expecting to read that 2x the heads would be marketed as spinning 2x faster, but ... it seems they are selling 7200 rpm drives as 5400. There might be more power consumption, but in this case they are selling you a faster drive. I kind of think this should be ok. I wonder if mustang guys ordered a 6-cylinder mustang and got the v8 - would they complain about gas mileage?
- austhrow743 6y agoMore power consumption on its own should be enough to make it not ok. There’s also heat, noise, and drive lifespan. Do people order 6 cylinder mustangs because that’s what they want or because they can’t afford the 8?
- markdown 6y ago> I wonder if mustang guys ordered a 6-cylinder mustang and got the v8 - would they complain about gas mileage? Why wouldn't they? They were fraudulently sold a vehicle that didn't meet the claimed specs.
- ashtonkem 6y agoIf I bought a Prius and they gave me a V8 I sure as heck would.
- windthrown 6y agoMustang owners might be an exception but I would be upset if I was hypothetically sold a V8 Toyota Camry when expecting a four-cylinder, even if I only paid the lower price. I have a very standard commute where I drive boring and defensively. I enjoy cars as much as they get me from point A to B. There would be no benefit for me spending extra money despite the "better" engine.
- swiley 6y agoThis kind of crap is why I hate shopping for computer hardware.
- acidbaseextract 6y agoIn general it's an amazing time to be a computer hardware consumer. There's real competition in pretty much every primary component hardware vertical. The spinning rust data storage market has been uniquely crappy of late. The sketchy stuff shows up in cheap components with slim margins (budget AIO watercoolers, budget hard drives, budget PSUs budget/no-name ebay video cards).
- swiley 6y agoEh. Or any kind of complex module/system like a laptop. I will agree that desktop hardware tends to be decent to shop for if you’re not trying to be a complete cheapskate. I built a desktop just like most other people during the lockdown and it wasn’t as bad as buying laptops trained me to expect.
- ric2b 6y agoThere isn't a lot of competition on GPU's, which happen to be one of the most expensive components. That market is basically just Nvidia (80%+ market share and still dominating in performance/features).
- swiley 6y ago> That market is basically just Nvidia I'm typing this on a machine with a fairly powerfull AMD GPU. The market for Nvidia is basically just Nvidia, everyone keeps using their special APIs. Their cards are not significantly more powerful than what AMD offers and their drivers suck because they're constantly using them for anti-competitive crap.
- ric2b 6y ago> The market for Nvidia is basically just Nvidia It's over 80% of GPU the market. > Their cards are not significantly more powerful than what AMD offers AMD can't compete with Nvidia's high end. Especially with the new 30XX series, which crush the performance of Nvidia's 20XX series. > and their drivers suck because they're constantly using them for anti-competitive crap. Their drivers have a lot of features that AMD doesn't, like G-Sync, DLSS, RTX and others.
- dorkwood 6y ago"By doing so, we are able to leverage our economies of scale and pass along those savings to our customers." So it sounds like the reason behind it is that they can save money by eliminating the 5400rpm production line.
- 393339 6y agoExactly, but then they rightly realized they would also lose all those customers looking for 5400rpm disks. And, no no no, they didn't want THAT. Easy fix though, smack a new 5400rpm label on those disks and fix the firmware to report 5400rpm, now they could get rid of the production line and retain the customers that weren't looking for 7200rpm disks. Absolute garbage.
- causality0 6y agoDid Western Digital have some kind of management shakeup in the last few years? Back in the day my general impression was that they were a quality brand that engaged in less bullshit than the likes of Seagate and Hitachi. It seems the tables have turned.
- wtallis 6y agoThey bought SanDisk in 2016, and that part of the business is now probably seen as having more strategic importance (their "President, Technology and Strategy" is a SanDisk guy). They got a new CEO this year, but the previous CEO had been HGST's CEO until WDC bought HGST and put him in charge. (He was also previously HGST's CFO, and before that, WDC's CFO.) But I don't think a management change is particularly important here. Their competitors were caught doing the same BS with SMR drives. I think we're just seeing what happens when a lucrative duopoly gets sidelined by replacement technology. The consumer hard drive market has become a market for lemons, and only the datacenter customers get treated seriously anymore.
- aj7 6y agoReminds me of the special Thursday night edition of Monday night football, and three-part “imaginary” Superman novellas of my youth.
- jasonhansel 6y agoThis reminds me of how, to make a whole lineup of Intel chips, they just make the highest-price model, and then disable features to create the lower-price ones. Or how shorter-range Teslas have the same battery capacity as longer-range ones--they just disable using the extra capacity in software. In this case, the "5400 RPM" drive runs at 7200 RPM, but WD presumably makes it (either via software or hardware) perform worse in other ways to compensate, so that its performance is really only competitive with actual 5400 RPM drives. That way, they can justify the lower price point without actually needing two separate manufacturing processes for each kind of drive (like how Intel saves on having to redesign each chip in a lineup).
- augustt 6y agoThey'll start with the same silicon design but manufacturing variability requires them to bin the chips based on functionality & performance, which is how you get all these different models.
- ATsch 6y agoThat is true, especially if you're in a position like AMD is where they can sell every single good chip they get into a high margin server part (which is why ryzen can be scarce). But that's pretty rare overall. As a process node matures, the amount of perfect dies will go up dramatically, but there will certainly be no price drop to compensate.
- crest 6y agoNobody would complain if Intel sold of 8core dies with 6 working cores as 6core CPUs. Disabling the ECC or AES-NI support just to create artificial market segmentation is an asshole move.
- segfaultbuserr 6y agoIt's also true in many IBM mainframe computers for decades. Usually a lot of hardware is installed but disabled by software, an upgrade by a field technician is just the process of entering a license key. Same for many electronic test instruments, sometimes it's possible to "upgrade" the cheapest 100 MHz oscilloscope in a product line to the most expensive 500 MHz model [0] by an undocumented backdoor, EEPROM hacking, or a keygen. Extra features can also be unlocked. Interestingly, since the manufacturers' revenues come from selling to enterprise users under service contracts, they usually don't care about a hardware hackers or two on the web at all. [0] Of course it's a possibility that the analog front-end and ADC is still binned for performance or populated with different components, so you need a bit luck here if you want matched performance.
- Fej 6y agoAdjacent to WD's recent scumminess, I recently purchased an Ultrastar drive (no longer HGST-branded) and it came with a slip in the box informing me that by purchasing this product (from B&H) I had somehow agreed to binding arbitration. Companies have been abusing the ability to force consumers into binding arbitration but this is another level. I'm not a lawyer but it doesn't seem to be clear if this would hold up in court; it is however pretty clearly a scare tactic, which is almost worse.
- bleepblorp 6y agoThe USSC has ruled that binding arbitration clauses in shrink-wrap consumer contracts are legal and enforceable. For the usual reasons, congress has refused to change the law to vacate the ruling.
- Fej 6y agoIt's not quite so clear, the Wikipedia article on the subject has a bird's eye view of the relevant case law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrink_wrap_contract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrink_wrap_contract For this drive, there is no explicit acceptance of the terms given and the terms are unavailable before not just purchase, but before opening of the box. Thank you for the comment, I've edited mine to reflect the ambiguity.
- AnonHP 6y agoI’ve not touched WD drives in a long, long time, and the recent SMR fiasco made the brand seem even more untrustworthy than what was in my imagination. In this case, it sounds (from the official response) as if WD is trying to “dumb down” the specs so that generally less informed buyers can compare them easily and make the right choices?! But this effort will fail because it hides information in scenarios where it certainly must cater to different needs — not everyone wants all the speed at a specific price just as not everyone wants the lowest power consumption at a specific price. The discerning users who want to get the specs and then decide what trade offs are worth it for their use case must be able to get it, even if it’s on page 6 of the “technical specifications” document.
- p1necone 6y ago"In this case, it sounds (from the official response) as if WD is trying to “dumb down” the specs so that generally less informed buyers can compare them easily and make the right choices" Which is total bullshit, because what "less informed buyers" even read spec sheets? The spec sheet is for people that want detailed technical information. Info for the average consumer should be on the retail box and store descriptions.
- remote_phone 6y agoDon’t drive with higher RPMs have higher transfer rates? I find it hard to believe that people are complaining about better performance.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- p1necone 6y agoHigher transfer rates, but also higher noise and power consumption (and presumably higher failure rates, but I'm less certain about that) - if you don't need the higher speed, 5400rpm drives are actually better.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]