5 ms·

Non-technical users don't care about this distinction. The name Western Digital is on both, and that name's brand value is destroyed forever if this indeed turn

Non-technical users don't care about this distinction. The name Western Digital is on both, and that name's brand value is destroyed forever if this indeed turns out to be irreversible. Though they could probably pivot to selling their drives in other's NAS devices without much difficulty if they want to remain in this market.

riffraff 5y ago
Non-technical users don't really buy hard drives individually, they would at most ask their computer-savvy friend or go to a shop who will replace it for them. I highly doubt the average non-technical user even knows who produced the hard drive they own.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  These are external drives, and I'd guess the vast majority of external drives are purchased by non-technical users.
- alpaca128 5y ago
  > Non-technical users don't really buy hard drives individually Yes, they do. My dad bought two WD My Book drives by himself as backup drives. He luckily was not aware that those things have an extra software for backups, nor how to install it, but those things are just sold like that targeted to the average user in your average computer store.
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  Internal drives, you're right, likely wouldn't be bought by a non-techie alone. But THIS affected type of drive is specifically marketed to a very non-technical user, and I can certainly confirm my non-technical friends and family have bought products in this segment independently, whereas my techie friends steer clear. It's a NAS that's made to look like a drive. My techie friends would never buy it - they'd get Synology/QNAP, or do their own over-complicated time-consuming solution (slight editorial opinion there ;), or use cloud backup, or some combo. But my dad, mother in law, and other relatives have products like this, and have purchased them on their own. In fact, I think when asked, most techies would in fact go against the notion of buying cheap but internet-exposed storage device for a non-technical friend :O
  - belval 5y ago
    Your slight editorial opinion reminded me of this HN hot-take from the DropBox announcement: > For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
they said the same thing about tylenol in 1982.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Somebody actually poisoned Tylenol. People realize that all the food they eat could have been poisoned in the grocery store. There's no easy mapping to "every external hard drive manufacturer could stop updating their products and your data could spontaneously delete itself."
  - Y_Y 5y ago
    There have been incidents of (other manufacturers') hard drives shipping with pre-installed malware though [e.g. 0]. I think that's a good analogue for Tylenol. [0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/malware-found-on-new-hard-drives/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/malware-found-on-new-hard-driv...
  - adolph 5y ago
    True, a small computer running an Internet connected general purpose operating system should have a prominently labeled expiration date of some short time after the last patch. Use after that date is not recommended and potentially dangerous. WD sold something that looked like a toaster to the consumer but was actually a lump of cheese.
kzrdude 5y ago
This is how non-technical users learn. How about.. don't have an internet connected drive? That's what I'll tell my family.

riffraff 5y ago

Non-technical users don't really buy hard drives individually, they would at most ask their computer-savvy friend or go to a shop who will replace it for them. I highly doubt the average non-technical user even knows who produced the hard drive they own.

pessimizer 5y ago
These are external drives, and I'd guess the vast majority of external drives are purchased by non-technical users.
alpaca128 5y ago
> Non-technical users don't really buy hard drives individually Yes, they do. My dad bought two WD My Book drives by himself as backup drives. He luckily was not aware that those things have an extra software for backups, nor how to install it, but those things are just sold like that targeted to the average user in your average computer store.
NikolaNovak 5y ago
Internal drives, you're right, likely wouldn't be bought by a non-techie alone. But THIS affected type of drive is specifically marketed to a very non-technical user, and I can certainly confirm my non-technical friends and family have bought products in this segment independently, whereas my techie friends steer clear. It's a NAS that's made to look like a drive. My techie friends would never buy it - they'd get Synology/QNAP, or do their own over-complicated time-consuming solution (slight editorial opinion there ;), or use cloud backup, or some combo. But my dad, mother in law, and other relatives have products like this, and have purchased them on their own. In fact, I think when asked, most techies would in fact go against the notion of buying cheap but internet-exposed storage device for a non-technical friend :O
- belval 5y ago
  Your slight editorial opinion reminded me of this HN hot-take from the DropBox announcement: > For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

SOMA_BOFH 5y ago

they said the same thing about tylenol in 1982.

pessimizer 5y ago
Somebody actually poisoned Tylenol. People realize that all the food they eat could have been poisoned in the grocery store. There's no easy mapping to "every external hard drive manufacturer could stop updating their products and your data could spontaneously delete itself."
- Y_Y 5y ago
  There have been incidents of (other manufacturers') hard drives shipping with pre-installed malware though [e.g. 0]. I think that's a good analogue for Tylenol. [0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/malware-found-on-new-hard-drives/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/malware-found-on-new-hard-driv...
- adolph 5y ago
  True, a small computer running an Internet connected general purpose operating system should have a prominently labeled expiration date of some short time after the last patch. Use after that date is not recommended and potentially dangerous. WD sold something that looked like a toaster to the consumer but was actually a lump of cheese.

kzrdude 5y ago

This is how non-technical users learn. How about.. don't have an internet connected drive? That's what I'll tell my family.