5 ms·

So saddle all the legacy liabilities in with the legacy business and slowly suck out the equity, while the flash business grows? I can see how that's a win for

by bragr 3y ago

So saddle all the legacy liabilities in with the legacy business and slowly suck out the equity, while the flash business grows? I can see how that's a win for investors at least. Are the flash products still going to be branded WD?

cogman10 3y ago
Yup. Seems like an increasingly common move by businesses. AMD did this with global foundries, for example.
- halJordan 3y ago
  Im not following the surprise or maybe incredulity of this sentiment. It's normal and healthy for businesses to shed poor performers and merge to create synergies. The food majors went through this in the 2010s and nobody was crying or implicating malfeasance. The market should be reacting, that's what makes it useful.
  - cogman10 3y ago
    There's a difference between what is good for the public, what is good for the market, and even what's good for a business's long term outlook. The issue with spinning off losers and acquiring winners is the prioritization of short-term gains over long term gains. Further, I dispute that it's motivated by "the market" and not the gambling habits of corporate leaders. Take, for example, HP's purchase of Palm for 1 billion dollars. But then a few months later, they let go of basically the entire palm staff. Then they created their webos tablet, then they killed it just a few months after launch. Then they let webos linger until finally selling rights to it to LG of all places. You certainly can argue "this is just the market being efficient" but was it? Or was it overpaid C level individuals making big bets, failing, and punishing their employees for their incompetence?
dehrmann 3y ago
Some companies have done this recently (J&J, iirc), but the article didn't mention any liabilities WD was trying to shed, and both these businesses are viable, so I'm not sure if this was just a knee-jerk corporate criticism or there's something to this.
- SSLy 3y ago
  Spinning rust side is only living because of price collusion by the flash vendors. Price for 8TB of TLC generic is currently 170 USD. QLC is cheaper than that.
  - dehrmann 3y ago
    That's actually a valid reason to spin off a business, especially if you happen to know you'll cross the inflection point in ~5 years. It isn't the same as the "legacy liabilities" game, though. Some investors want the growth business, some want the stable business, some want a cheaply-priced declining business (seriously; look into anything that pays royalties).
  - mbreese 3y ago
    Spinning rust is still useful for many purposes and will probably live on for decades more. We generate a ton of data and most of it ends up as read rarely or never. But it can live with slower access times on longer duration storage. It’s honestly just like tape. There will be an HDD market for a long time that will be hidden in the whirl of data centers. Consumer HDD will slowly melt away, but the price/byte and durability of disk will keep it viable for quite a while. It’s still faster than tape (but not as cheap).
    - SoftTalker 3y ago
      > Consumer HDD will slowly melt away I’d say it already has. Does any consumer PC come with a spinning disk anymore?
      - purpleflame1257 3y ago
kstrauser 3y ago
Nailed it. They’ve been spending goodwill like crazy with debacles like pushing out SMR junk under the Red name. In my experience, their overall quality control has plummeted over the last few years. I’ve bought 3 Red drives for my home Synology. After about a year with each, the drive utilization graph will start creeping up toward a steady 100% while the other drives in the RAID are mostly idle. All drives have the same throughput. All drives have the same IOPS. And yet, the Red starts taking longer and longer to complete its requests. There aren’t any SMART errors or warnings. If I pull the drive and run WD’s diagnostics, it’s fine. It shows every sign of being perfectly healthy, other than being dog slow up until the day I replace it. I’m 3-for-3 with this happening. Maybe I’m the only person and they work great for everyone else. I won’t buy another, though. I think we’re seeing WD turn into HP. People will still buy it for the name on the label, but those in the know will steer their friends to calmer waters.
- lloydatkinson 3y ago
  I also had two Reds showing bad sectors after around a year, with a Synology. What "colour" drive do you usually buy now? Or even which manufacturer?
  - sersi 3y ago
    I've switched to only buying Toshiba, been very happy with them. They're also more silent as a bonus.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    I've had good luck with Seagate Iron Wolves. They're a little noisier than others, but I've never had one fail. The Toshiba I've had in there for 3 years has also been fine. After years of seeing many brands of drives go through good and bad years, I'm hesitant to recommend any particular manufacturer. Seagate had a rough stretch, but they seem to be pretty good right now. WD used to be great, and now I don't want anything to do with them. Anytime I look for a new drive, I check out the latest Backblaze report and hope for the best.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ginko 3y ago
Feels like the HDD business is the more stable of the two. The competition in the flash/SSD market if fierce.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  True, but it’s clearly the future, at least for mass market devices. There’s still a place for buggy whip makers. The remaining ones can charge an arm and a leg because the few remaining ones generally compete on quality. I bet that’s what we’ll see for HDDs soon.
  - rasz 3y ago
    NAND is unable to replace HDD for long term storage.
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      Yes, and that's an important market. I suspect that it's tiny compared to the mass market devices I mentioned.
justinclift 3y ago
SanDisk's reputation is in the toilet though, thanks to things like this: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/sandisk-extreme-ssds-keep-abruptly-failing-firmware-fix-for-only-some-promised/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/sandisk-extreme-ssds... Western Digital's isn't any better though, due to their own mismanagement https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/05/western-digital-gets-sued-for-sneaking-smr-disks-into-its-nas-channel/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/05/western-digital-gets...

by bragr 3y ago

cogman10 3y ago

Yup. Seems like an increasingly common move by businesses. AMD did this with global foundries, for example.

halJordan 3y ago
Im not following the surprise or maybe incredulity of this sentiment. It's normal and healthy for businesses to shed poor performers and merge to create synergies. The food majors went through this in the 2010s and nobody was crying or implicating malfeasance. The market should be reacting, that's what makes it useful.
- cogman10 3y ago
  There's a difference between what is good for the public, what is good for the market, and even what's good for a business's long term outlook. The issue with spinning off losers and acquiring winners is the prioritization of short-term gains over long term gains. Further, I dispute that it's motivated by "the market" and not the gambling habits of corporate leaders. Take, for example, HP's purchase of Palm for 1 billion dollars. But then a few months later, they let go of basically the entire palm staff. Then they created their webos tablet, then they killed it just a few months after launch. Then they let webos linger until finally selling rights to it to LG of all places. You certainly can argue "this is just the market being efficient" but was it? Or was it overpaid C level individuals making big bets, failing, and punishing their employees for their incompetence?

dehrmann 3y ago

Some companies have done this recently (J&J, iirc), but the article didn't mention any liabilities WD was trying to shed, and both these businesses are viable, so I'm not sure if this was just a knee-jerk corporate criticism or there's something to this.

SSLy 3y ago
Spinning rust side is only living because of price collusion by the flash vendors. Price for 8TB of TLC generic is currently 170 USD. QLC is cheaper than that.
- dehrmann 3y ago
  That's actually a valid reason to spin off a business, especially if you happen to know you'll cross the inflection point in ~5 years. It isn't the same as the "legacy liabilities" game, though. Some investors want the growth business, some want the stable business, some want a cheaply-priced declining business (seriously; look into anything that pays royalties).
- mbreese 3y ago
  Spinning rust is still useful for many purposes and will probably live on for decades more. We generate a ton of data and most of it ends up as read rarely or never. But it can live with slower access times on longer duration storage. It’s honestly just like tape. There will be an HDD market for a long time that will be hidden in the whirl of data centers. Consumer HDD will slowly melt away, but the price/byte and durability of disk will keep it viable for quite a while. It’s still faster than tape (but not as cheap).
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    > Consumer HDD will slowly melt away I’d say it already has. Does any consumer PC come with a spinning disk anymore?
    - purpleflame1257 3y ago

kstrauser 3y ago

Nailed it. They’ve been spending goodwill like crazy with debacles like pushing out SMR junk under the Red name. In my experience, their overall quality control has plummeted over the last few years. I’ve bought 3 Red drives for my home Synology. After about a year with each, the drive utilization graph will start creeping up toward a steady 100% while the other drives in the RAID are mostly idle. All drives have the same throughput. All drives have the same IOPS. And yet, the Red starts taking longer and longer to complete its requests. There aren’t any SMART errors or warnings. If I pull the drive and run WD’s diagnostics, it’s fine. It shows every sign of being perfectly healthy, other than being dog slow up until the day I replace it. I’m 3-for-3 with this happening. Maybe I’m the only person and they work great for everyone else. I won’t buy another, though. I think we’re seeing WD turn into HP. People will still buy it for the name on the label, but those in the know will steer their friends to calmer waters.

lloydatkinson 3y ago
I also had two Reds showing bad sectors after around a year, with a Synology. What "colour" drive do you usually buy now? Or even which manufacturer?
- sersi 3y ago
  I've switched to only buying Toshiba, been very happy with them. They're also more silent as a bonus.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  I've had good luck with Seagate Iron Wolves. They're a little noisier than others, but I've never had one fail. The Toshiba I've had in there for 3 years has also been fine. After years of seeing many brands of drives go through good and bad years, I'm hesitant to recommend any particular manufacturer. Seagate had a rough stretch, but they seem to be pretty good right now. WD used to be great, and now I don't want anything to do with them. Anytime I look for a new drive, I check out the latest Backblaze report and hope for the best.
Scoundreller 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ginko 3y ago

Feels like the HDD business is the more stable of the two. The competition in the flash/SSD market if fierce.

kstrauser 3y ago
True, but it’s clearly the future, at least for mass market devices. There’s still a place for buggy whip makers. The remaining ones can charge an arm and a leg because the few remaining ones generally compete on quality. I bet that’s what we’ll see for HDDs soon.
- rasz 3y ago
  NAND is unable to replace HDD for long term storage.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    Yes, and that's an important market. I suspect that it's tiny compared to the mass market devices I mentioned.

justinclift 3y ago

SanDisk's reputation is in the toilet though, thanks to things like this: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/sandisk-extreme-ssds-keep-abruptly-failing-firmware-fix-for-only-some-promised/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/sandisk-extreme-ssds... Western Digital's isn't any better though, due to their own mismanagement https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/05/western-digital-gets-sued-for-sneaking-smr-disks-into-its-nas-channel/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/05/western-digital-gets...