Monday, September 18, 2023

Update on Western Digital

In a post on August 23rd and a YouTube video on August 25th, I mentioned that I was ditching SanDisk and Western Digital after two bad experiences. 

One of my cousins followed up, saying he had ditched Western Digital after two other bad experiences, both of which I have been given permission to share on this website. Both of them also relate to the Western Digital Red lineup of hard drives, which are oriented towards NAS (Network attached storage) usage. 

A few years ago, Western Digital was caught sneaking SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) drives into their Western Digital Red lineup. Compared to CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording), SMR drives are better for some use cases but have slower I/O performance in others such as NAS systems, which is what the Western Digital Red lineup is oriented for. Western Digital admitted to it, then was hit with a class-action lawsuit and lost.

That wasn't the only problem my cousin had with Western Digital Red drives. This past May, users using Synology NAS solutions began reporting that their drives would warn you when the drives hit three years' worth of power on hours, even though there was nothing wrong with the drives.

Now, I never had any issues like these, but this makes my cousin think it's worth ditching Western Digital altogether.

No comments:

Post a Comment

March 8, 1942 to October 21, 2024

Today marks the loss of an important member of my family. My grandfather, who was 82 years old, was hospitalized on October 14th, and after ...