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Western Digital confirms speed crippling SN550 SSD flash change

212 points by sharjeelsayed 5y ago

smoldesu 5y ago
The owners of these drives should get in contact with WD and demand they replace it with a top-of-the-line drive if they want you to keep quiet. This whole drive speed brouhahahas been sketchy from the start, but their sheepish admission of guilt here is just enterprise-grade lip service.
koala_man 5y ago
> The company says that, in the future, it will also introduce a new model number when making any hardware changes to its products that impact performance. So they'll keep selling products called "Western Digital SN550" running at half the speed, but you'll now be able to tell them apart by seeing the model number update from "WDBA3V0010BNC-WRSN" to e.g. "WDBA3V0011BNC-WRSN"? This is very scummy.
- Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
  TBF, it is common tactics for manufacturers to do this. They even have specific SKU for each retail store (Amazon, Target, Walmart, etc), including Black Friday SKUs (they are inferior/lower quality product intended for Black Friday/Cyber Monday day). Not surprisingly that WD are going down to this route. "Shareholders is a priority over customers" is a common business mantra.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Customers so often fall for it though. I've been taken in by Black Friday deals many times. It hurts you with rigorous buyers, but most are not that.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > Black Friday SKUs (they are inferior/lower quality product intended for Black Friday/Cyber Monday day) How inferior?
    - QuotedForTruth 5y ago
      Usually its not easy to tell. There are often less ports and other obvious features, but who knows whats inside. I dont think anyone has ever done a component level breakdown like they do for storage. >These derivative models are toned down versions of standard ones, perhaps offering a reduced number of HDMI ports or lower quality components. However, it's hard to say -- it can even be hard to tell which specific TVs are derivatives, requiring a careful scan of a model number which could total eight or nine digits. https://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/11/21/why-you-shouldnt-buy-a-tv-on-black-friday/?sh=3f0648bd1a2c https://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/11/21/why...
      - cwizou 5y ago
        While this happens on TVs (and other consumer goods, mattresses is another example of different SKUs for different retailers), this is not common at all for performance sensitive components in PC hardware industry. Making different SKUs (with same generic marketing name) can happen (which WD did NOT do here) for good reasons, but most of the time you get better performance out of it. What WD did is really shameful and very much not the norm in this industry.
    - Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
      Less inputs (like only 1 HDMI port), lower resolutions, low spec cpu (lagfest smart TV), etc. So inferior version of the same superior products. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/black-friday-insider-secrets-2017-11#some-items-are-made-specifically-for-black-friday-and-are-lower-quality-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/black-friday-insider-secrets... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/11/21/why-you-shouldnt-buy-a-tv-on-black-friday/?sh=33442ad91a2c https://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/11/21/why...
  - everdrive 5y ago
    >including Black Friday SKUs (they are inferior/lower quality product intended for Black Friday/Cyber Monday day). This is news to me. Can you elaborate?
  - handrous 5y ago
    See also: "outlet mall" clothing.
  - cptskippy 5y ago
    The different SKUs is a way to get around price matching because they're "not the same". Black Friday SKUs are a similar tactic where the retailer can offer a raincheck knowing that SKU will never resurface. What WD is doing hits differently and would be like LG using LED panels in the OLED*A line of TVs or if the Ford F-Series PowerStroke suddenly came with an EcoBoost engine. It betrays the trust people have in the line/model that WD has created.
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      > The different SKUs is a way to get around price matching because they're "not the same". So then the customer can just order from his phone right in front of the cashier the item he doesn't want to price-match? I don't get how that's helping anyone.
      - cptskippy 5y ago
        Stock issues and often prices in store and online don't match, frequently they're independent systems. Home Depot uses the same system and still maintains different prices.
  - Stratoscope 5y ago
    The mattress business is notorious for this. Every mattress store offers price matching against any other mattress store... but only for the exact same item, by name! Let's take one manufacturer, I'll call them Sorta. One store will sell the Sorta Beautysleep, another sells the Sorta Quietrest, and a third has the Sorta Hamptonshire. All three are identical design, materials, construction, and appearance. The only difference is the label Sorta attaches before shipping to each store's distribution center. So when you ask for a price match on that first store's Sorta Beautysleep, no price match for you! It's an exclusive product available at our store only.
    - awill 5y ago
      I've never really understood the value of price-matching. Unless you have a gift card, or one store offers free shipping, why both with a price match? Just buy from the cheaper place.
      - Osiris 5y ago
        Some places used to offer price match plus an additional 10% off so it was beneficial to search for a cheaper price. I once did this at Lowe's by finding the item at home Depot for just a few cents cheaper and after buying 100 bundles saved a bunch of money. They recently stopped doing the extra 10% off.
      - yencabulator 5y ago
        It's useful if you have a local store you like, with good customer service, that does price matching. It means you get the cheaper price but the better experience.
      - FractalParadigm 5y ago
        If one place is walking distance and will price-match, it doesn't make sense to even start the car let alone drive elsewhere. In a different vein, when I was younger my mom price-matched a TV at Best Buy against a lower price at the Future Shop across the street, it was about $50 on a $1100 unit. We went to Best Buy first, found the TV we liked, then went across the road to see if there were any better/cheaper options. We ended up going back to Best Buy because the sales people actually seemed to give a damn about their job and the customer, and the fact they were not paid commission (unlike Future Shop), all combined with the price matching made it the more appealing decision. IIRC the BB extended warranty was a better deal.
- cptskippy 5y ago
  > This is very scummy. That's been my overall opinion of WD in recent years. I have been a supporter of WD since the 90s when I bought my first 2.5GB Caviar drive. My NAS and Server are filled with WD Reds and my gaming PC is using an WD Black NVME. I recently pulled WD Green and Blues from some systems and for the first time in 25 years used something other than WD to replace them. WD's branding use to make it really simple to understand what you were buying. You knew what Green, Blue, Red, Purple, and Black drives were capable of and you bought accordingly. Now it seems they're leveraging that trust and comfort to fuck people over and for what? How does disappointing your customer help your brand? I can no longer trust them and I'm not going to invest the effort to ensure that I'm buying the right Red or Blue drive from them. It's sad but I'm just going to take my money elsewhere.
  - ev1 5y ago
    I stopped trusting them when they started silently hiding SMR in existing CMR SKUs and it only took massive backlash and public calling out for them to start selling "red" and "red plus" HDs. Blatantly lied about it while people have raid arrays failing and unable to rebuild, etc. edit: pro -> plus
    - sigstoat 5y ago
      the red pro line significantly predates the SMR/CMR debacle. edit: or the plus did? well. they've successfully managed to confuse me, which was probably their goal. apologies.
      - cptskippy 5y ago
        A line Plus or Pro, was introduced as part of the fallout of the SMR debacle.
      - ev1 5y ago
        My bad, I was confused too Red pro: CMR, "remains the same" Red plus: the new CMR SKUs that were previously sold under the same models as CMR and mixed SMR SKUs Red: used to be CMR now SMR as far as I can tell
- a9h74j 5y ago
  Think how this would play with, say, a BOM going into a medical device. Not only on regulatory grounds, but in terms of specific performance.
  - yencabulator 5y ago
    Companies such as IBM historically specialized in guaranteeing the exact BOM for long-term usage. You pay a premium for that, because they design and stock for it.
- userbinator 5y ago
  That's the problem with "marketing names": they're dumbed-down "abstractions" created by and for "non-technical" people who don't think precision matters and so will try to get away with whatever they think they can with stretching the truth. From that perspective, instances like this that will cause people to place less trust in the marketing names and look into the actual model numbers is a good thing.
donmcronald 5y ago
> For greater transparency going forward, if we make a change to an existing internal SSD, we commit to introducing a new model number whenever any related published specifications are impacted. I’ll believe that when it happens. IMO it’s fraud and after the SMR debacle everyone at Western Digital should know it’s not ok, but they still tried to sneak it by everyone.
- bopbeepboop 5y ago
  It’s absolutely fraud, at scale and across state lines. They started selling product A, under a particular version number. They then substituted inferior product B as the same version number, deceiving customers who were attempting to buy product A. They did this with what seems like explicit intent to trick customers attempting to buy product A into accepting the inferior product B. I think it speaks to the overt criminality of modern businesses that they did this. I hope we start seeing RICO and organized crime prosecutions against executives for this behavior.
  - sschueller 5y ago
    They also surely didn't ship the slow units to the reviewers...
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    +1 I was wondering about the legality, since this seems to me to be bald-faced fraud and part of a consistent pattern at WD and other manufacturers. I guess the sticking point is proving that they deliberately used faster components in earlier units to get good reviews? I'm sure they've been very careful to keep their conversations on this matter off the record. If only we had a government more interested in protecting its people from corporate malfeasance.
  - kragen 5y ago
    This kind of line-extension fraud is pretty common. Pyrex used to be a brand name for borosilicate glass, the kind you can safely heat to red heat on a Bunsen burner, and became popular for home baking dishes as well. At some point Corning started selling tempered soda-lime glass in the US as "Pyrex" as well, which can explode if subjected to thermal shock, a decision that causes several cooks per year to end up covered in turkey grease and glass shards. Saran was Dow's trademark for polyvinylidene chloride, a superior chemical protective layer, which became popular as a plastic wrap as a way to preserve food against evaporation and rancidification through oxygen ingress; now Dow sells Saran Wrap that contains no Saran, instead consisting of polyethylene, which permits literally a thousand times as much oxygen through. Similarly there are lines of Sudafed that contain no pseudoephedrine, Kaopectate that no longer contains kaolin or pectin (only in the US), and so on. In electronics, substituting inferior components after the initial launch of a product has become routine, and it isn't even always intentional fraud; the manufacturer may honestly believe the new, cheaper parts are equivalent to the original parts. I think you will see organized crime prosecutions against executives for this behavior, but only in PRC.
theogravity 5y ago
Not surprised they'd hide it considering the WD Red CMR debacle where they didn't notify customers that they changed from CMR to SMR. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22875094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22875094
- deckard1 5y ago
  last I checked they still make you hunt for the CMR/SMR info on their webpage by having to match model numbers. Talk about scummy. Not to mention they did this with their NAS lineup, which is like hitting a hornet nest with a stick. The other thing HDD manufacturers apparently lie about is RPM. WD claims their WD Red are 5400 RPM when they are actually 7200[1]. Which just seems like a ridiculous thing to obfuscate if you ask me. Most consumers still think 7200 RPM is faster/better, and those shopping for 5400 for quiet are just going to get annoyed. [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/western-digital-confuses-everyone-with-5400-rpm-class-hard-drives https://www.pcmag.com/news/western-digital-confuses-everyone...
  - willis936 5y ago
    5400 RPM is also significantly lower power/heat and more reliable.
    - bhj 5y ago
      Sadly some WD drives specced as 5400RPM are actually 7200RPM. Luckily, acoustics don't lie: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ikk0rv/psa_multiple_wd_5400rpm_drives_are_actually/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ikk0rv/psa_mul...
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      Unfortunately... it turns out WD is lying to you about 5400 RPM as well. A lot of those 5400 RPM drives are just lower-performance 7200 RPM drives. So you end up eating the power-costs and noise for no actual benefit. This company has consistently screwed its customers over for short-term gain over and over again.
  - 5y ago
mzs 5y ago
Samsung now too, wonder if this is chip shortage related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28329386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28329386
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  I suspect that we're starting to see a lot of products being quietly changed in subtle ways now that we're moving into ~6 months of part shortages (for reference, 6 months is about normal for lag from part purchasing to consumer availability, with substantial variation by sector). The good way to do this is be open when user-visible specs have to change, or even to release a new model. What WD is doing is the bad way.
  - shadilay 5y ago
    This doesn't have anything to do with the shortages. SSD OEM's have been doing it for years. The real reason is the NAND manufactures add more layers or change nodes.
- noizejoy 5y ago
  The Samsung case seems to be quite different, though. i.e. the replacement components don’t seem to generally make things worse.
bsharitt 5y ago
Between this and the SMR NAS drive debacle, I think I'm done with Western Digital for the foreseeable future.
ep103 5y ago
So HN, who should I be buying external HDDs from anymore? Because this is the last straw for me with WD
- thg 5y ago
  Toshiba.
  - babypuncher 5y ago
    It's a sample size of one, but the worst recent HDD I bought was a Toshiba. I got it in, and within a week I was getting SMART warnings about a high number of reallocated sectors (accompanied by strange performance characteristics. I RMA'd the drive and the replacement had the exact same issue.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Technically that's a sample size of two.
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        Could be a sample size of one though. One of the most important things for hard drives is to keep them protected. If your shipping company screws up (see Amazon) and drops the box hard on your front porch, you may end up with a broken drive. AKA: The issue could very well not be the hard drive manufacturer, but instead the company that delivered your hard drives to you. I prefer to pick up hard drives physically from Microcenter for this reason, it means that I can properly "baby" those fragile drives all the way home.
      - babypuncher 5y ago
        Sample size of one customer with a bad experience, or a sample size of two bad drives.
  - _ph_ 5y ago
    Seconded. I have many Toshiba drives, always very happy with them.
bobcall 5y ago
People need to learn to be grateful that they can buy anything right now. Sure, in normal times it would be an issue but things are different now. The swapping of these controllers is the difference between shipping and not shipping a product. Would you rather wait 6 mo or 1 year for an SSD? That is where we are at now and things won't be getting any better in the next year. Sure, maybe they should have added a sticker or SKU change, but that would result in further delays and shortages.
crazyjncsu 5y ago
Nothing new folks. 23 years ago I bought a RIVA TNT video card (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIVA_TNT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIVA_TNT) where early models (and, conveniently, the ones sent to reviewers) were clocked at 110Mhz. They silently clocked them down to 90Mhz after a month or so before I got mine. “The TNT shipped later than originally planned, ran quite hot, and was clocked lower than Nvidia had planned at 90 MHz instead of 110 MHz. Originally planned specifications should have placed the card ahead of Voodoo2 in theoretical performance for Direct3D applications, but at 90 MHz it did not quite match the Voodoo2” I’ve been a bitter man ever since…
- deadmutex 5y ago
  I am guessing behind the scenes they probably had a target of 110Mhz. They probably hoped to hit that by launch, and sent out review units a bit early. However, whatever fix they were trying probably didn't pan out or they found another failure case in edge case testing (e.g. running it long term in places with high ambient temps), and had to throttle them down for everyone. So, the critical mistake was probably sending out units too early. Can totally understand how infuriating it must be because you buy based on the benchmarks, and don't get what you think you're buying.
  - spyder 5y ago
    "So, the critical mistake was probably sending out units too early." No, the critical mistake is not telling the costumers about the change.
    - deadmutex 5y ago
      Perhaps, but I think it might've been a logistically challenging to do that vs being consistent with what is being reviewed and sold.
      - NullPrefix 5y ago
        Increment the name. Is it really that hard? Product being sold is not the same as the product being reviewed.
ljhsiung 5y ago
I literally just bought an SN550 last week. Any suggestions for recourse? Unlikely to be able to return it, since "technically" it's used.
- travoc 5y ago
  The retailer should accept return of a defective product. Then file a warranty claim with the manufacturer. If that doesn’t work, your credit card company might have an extended warranty claim procedure that you should start. Finally, start leaving bad reviews of the retailer and manufacturer online. If that doesn’t get their attention, at least you might cause them to lose a few hundred thousand dollars in sales.
- DiabloD3 5y ago
  Talk to your credit card company if the retail outlet won't help you. Try to push the narrative that this is a counterfeit and is not the product as advertised.
intricatedetail 5y ago
If a small manufacturer did this, they'd get bankrupted and maybe in jail. I guess we still have a two tier system.
shadilay 5y ago
This is such an obvious bait and switch. If we had a functioning FTC WD would be forced to refund all purchasers 2x.
BuckRogers 5y ago
I saw this come across on ExtremeTech a few days ago. I believe they broke the story. It was Western Digital AND Crucial that were caught doing it. That means you should buy Intel or Samsung products, neither of whom have been caught doing this. I was going to get a WD SN850, thinking how nice it was that an American company beat out Samsung finally on performance. The first time since Intel reigned some years ago. But not now. I'm going with a Samsung 990 Pro when those drop later this year. Intel abandoned the high performance consumer space, but my Intel X25-M 160GB that I bought in January 2010 is still in-use to this day, and it was punished in my personal machine for 7 years straight. I would have no qualms buying anything they put out for laptops or any system that isn't my i9-11900K. It's a real shame. American companies just don't can't think past the next quarter. I recently read that Ford has been putting plastic oil pans on trucks, and I know a guy that has a brand new one- it cracked. I've been doing my research and was determined to buy domestic but found enough stuff like that, that I'm going with Toyota from here on out, and I've never owned one before. Crucial/Micron was one of the better quality manufacturers, it's a shame to see them lumped in with this scandal. Looking forward to an Intel Arc GPU next year paired with my Samsung 990 Pro 2TB SSD which will sit alongside my existing 960 1TB Pro. I'm also looking for some more external storage, and was determined to with Sandisk-WD. I am waiting for Thunderbolt 4 drives or USB 4.0 as my system supports both, but the Seagate FireCuda USB 3.2 Gen2x2 is what I'd reach for if I needed one right away. I'll be skipping Sandisk. If you hate America, run a company like most of them operate. No quicker way to hollow out what's left of our economy. Maybe we can just sell each other loans and insurance.
- anakaine 5y ago
  Theres an entire other story here in your comments: ford building vehicles with a plastic oil pan / sump. That it just insane, even by the standards of "engineering says it will work and be cheaper", particularly on a truck / 4x4 where off road duty can cause stones, sticks, etc to hit the sump hard. Even in a smaller vehicle lower clearances can cause that part of the vehicle to strike the road surface often enough- just have a look either side of your nearest speed bump. Theres likely a pro in this design for North American vehicles, where the pan won't rust. I still maintain, however, that at least a metal pan will bend or dent and be serviceable whilst a hardened plastic one will tend to crack or shatter.
dfdz 5y ago
Since no one is discussing it, here are the technical details of the change: >once the 12 GB SLC cache is exhausted, and their [write] performance [decreases] from 610 MBps (the original speed) [to] 390Mps. I am not saying what they did was ethical, but many consumers do not regularly write files of 12G and will not notice the change Here is a better article describing the situation: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wd-blue-sn550-ssd-performance-cut-in-half-slc-runs-out https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wd-blue-sn550-ssd-performa...
- NullPrefix 5y ago
  Fictional qoute: >once the the 4GB RAM cache is exhausted, and their [write] performance [decreases] from 20GBps (the original speed) [to] 610 MBps

212 points by sharjeelsayed 5y ago

The owners of these drives should get in contact with WD and demand they replace it with a top-of-the-line drive if they want you to keep quiet. This whole drive speed brouhahahas been sketchy from the start, but their sheepish admission of guilt here is just enterprise-grade lip service.

koala_man 5y ago

> The company says that, in the future, it will also introduce a new model number when making any hardware changes to its products that impact performance. So they'll keep selling products called "Western Digital SN550" running at half the speed, but you'll now be able to tell them apart by seeing the model number update from "WDBA3V0010BNC-WRSN" to e.g. "WDBA3V0011BNC-WRSN"? This is very scummy.

Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
TBF, it is common tactics for manufacturers to do this. They even have specific SKU for each retail store (Amazon, Target, Walmart, etc), including Black Friday SKUs (they are inferior/lower quality product intended for Black Friday/Cyber Monday day). Not surprisingly that WD are going down to this route. "Shareholders is a priority over customers" is a common business mantra.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Customers so often fall for it though. I've been taken in by Black Friday deals many times. It hurts you with rigorous buyers, but most are not that.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > Black Friday SKUs (they are inferior/lower quality product intended for Black Friday/Cyber Monday day) How inferior?
  - QuotedForTruth 5y ago
    Usually its not easy to tell. There are often less ports and other obvious features, but who knows whats inside. I dont think anyone has ever done a component level breakdown like they do for storage. >These derivative models are toned down versions of standard ones, perhaps offering a reduced number of HDMI ports or lower quality components. However, it's hard to say -- it can even be hard to tell which specific TVs are derivatives, requiring a careful scan of a model number which could total eight or nine digits. https://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/11/21/why-you-shouldnt-buy-a-tv-on-black-friday/?sh=3f0648bd1a2c https://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/11/21/why...
    - cwizou 5y ago
      While this happens on TVs (and other consumer goods, mattresses is another example of different SKUs for different retailers), this is not common at all for performance sensitive components in PC hardware industry. Making different SKUs (with same generic marketing name) can happen (which WD did NOT do here) for good reasons, but most of the time you get better performance out of it. What WD did is really shameful and very much not the norm in this industry.
  - Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
    Less inputs (like only 1 HDMI port), lower resolutions, low spec cpu (lagfest smart TV), etc. So inferior version of the same superior products. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/black-friday-insider-secrets-2017-11#some-items-are-made-specifically-for-black-friday-and-are-lower-quality-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/black-friday-insider-secrets... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/11/21/why-you-shouldnt-buy-a-tv-on-black-friday/?sh=33442ad91a2c https://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/11/21/why...
- everdrive 5y ago
  >including Black Friday SKUs (they are inferior/lower quality product intended for Black Friday/Cyber Monday day). This is news to me. Can you elaborate?
- handrous 5y ago
  See also: "outlet mall" clothing.
- cptskippy 5y ago
  The different SKUs is a way to get around price matching because they're "not the same". Black Friday SKUs are a similar tactic where the retailer can offer a raincheck knowing that SKU will never resurface. What WD is doing hits differently and would be like LG using LED panels in the OLED*A line of TVs or if the Ford F-Series PowerStroke suddenly came with an EcoBoost engine. It betrays the trust people have in the line/model that WD has created.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    > The different SKUs is a way to get around price matching because they're "not the same". So then the customer can just order from his phone right in front of the cashier the item he doesn't want to price-match? I don't get how that's helping anyone.
    - cptskippy 5y ago
      Stock issues and often prices in store and online don't match, frequently they're independent systems. Home Depot uses the same system and still maintains different prices.
- Stratoscope 5y ago
  The mattress business is notorious for this. Every mattress store offers price matching against any other mattress store... but only for the exact same item, by name! Let's take one manufacturer, I'll call them Sorta. One store will sell the Sorta Beautysleep, another sells the Sorta Quietrest, and a third has the Sorta Hamptonshire. All three are identical design, materials, construction, and appearance. The only difference is the label Sorta attaches before shipping to each store's distribution center. So when you ask for a price match on that first store's Sorta Beautysleep, no price match for you! It's an exclusive product available at our store only.
  - awill 5y ago
    I've never really understood the value of price-matching. Unless you have a gift card, or one store offers free shipping, why both with a price match? Just buy from the cheaper place.
    - Osiris 5y ago
      Some places used to offer price match plus an additional 10% off so it was beneficial to search for a cheaper price. I once did this at Lowe's by finding the item at home Depot for just a few cents cheaper and after buying 100 bundles saved a bunch of money. They recently stopped doing the extra 10% off.
    - yencabulator 5y ago
      It's useful if you have a local store you like, with good customer service, that does price matching. It means you get the cheaper price but the better experience.
    - FractalParadigm 5y ago
      If one place is walking distance and will price-match, it doesn't make sense to even start the car let alone drive elsewhere. In a different vein, when I was younger my mom price-matched a TV at Best Buy against a lower price at the Future Shop across the street, it was about $50 on a $1100 unit. We went to Best Buy first, found the TV we liked, then went across the road to see if there were any better/cheaper options. We ended up going back to Best Buy because the sales people actually seemed to give a damn about their job and the customer, and the fact they were not paid commission (unlike Future Shop), all combined with the price matching made it the more appealing decision. IIRC the BB extended warranty was a better deal.
cptskippy 5y ago
> This is very scummy. That's been my overall opinion of WD in recent years. I have been a supporter of WD since the 90s when I bought my first 2.5GB Caviar drive. My NAS and Server are filled with WD Reds and my gaming PC is using an WD Black NVME. I recently pulled WD Green and Blues from some systems and for the first time in 25 years used something other than WD to replace them. WD's branding use to make it really simple to understand what you were buying. You knew what Green, Blue, Red, Purple, and Black drives were capable of and you bought accordingly. Now it seems they're leveraging that trust and comfort to fuck people over and for what? How does disappointing your customer help your brand? I can no longer trust them and I'm not going to invest the effort to ensure that I'm buying the right Red or Blue drive from them. It's sad but I'm just going to take my money elsewhere.
- ev1 5y ago
  I stopped trusting them when they started silently hiding SMR in existing CMR SKUs and it only took massive backlash and public calling out for them to start selling "red" and "red plus" HDs. Blatantly lied about it while people have raid arrays failing and unable to rebuild, etc. edit: pro -> plus
  - sigstoat 5y ago
    the red pro line significantly predates the SMR/CMR debacle. edit: or the plus did? well. they've successfully managed to confuse me, which was probably their goal. apologies.
    - cptskippy 5y ago
      A line Plus or Pro, was introduced as part of the fallout of the SMR debacle.
    - ev1 5y ago
      My bad, I was confused too Red pro: CMR, "remains the same" Red plus: the new CMR SKUs that were previously sold under the same models as CMR and mixed SMR SKUs Red: used to be CMR now SMR as far as I can tell
a9h74j 5y ago
Think how this would play with, say, a BOM going into a medical device. Not only on regulatory grounds, but in terms of specific performance.
- yencabulator 5y ago
  Companies such as IBM historically specialized in guaranteeing the exact BOM for long-term usage. You pay a premium for that, because they design and stock for it.
userbinator 5y ago
That's the problem with "marketing names": they're dumbed-down "abstractions" created by and for "non-technical" people who don't think precision matters and so will try to get away with whatever they think they can with stretching the truth. From that perspective, instances like this that will cause people to place less trust in the marketing names and look into the actual model numbers is a good thing.

donmcronald 5y ago

> For greater transparency going forward, if we make a change to an existing internal SSD, we commit to introducing a new model number whenever any related published specifications are impacted. I’ll believe that when it happens. IMO it’s fraud and after the SMR debacle everyone at Western Digital should know it’s not ok, but they still tried to sneak it by everyone.

bopbeepboop 5y ago
It’s absolutely fraud, at scale and across state lines. They started selling product A, under a particular version number. They then substituted inferior product B as the same version number, deceiving customers who were attempting to buy product A. They did this with what seems like explicit intent to trick customers attempting to buy product A into accepting the inferior product B. I think it speaks to the overt criminality of modern businesses that they did this. I hope we start seeing RICO and organized crime prosecutions against executives for this behavior.
- sschueller 5y ago
  They also surely didn't ship the slow units to the reviewers...
- caconym_ 5y ago
  +1 I was wondering about the legality, since this seems to me to be bald-faced fraud and part of a consistent pattern at WD and other manufacturers. I guess the sticking point is proving that they deliberately used faster components in earlier units to get good reviews? I'm sure they've been very careful to keep their conversations on this matter off the record. If only we had a government more interested in protecting its people from corporate malfeasance.
- kragen 5y ago
  This kind of line-extension fraud is pretty common. Pyrex used to be a brand name for borosilicate glass, the kind you can safely heat to red heat on a Bunsen burner, and became popular for home baking dishes as well. At some point Corning started selling tempered soda-lime glass in the US as "Pyrex" as well, which can explode if subjected to thermal shock, a decision that causes several cooks per year to end up covered in turkey grease and glass shards. Saran was Dow's trademark for polyvinylidene chloride, a superior chemical protective layer, which became popular as a plastic wrap as a way to preserve food against evaporation and rancidification through oxygen ingress; now Dow sells Saran Wrap that contains no Saran, instead consisting of polyethylene, which permits literally a thousand times as much oxygen through. Similarly there are lines of Sudafed that contain no pseudoephedrine, Kaopectate that no longer contains kaolin or pectin (only in the US), and so on. In electronics, substituting inferior components after the initial launch of a product has become routine, and it isn't even always intentional fraud; the manufacturer may honestly believe the new, cheaper parts are equivalent to the original parts. I think you will see organized crime prosecutions against executives for this behavior, but only in PRC.

theogravity 5y ago

Not surprised they'd hide it considering the WD Red CMR debacle where they didn't notify customers that they changed from CMR to SMR. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22875094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22875094

deckard1 5y ago
last I checked they still make you hunt for the CMR/SMR info on their webpage by having to match model numbers. Talk about scummy. Not to mention they did this with their NAS lineup, which is like hitting a hornet nest with a stick. The other thing HDD manufacturers apparently lie about is RPM. WD claims their WD Red are 5400 RPM when they are actually 7200[1]. Which just seems like a ridiculous thing to obfuscate if you ask me. Most consumers still think 7200 RPM is faster/better, and those shopping for 5400 for quiet are just going to get annoyed. [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/western-digital-confuses-everyone-with-5400-rpm-class-hard-drives https://www.pcmag.com/news/western-digital-confuses-everyone...
- willis936 5y ago
  5400 RPM is also significantly lower power/heat and more reliable.
  - bhj 5y ago
    Sadly some WD drives specced as 5400RPM are actually 7200RPM. Luckily, acoustics don't lie: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ikk0rv/psa_multiple_wd_5400rpm_drives_are_actually/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ikk0rv/psa_mul...
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Unfortunately... it turns out WD is lying to you about 5400 RPM as well. A lot of those 5400 RPM drives are just lower-performance 7200 RPM drives. So you end up eating the power-costs and noise for no actual benefit. This company has consistently screwed its customers over for short-term gain over and over again.
- 5y ago

mzs 5y ago

Samsung now too, wonder if this is chip shortage related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28329386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28329386

InitialLastName 5y ago
I suspect that we're starting to see a lot of products being quietly changed in subtle ways now that we're moving into ~6 months of part shortages (for reference, 6 months is about normal for lag from part purchasing to consumer availability, with substantial variation by sector). The good way to do this is be open when user-visible specs have to change, or even to release a new model. What WD is doing is the bad way.
- shadilay 5y ago
  This doesn't have anything to do with the shortages. SSD OEM's have been doing it for years. The real reason is the NAND manufactures add more layers or change nodes.
noizejoy 5y ago
The Samsung case seems to be quite different, though. i.e. the replacement components don’t seem to generally make things worse.

bsharitt 5y ago

Between this and the SMR NAS drive debacle, I think I'm done with Western Digital for the foreseeable future.

ep103 5y ago

So HN, who should I be buying external HDDs from anymore? Because this is the last straw for me with WD

thg 5y ago
Toshiba.
- babypuncher 5y ago
  It's a sample size of one, but the worst recent HDD I bought was a Toshiba. I got it in, and within a week I was getting SMART warnings about a high number of reallocated sectors (accompanied by strange performance characteristics. I RMA'd the drive and the replacement had the exact same issue.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Technically that's a sample size of two.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      Could be a sample size of one though. One of the most important things for hard drives is to keep them protected. If your shipping company screws up (see Amazon) and drops the box hard on your front porch, you may end up with a broken drive. AKA: The issue could very well not be the hard drive manufacturer, but instead the company that delivered your hard drives to you. I prefer to pick up hard drives physically from Microcenter for this reason, it means that I can properly "baby" those fragile drives all the way home.
    - babypuncher 5y ago
      Sample size of one customer with a bad experience, or a sample size of two bad drives.
- _ph_ 5y ago
  Seconded. I have many Toshiba drives, always very happy with them.

bobcall 5y ago

People need to learn to be grateful that they can buy anything right now. Sure, in normal times it would be an issue but things are different now. The swapping of these controllers is the difference between shipping and not shipping a product. Would you rather wait 6 mo or 1 year for an SSD? That is where we are at now and things won't be getting any better in the next year. Sure, maybe they should have added a sticker or SKU change, but that would result in further delays and shortages.

crazyjncsu 5y ago

Nothing new folks. 23 years ago I bought a RIVA TNT video card (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIVA_TNT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIVA_TNT) where early models (and, conveniently, the ones sent to reviewers) were clocked at 110Mhz. They silently clocked them down to 90Mhz after a month or so before I got mine. “The TNT shipped later than originally planned, ran quite hot, and was clocked lower than Nvidia had planned at 90 MHz instead of 110 MHz. Originally planned specifications should have placed the card ahead of Voodoo2 in theoretical performance for Direct3D applications, but at 90 MHz it did not quite match the Voodoo2” I’ve been a bitter man ever since…

deadmutex 5y ago
I am guessing behind the scenes they probably had a target of 110Mhz. They probably hoped to hit that by launch, and sent out review units a bit early. However, whatever fix they were trying probably didn't pan out or they found another failure case in edge case testing (e.g. running it long term in places with high ambient temps), and had to throttle them down for everyone. So, the critical mistake was probably sending out units too early. Can totally understand how infuriating it must be because you buy based on the benchmarks, and don't get what you think you're buying.
- spyder 5y ago
  "So, the critical mistake was probably sending out units too early." No, the critical mistake is not telling the costumers about the change.
  - deadmutex 5y ago
    Perhaps, but I think it might've been a logistically challenging to do that vs being consistent with what is being reviewed and sold.
    - NullPrefix 5y ago
      Increment the name. Is it really that hard? Product being sold is not the same as the product being reviewed.

ljhsiung 5y ago

I literally just bought an SN550 last week. Any suggestions for recourse? Unlikely to be able to return it, since "technically" it's used.

travoc 5y ago
The retailer should accept return of a defective product. Then file a warranty claim with the manufacturer. If that doesn’t work, your credit card company might have an extended warranty claim procedure that you should start. Finally, start leaving bad reviews of the retailer and manufacturer online. If that doesn’t get their attention, at least you might cause them to lose a few hundred thousand dollars in sales.
DiabloD3 5y ago
Talk to your credit card company if the retail outlet won't help you. Try to push the narrative that this is a counterfeit and is not the product as advertised.

intricatedetail 5y ago

If a small manufacturer did this, they'd get bankrupted and maybe in jail. I guess we still have a two tier system.

shadilay 5y ago

This is such an obvious bait and switch. If we had a functioning FTC WD would be forced to refund all purchasers 2x.

BuckRogers 5y ago

I saw this come across on ExtremeTech a few days ago. I believe they broke the story. It was Western Digital AND Crucial that were caught doing it. That means you should buy Intel or Samsung products, neither of whom have been caught doing this. I was going to get a WD SN850, thinking how nice it was that an American company beat out Samsung finally on performance. The first time since Intel reigned some years ago. But not now. I'm going with a Samsung 990 Pro when those drop later this year. Intel abandoned the high performance consumer space, but my Intel X25-M 160GB that I bought in January 2010 is still in-use to this day, and it was punished in my personal machine for 7 years straight. I would have no qualms buying anything they put out for laptops or any system that isn't my i9-11900K. It's a real shame. American companies just don't can't think past the next quarter. I recently read that Ford has been putting plastic oil pans on trucks, and I know a guy that has a brand new one- it cracked. I've been doing my research and was determined to buy domestic but found enough stuff like that, that I'm going with Toyota from here on out, and I've never owned one before. Crucial/Micron was one of the better quality manufacturers, it's a shame to see them lumped in with this scandal. Looking forward to an Intel Arc GPU next year paired with my Samsung 990 Pro 2TB SSD which will sit alongside my existing 960 1TB Pro. I'm also looking for some more external storage, and was determined to with Sandisk-WD. I am waiting for Thunderbolt 4 drives or USB 4.0 as my system supports both, but the Seagate FireCuda USB 3.2 Gen2x2 is what I'd reach for if I needed one right away. I'll be skipping Sandisk. If you hate America, run a company like most of them operate. No quicker way to hollow out what's left of our economy. Maybe we can just sell each other loans and insurance.

anakaine 5y ago
Theres an entire other story here in your comments: ford building vehicles with a plastic oil pan / sump. That it just insane, even by the standards of "engineering says it will work and be cheaper", particularly on a truck / 4x4 where off road duty can cause stones, sticks, etc to hit the sump hard. Even in a smaller vehicle lower clearances can cause that part of the vehicle to strike the road surface often enough- just have a look either side of your nearest speed bump. Theres likely a pro in this design for North American vehicles, where the pan won't rust. I still maintain, however, that at least a metal pan will bend or dent and be serviceable whilst a hardened plastic one will tend to crack or shatter.

dfdz 5y ago

Since no one is discussing it, here are the technical details of the change: >once the 12 GB SLC cache is exhausted, and their [write] performance [decreases] from 610 MBps (the original speed) [to] 390Mps. I am not saying what they did was ethical, but many consumers do not regularly write files of 12G and will not notice the change Here is a better article describing the situation: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wd-blue-sn550-ssd-performance-cut-in-half-slc-runs-out https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wd-blue-sn550-ssd-performa...

NullPrefix 5y ago
Fictional qoute: >once the the 4GB RAM cache is exhausted, and their [write] performance [decreases] from 20GBps (the original speed) [to] 610 MBps