Western Digital confirms speed crippling SN550 SSD flash change
bleepingcomputer.com
bleepingcomputer.com
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.
Not surprisingly that WD are going down to this route. "Shareholders is a priority over customers" is a common business mantra.
It hurts you with rigorous buyers, but most are not that.
How inferior?
>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...
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.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/black-friday-insider-secrets...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsights/2012/11/21/why...
This is news to me. Can you elaborate?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Simple:
* You might trust one place to provide better ongoing service after sale - for instance in the UK John Lewis used to offer a price match ('never knowingly undersold') which would include a 2 year store warranty, while most other retailers only offered a 1 year warranty. On top of that, over time you find out which retailers will just sort your problem out when you bring it to them, while others will require you to deal with some helpline and will fob you off.
* Price-match often also applies after the sale (i.e. we will match to 14 days after the sale) which provides the promotional message of 'you don't have to worry about shopping around now - you can complete the sale and if you would have got it cheaper you can get the difference back anyway'. This is also an additional customer price guarantee if an item goes on sale or is discounted immediately after purchase.
* If you see a store online nearby that has better pricing, you can avoid the trip to the other store, or alternatively you may be able to visit your local store. If price-matching and buying multiple items, this may also mean that you can get all your items from one shop without having to visit multiple.
* You might be able to get a better sales experience from a certain store - for instance I used price-match the other day on a monitor I was looking to purchase, because my local electronics store was more expensive but I knew that they would have a working sample out on display (while the other cheaper shop would just have it in the stock room, and it would be a faff to actually see the item).
For the stores, it is also about 'loyalty'. If a customer always buys their electronics from your store, you don't want them going and shopping with your competitors.
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.
edit: pro -> plus
edit: or the plus did? well. they've successfully managed to confuse me, which was probably their goal. apologies.
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
CMR:good for everything, and NAS+RAID use. You want this one pretty much for everything.
SMR: good for light desktop work, very risky for NAS+RAID use.
Older plain Red drives are CMR and therefore good, but check that their model string contains EFRX and not EFAX because WD at one point silently started shipping SMR drives labeled as WD Red, and the only difference was the model string, which contains EFRX for CMR (good) drives and EFAX for SMR (bad) ones.
Be aware however that WD uses the model number in a very inconsistent way, for example there are new WD Red Plus models who have the EFAX designation, still are CMR drives, therefore good. Use it as indicator for older models, while newer models can be sorted out using their commercial name.
Therefore, as of today:
WD Red: those are mostly/all SMR drives. Avoid them.
WD Red Plus: those initially were the old CMR WD Red ones, simply relabeled to show the difference. Good for everything. Newer ones have a different model string now which should imply some improvement besides a plain relabeling. They're still CMR and good. Those are what I'm currently using on my home NAS.
WD Red PRO: those are high end CMR drives with better performance and durability standards than the Plus ones. Good for everything and indicated for heavy load situations. More costly however.
Further details:
https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library...
https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library...
https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library...
Yes, Plain WD Red drives are marketed as NAS drives; just ignore them.
Tl;Dr: Avoid plain WD Reds, use Plus for low cost desktop or Home/SOHO NAS hardware, and Pro for more intensive uses.
https://i.redd.it/4sg8kvhe1nuy.png
Unfortunately I can't seem to find one for their SSDs, which is certainly a problem.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
0: https://journaltimes.com/business/local/ceo-explains-why-sc-...
“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…
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.
No, the critical mistake is not telling the costumers about the change.
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...
This company has consistently screwed its customers over for short-term gain over and over again.
WD built brand loyalty and trust around the easy branding the created with the Blue, Green, Black, Purple, and Red lines. People knew what they were getting when they bought a particular color.
Now WD is leveraging that trust to trick people into purchasing a lesser product. When they were called on it their response was "Oh well here's what you really wanted but now it's a different product line". This benefits them because customers oblivious to the controversy will still buy the inferior product thinking it's something else and not knowing better.
SMR drives aren't bad; you just need them for different applications and they require different software support.
They knew that it was going to end up badly with storage arrays that were not SMR-aware.
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.
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.
And I would believe it's a wise engineering choice, if the first time I've heard about it was in regards to a 2021 truck leaking. I don't know if the other US domestic manufacturers are doing this, but you can bet they'll be right behind as they've always chased each other in a race to making the worst vehicles possible for 50 years now in the name of profits. I read a story that in the 70s GM executives heard that Ford was cutting quality/costs by 30% in some way, and demanded they "get to do" the same.
The Tacoma I'm likely to buy does have a plastic truck bed instead of stainless, which was also a surprise to me. I think everything is being cheapened up, even the Toyotas and Hondas. But I see legitimate trade offs with bed materials that could make a little more sense, much like how Ford uses aluminum beds. When Ford did that, I didn't outright scorn it like these plastic pans.
I'm responding for the benefit of others, not yours, as you're basically presenting false information. Crucial and Western Digital were caught swapping NAND with zero other indication. Samsung has updated that SKU's serial number, product datasheet, and the actual change in question was a different Samsung controller and increased SLC cache. Not the NAND.[0]
And, they swapped the controller for a newer one, out of the 980 Pro. Almost 3-times the the SLC cache of the original model, and overall netting a small performance increase. Most people would prefer these changes over the original configuration. I would.
And while I'd be more than happy to only buy Intel products, Samsung is still in the clear on this front.
You're not on Ars Technica anymore. Don't ever come half-stepping with spreading misinformation on HN. It's a disservice to not read your own sources, and then apply your incorrect conclusion for others. You're welcome for the correction.
[0]https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-is-swapping-ssd-pa...
"Although the new version's SLC cache is 173% bigger, it offers 47% lower sustained write performance."
So depending on your use case it can be a significant performance difference. Did you read your source?
What Samsung should have done it change the name and call it the "971 Evo Plus SSD" or "970 Evo Gold SSD" or some such change that distinguishes this new product with different performance characteristics than the actual "970 Evo Plus SSD".
But no they want to benefit from the good name and customer perception of the "970 Evo Plus SSD" while selling a substantially different product under that name. That is fraudulent behavior!
"As per the result, the old version started at 1,750 MBps and eventually dropped down to 1,500 MBps after the 40GB mark. On the new version, the drive steadily performed at 2,500 MBps, but once the 115GB SLC cache was exhausted, the SSD fell to 800 MBps."
If you're unhappy about 1,750MBps->2,500MBps performance increases for <=115GB transfers, by all means, be upset. For me, and I think any reasonable person, this is an improvement for most users that don't typically work with >115GB contiguous transfers.
And in their own test with a 154GB video file- "At the end of the day, everything balanced out and the new version finished the copying process just a hairline faster than the old version."
Now I'm just having to repeat myself. Everyone can make their own determination. I don't really care what you buy honestly. If you find their SKU update and changes as fraudulent, file a lawsuit or wage an online crusade against Samsung. I don't see it, believe it's unfounded and won't be joining you in your quest. Good luck to you.
I RMA'd the drive and the replacement had the exact same issue.
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.
WD's recent weirdness with the Red drives has pushed me to just spend the extra money for SSDs. I've been happy with Samsung's high-end products but I'm sure there are caveats.
I use Samsung for solid state - their Evo series are very good. The m2 Pro 980s are seriously fast.
https://hexus.net/tech/news/storage/148295-samsung-latest-ss...
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sabrent-rocket-4-plus-m...
Trick question. The answer is "don't". I can't find a direct citation for external HDDs being the lowest parts-bin of drives manufactured, but the pricing tells the story enough for me.
My data is valuable enough to me that I usually spend ~twice as much on a high-end drive and put it in my own enclosure. I usually go for IronWolf drives, and I'm a big fan of ICY BOX enclosures: https://icybox.de/en/product.php?id=297
smartctl knows how to parse it, it just never does by default (a long-standing bug that isn't high priority enough to fix).
Do `smartctl -a -v 1,raw48:54 /dev/xxx`, or `-v 7,raw48:54` for raw seek.
However, these values have never been useful to diagnose a drive as failing before data corruption appears (and it gets kicked of a raid), in my experience.
Meanwhile, they're cheap and Seagate never pulled that SMR-in-NAS-disks shit that WD and a few others did.
This WD dumbassery seems like its mostly on the WD side. I'm not aware of any dumb decisions being made on the HGST-side of the WD company yet. It should also be noted that Sandisk is also owned by WD.
>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-performa...
>once the the 4GB RAM cache is exhausted, and their [write] performance [decreases] from 20GBps (the original speed) [to] 610 MBps
Any suggestions for recourse? Unlikely to be able to return it, since "technically" it's used.
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.