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The German-language forum that the article mentions has been doing some great detective work: https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/threads/crystaldiskinfo-zeig

• 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 ago
    There'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 ago
      It also includes the fact that their network may be oversubscribed.
      • throw0101a 6y ago
        There's no "may" about it: they are oversubscribed for consumers so as to get the price points down. If anyone wants to have an unfettered pipe then call up a Tier 1/2/3 ISP and ask for a commercial connection via a single-mode fibre, and be ready to pay quite a bit for it.
        • ComputerGuru 6y ago
          > If anyone wants to have an unfettered pipe then call up a Tier 1/2/3 ISP and ask for a commercial connection via a single-mode fibre, and be ready to pay quite a bit for it. You might be surprised to find it surprisingly affordable. Cheaper than colocation, even.
          • erinnh 6y ago
            Only if you want a complete rack or more at a colo facility. If you get half a rack or less, that tends to be (quite a bit) cheaper.
            • ComputerGuru 6y ago
              I have both, and I think the break even point is probably paying for around 7 or 8U.
          • throw0101a 6y ago
            > You might be surprised to find it surprisingly affordable. Assuming you can easily get hooked up at a residential address. Perhaps if you live in an apartment/condo tower, then fibre may have already been run: * https://www.fibrestream.ca/locations https://www.fibrestream.ca/locations Some random house, on some random street? Unlikely.
            • ComputerGuru 6y ago
              If you get in touch with the right department, you would typically have to sign a multi year contract with the net value due upfront in case of termination to get them to run the fiber to you. Or else cover the cost of the run as an installation fee.
    • akhosravian 6y ago
      Does anyone in the US actually get the “up to” even plugging directly into the ISP provided modem at off peak times?
      • kop316 6y ago
        Yes, I do. I have lived in several different areas where I had no problems getting the full advertised speed at any given time (on peak, off peak, etc.). I think the biggest reason they say "up to" is because a lot of poeple get a cheap $40 router that can't support that the advertised speed. Heck, I just moved into a new place that gives symmetric gigabit speeds. I had to replace my router to actually get one that can handle the advertised speeds (I had an APU1d4 with realtek ethernet ports that saturated at 300 Mb/s). My older laptop does not even have wired nor wireless speeds that can handle the connection. So while I am no fan of a lot of ISPs, I completely understand why they say "up to", they don't want to deal with folks who say they don't get their advertised speeds while using a $200 laptop and a $40 router.
      • wmf 6y ago
        Many ISPs provide that level (or more) of performance, even during peak hours. https://transition.fcc.gov/oet/mba/images/2018/chart1.png https://transition.fcc.gov/oet/mba/images/2018/chart1.png https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/measuring-broadband-america/measuring-fixed-broadband-eighth-report https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/measuring-broad...
      • xoa 6y ago
        Yes, absolutely. On all 5 different sites I manage in fact, two on a local ISP ADSL, third on local ISP fiber, fourth on Comcast Business cable modem, and even the fifth on a small regional WISP. All of them are reliably within a few percent of their expected speed with about the frequency that one would reasonably expect from that connection class. "Up-to" is fuzzy but quite justified with many technologies. Proper fiber of course is rock solid and essentially never has issues short of a backhoe. But ADSL falls off hard with distance, and a lot of the in-house wiring it's forced through is ancient garbage phone line. Sometimes one can get a huge practical boost just from shortening/replacing line with cat 5. And WISPs obviously have to deal with inclement weather fade as well as any additional obstacles for subpar sites that customers can't/won't rectify. Cable is more of a shared resource though you get much better support and less bullshit with business class even though Comcast are bastards. Now, I absolutely would love to see it mandated by law that somewhere upfront in ISP info to consumers it's required to have a standardized SLA. A consumer-level SLA for sure, but still have it formalized and cover all of the basics. So not just absolute max bandwidth, but 90%/50%/whatever bandwidth, any guaranteed floor, 90% latency, any data caps, any throttling criteria, etc. All categories the same and measured in a mandated standardized way so universally comparable. I don't expect data center level SLAs at all, but there isn't any reason there can't be that level of clarity. But residential/SOHO and such service inherently has more uncertainty and more compromises and capacity multipliers to meet lower prices. I think that's ok, just that it should be laid out and not buried in some fine print or support page in the disused lavatory defended by a leopard either.
    • gorgoiler 6y ago
      The ISP is also in the best position to publish the p50, p90 and p99 speeds their customers reach. But why bother, when they can feign ignorance and just talk about what the boffins in the Science Lab say it should be. Perhaps, with tongue in cheek, we could call this the p0 speed — as in it doesn’t make sense and it’s guaranteed that 0% of customers achieve it.
      • dirkt 6y ago
        Percentiles are not helpful, because at least in my home country what degrades the maximum potential speed is the influence that parallel copper cables have on each other. So my internet speed depends on how much my neighbours are using the internet. It's really really difficult to predict this statistically. OTOH, there's a guaranteed minimum speed the ISP has to deliver.
        • gorgoiler 6y ago
          This is really interesting, thank you. Do you have a link to some good info on the phenomenon?
    • aidenn0 6y ago
      They have total control over your connection's speed, particularly when they mandate you use their equipment.
      • ac29 6y ago
        Only as far as the first bottleneck though - if 1000 customers in a neighborhood pay for 1Gbps connections, that doesnt mean the neighborhood actually has 1Tbps of capacity to the wider internet. Its probably a tenth of that at best, even in well connected areas.
  • sellyme 6y ago
    That's illegal where I live, the primary connection speed figure used in advertisements must be the average speed users in the real world experience. Turns out that consumer protection laws are pretty useful.
  • PeterStuer 6y ago
    The worst case ever: Long ago an ISP sold me on VDSL for the office as "up to 55/3 Mbit/s". After install I notice they had deployed ADSL equipment with a theoretical maximum throughput of 12/1.3 Mbit/s. They claimed that this was ok and tried to hide behind the "up to" clause.
• fomine3 6y ago
  DAT Tape nTB (uncompressed data)
• jdndkai 6y ago
  60 watt equivalent light bulb
  • strombofulous 6y ago
    I thought that based on the amount of lumens it produces
    • pmiller2 6y ago
      It is, and that's the point: you can screw a 60W equivalent LED into any socket where you previously had a 60W incandescent and have about the same amount of light for a much lower energy cost.
      • srtjstjsj 6y ago
        Not everywhere -- LEDs aren't always dimmer switch compatible, and mismatched bulbs on a shared circuit will have weird interactions.
      • ars 6y ago
        You'd think so. But I've seen LEDs that are kind of like spotlights and they market them as the wattage based on the brightness under the spotlight not the total lumens it produces. Only in the fine print do they disclose how many actual lumens.
      • ryandrake 6y ago
        So why not use the actual measurement that the customer is interested in: The light quantity? Power consumption (W) seems to be the wrong measurement since you're comparing apples to oranges.
        • curryst 6y ago
          Are they just basing it on lumens? There might be more interplay, i.e. if you can get by with fewer lumens if you emit in a different wavelength.
  • 6y ago
• deleted 6y ago
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• floatingatoll 6y ago
  Does the spec sheet have inaccurate decibel and watts information provided, such that the drive being purchased has inappropriate noise (decibels) and thermal (watts used) properties when compared to the specifications printed for those specific properties? Or has everyone been taking for granted that '5400 rpm' is a shortcut for 'cool and quiet' and is just now realizing that they should have been reading the actual 'cool' and 'quiet' specifications instead of using search keyword '5400' to stand in for that diligence? I think Western Digital just made a year's worth of profits off of people who don't read spec sheets, and they have a plausible interpretation that would unfortunately will probably survive a court challenge. Western Digital has clearly taken the position that '5400 RPM' has always been a statement of disk I/O performance, never a statement about other characteristics, and so by saying '5400 RPM Class' they only mean the drive's I/O performance, not any of those other secondary characteristics that led to the uproar we're discussing. Western Digital is in the wrong here — not for repricing 'cool and quiet' drives, but for communication — and should have just openly said: "We're ending production of quiet-cool 5400 RPM drives in our consumer product lines. If cost is of most concern to your installation, our consumer products will continue to meet your needs. If heat and noise are of most concern to your installation, our professional products with WhisperDrive(tm) will continue to meet your needs." EDIT: I also think WD should be publishing thermal characteristics, not just "watts used".
  • aidenn0 6y ago
    decibels isn't the main advantage of 5400 over 7200. The lower frequency makes it both less loud to the human ear and subjectively less "annoying"
    • acqq 6y ago
      > The lower frequency makes it both less loud to the human ear and subjectively less "annoying" Exactly. The difference can be huge, even if the number of "dB" measured are the same, to the point that one would not recognize the noise of one running HD, whereas another could be extremely irritating. There is an exact reason why: the curve of perception limits of our ears is not a horizontal line but a curve, where the higher power of the tone is needed when moving to the lower frequencies. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour Knowing that: 5400RPM == 90Hz; 7200RPM == 120Hz The proper reporting of the noise levels would therefore be a noise histogram, or at least should include the frequency of the peak level and not be just a single number if one'd want to compare how irritating the noise is. And even a single histogram can miss the time component, as the noise with the main peak level at some frequency can also come in the waves, making it even more irritating, basically, the histogram of the histogram could also be needed to tell you what's going on. Moreover, the said "equal-loudness contour" is not exactly the same for different listeners, and as a result different listeners could hear the same noise sources differently. E.g. my girlfriend and I hear the same noise sources (emitting different levels of noise over different frequencies) completely different. In short, not having precise histograms and analysis simple "is it 5400 RPM" was a really useful information to know the expected noise characteristic of a HD. It's not an accident that these two became two different speeds with the expected use in different environments. I've intentionally bought 5400RPM disks whenever it wasn't for some servers locked in the server rooms. Edit (answering "floatingatoll"'s comment below): All the above should be an argument that: "“are they essentially silent from a few feet away”, which is often simple to answer given a drive to test" is not something that has the same answer for everybody. If I'm hearing the lower frequencies better than you, what is "essentially silent" for you can be very annoying for me, and that's why I'd need 5400RPM where you could tolerate 7200RPM. It's also an argument that the proper measurement could indeed be made to know what will be irritating for which person, but it's not common to be present even in the reviews, even less in the specs of the manufacturer. Which is again not surprising, as the frequency histograms sadly aren't common even in the reviews of the music equipment. Common consumers indeed prefer some simple "yes/no" verdicts ("is it quiet" enough), like the one "floatingatoll" below proposes. But such statements just aren't the answer usable for everyone -- that's anyway why the number for noise level is reported. But it's not enough. I know it firsthand, as I personally do hear better low level sounds than many people around me. What's "quiet" for them is "irritating noise" for me.