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Western Digital gets sued for sneaking SMR disks into its NAS channel

Pickles von Brine
1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Nope, it's exactly the same regardless who the plaintiff is,  besides that the plaintiff in the Monsanto case were consumers.

 

Still different, because company v company typically doesn't concern consumer rights. Where as a consumer v company usually does. The Monsanto case you just refered too is not the one you linked, also which one those people have had so many...

 

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

I linked to an article that showed a basic market share of NAS systems, Freenas doesn't even present on the small business side,   It would be a large assumption to assume any significant portion of WD's red sales go to home NAS systems when such a large commercial market (that is projected to grow immensely) already exists.

You linked a link to pre built market shares, not actual market shares.

The companies you linked to are the following in order shown:

  1. Synology - Prebuilt
  2. QNAP - Prebuilt
  3. HPE - Prebuilt
  4. Netapp - Prebuilt/Cloud
  5. Dell - Prebuilt
  6. EMC - ? Only found Dell EMC
  7. Netgear - Prebuilt
  8. Thecus - Prebuilt

What do they have all in common with WD Red? Nothing. Why? Those numbers are based on companies 50+ in one part of the world, in a country with half the population of Canada. WD reds while could go into those setups, those numbers you gave do not represent the clientele of WD Reds, more specifically because those numbers don't actually state what those places bought, one could argue they only bought units exceeding the suggest number of 8 by WD themselves. Something not stated in the article.

 

It also wouldn't be a large assumption a significant portion goes to home sales, because no business will buy 5400 RPM drives for backups less conserving power. However those companies would then see the Cloud as a good alternative over having a onsite server. The 5400 RPM units are very likely targeted to users that do not fall under the 50+ category, because if you have 50 employees and need a server you are not going to be buying a 5400RPM drive due to speed limitations.

 

All you did was find a tiny sample of the world and used it as fact for the whole world. Reality is for a corporations with 50+ people spending the extra $100-200 or so per drive on the extra quality of drives, or if buying Reds the $50 per drive more for Pros are a better and likely choice to be had. Where as if you are a family person looking for a server for home media with a budget, what would you get? Hence the SMR drives are targeted towards home and tiny tiny companies with no more than 15 people, hell 15 could still be too big in some cases.

 

Here's the real question for you to answer, which you can't not because it doesn't exist, but because the numbers are unclear or withheld. How many Reds go into prebuilt units for corporation use vs house/small company use, and how many Reds go into home made solutions like unraid freenas etc. You won't find any major publisher to hand you that information, you know why? Because I bet WD doesn't even know, else they would have likely never issued SMR NAS drives in the first place. That's the point, what we know as a whole isn't what is equal to Red, Reds have their own unique market. Those who are willing to buy a $1000-4000+ unit are not that market. The people who are buying the $500 or less units are within the market for Reds, so are people who are using old hardware (bought or not) and converting it into a NAS. I know for a fact I would be buying Reds if I didn't start shucking, not because I want cheap but because I have had 5400RPM reds and they are still kicking.

 

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

Given the stats I linked before it is very very very likely to be less than a few % at best.  Windows updates fail for a myriad of unexpected reasons,  that's the point, WD failed on freenas for an unexpected reason, not a misleading consumer reason.

You failed to see my point, WD clearly failed to do market research or ignored it. Why else would they have put SMR into NAS drives while no one else has, and one clearly stating they wouldn't? You are once again going based on biased facts that mean nothing for this situation. My windows update situation is Windows killing computers because they had specific hardware in it AND blaming the hardware, not because Microsoft is becoming less competent in their updates. My example is what you are saying, WD pushed a drive and broke a otherwise functional software and you are blaming the software. That's my point, no SMR ZFS works normally like everything else, so who is in the wrong here? The software makers who use ZFS or the hardware company that never bothered to test ZFS based software? Remember being in a market means you need to test every aspect possible. Seeing as buying a NAS enclosure of 8 or less bays (typically companies will give it for free) and requesting keys for testing is not out of the question and typically would be widely accepted, for your "excuse" of being a small % isn't even remotely a good one for WD.

 

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

Objective issue,  cheaper with larger capacity versus longer rebuilds times once or twice a year.    @Leadeater has gone over the specifics of that already.

First it's not objective, it is fact a failure will happen. Second the Reds with SMR are no cheaper than the CMR counterparts, nor do they offer more space since the SMR drives range from 2-6TB. The issue is you want rebuilds to take less time, not more, by selling a product that does just that shows you do no care about your customers.

 

Like I have said time and time again SMR is great in NAS for day to day, but in rebuilds is where it shows its weakness. If WD was able to remove that weakness then the court case would have no merit, however as it stands depending how they go with the suit WD is screwed.

 

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

That doesn't really change the reality of the situation.    We have a series of drives that do as they say for (what we know to be) every product except freenas,  we still don't know if SMR is an absolute issue with freenas.   It seems to me that is a crucial bit of information if you are intending on suing WD for misleading the consumer.  Because if an update to either the firmware or freenas comes out that fixes that issue then all you have is a drive that takes longer to rebuild, but works as intended and advertised every way.   I think that should fail in the courts,  but as I pointed out before, the courts don't find in favor of facts, they find in favor of the best argument or feeling. 

Except for QNAP as well, and like I said if QNAP in that video test was not using ZFS then WD Reds could make it much worse.

 

If WD releases a Firmware update that fixes the issue then great, but that isn't going to stop the suit, it'll make it harder sure but many questions that justify it are still left unanswered.

 

In order to have a drive that works as intended rebuild times need to be relatively equal to that of a CMR drive because WD is advertising "Designed for RAID environments", and as stated if the test with QNAP isn't using ZFS WD has already technically and legally speaking failed to uphold that claim because even a 25% increase in time because of a new platter tech where the old platter tech can still be used (aka no benefit to the end user, no real cost to manufacture either since they are still making them) is unacceptable when it comes to recovery of data where faster is better.

 

You clearly don't understand how courts work, because if courts never looked at facts, if jury never looked at facts murders would never go to prison even if their dna was all over the victims body and all innocent people would instead. Right now WD has their DNA all over the place, with many many unknowns to everyone. More tests need to be made, less assumptions. I literally don't care about market shares and all that what I do care about is having safe data, spending 30-60% longer to recover a lost drive isn't safe, let alone 9 days. If WD can fix it they might be able to convince the suit to be dropped, but WD has to fix it not ZFS not freenas, as even tho it is technically a zfs issue WD brought a drive in to a market that negatively affects users because of that issue, freenas didn't ask for it not did the creators of zfs. CMR worked equally for all platforms before SMR so it is to be assumed SMR should hold to at least those standards, which it has not.

 

Now I do have a theory as to why WD has pushed so many SMR drives to the world, apparently they are not doing so well financially, so they might be trying to cut corners in saving money.

https://www.westerndigital.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/2020/2020-01-30-western-digital-announces-financial-results-for-second-quarter-fiscal-year-2020#:~:text=Western Digital Announces Financial Results for Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2020,-SAN JOSE%2C CA&text=Western Digital Corp.,or (%240.47) per share.

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Just now, Egg-Roll said:

Still different, because company v company typically doesn't concern consumer rights. Where as a consumer v company usually does. The Monsanto case you just refered too is not the one you linked, also which one those people have had so many...

Why is it different?  I have demonstrated with links to actual cases both corporate v corporate and consumer v corporate where the outcome was ridiculous.

 

Just now, Egg-Roll said:

You linked a link to pre built market shares, not actual market shares.

The companies you linked to are the following in order shown:

  1. Synology - Prebuilt
  2. QNAP - Prebuilt
  3. HPE - Prebuilt
  4. Netapp - Prebuilt/Cloud
  5. Dell - Prebuilt
  6. EMC - ? Only found Dell EMC
  7. Netgear - Prebuilt
  8. Thecus - Prebuilt

What do they have all in common with WD Red? Nothing. Why? Those numbers are based on companies 50+ in one part of the world, in a country with half the population of Canada. WD reds while could go into those setups, those numbers you gave do not represent the clientele of WD Reds, more specifically because those numbers don't actually state what those places bought, one could argue they only bought units exceeding the suggest number of 8 by WD themselves. Something not stated in the article.

They are relevant because that is the reds target sales demographic.  Like it or not. 

 

Just now, Egg-Roll said:

It also wouldn't be a large assumption a significant portion goes to home sales, because no business will buy 5400 RPM drives for backups less conserving power. However those companies would then see the Cloud as a good alternative over having a onsite server. The 5400 RPM units are very likely targeted to users that do not fall under the 50+ category, because if you have 50 employees and need a server you are not going to be buying a 5400RPM drive due to speed limitations.

I would like some figures on that before I just take it as read.  Of all the stats I could find there was nothing that pointed to a large DIY market for those drives.

 

Just now, Egg-Roll said:

All you did was find a tiny sample of the world and used it as fact for the whole world. Reality is for a corporations with 50+ people spending the extra $100-200 or so per drive on the extra quality of drives, or if buying Reds the $50 per drive more for Pros are a better and likely choice to be had. Where as if you are a family person looking for a server for home media with a budget, what would you get? Hence the SMR drives are targeted towards home and tiny tiny companies with no more than 15 people, hell 15 could still be too big in some cases.

Rinse & repeat.  find me some figures that say otherwise or are more conclusive and well discuss that instead.

 

Just now, Egg-Roll said:

Here's the real question for you to answer, which you can't not because it doesn't exist, but because the numbers are unclear or withheld. How many Reds go into prebuilt units for corporation use vs house/small company use, and how many Reds go into home made solutions like unraid freenas etc.

 

As I have said multiple times already,  don't assume what you can't find evidence for,  I have found several articles that talk about the size of the NAS industry and they only look at prebuilts because the freenas/DIY segment is so small it is hard to compare.  I'm not sure why that is a point of contention, without something more substantial than what I have found by way of numbers you can't just assume something different. 

 

 

Just now, Egg-Roll said:

You won't find any major publisher to hand you that information, you know why? Because I bet WD doesn't even know, else they would have likely never issued SMR NAS drives in the first place. That's the point, what we know as a whole isn't what is equal to Red, Reds have their own unique market. Those who are willing to buy a $1000-4000+ unit are not that market. The people who are buying the $500 or less units are within the market for Reds, so are people who are using old hardware (bought or not) and converting it into a NAS. I know for a fact I would be buying Reds if I didn't start shucking, not because I want cheap but because I have had 5400RPM reds and they are still kicking.

 

You failed to see my point, WD clearly failed to do market research or ignored it.

I think that is a pretty bold claim in assuming a global company didn't do it's market research.

 

Just now, Egg-Roll said:

Why else would they have put SMR into NAS drives while no one else has, and one clearly stating they wouldn't? You are once again going based on biased facts that mean nothing for this situation. My windows update situation is Windows killing computers because they had specific hardware in it AND blaming the hardware, not because Microsoft is becoming less competent in their updates. My example is what you are saying, WD pushed a drive and broke a otherwise functional software and you are blaming the software. That's my point, no SMR ZFS works normally like everything else, so who is in the wrong here? The software makers who use ZFS or the hardware company that never bothered to test ZFS based software? Remember being in a market means you need to test every aspect possible. Seeing as buying a NAS enclosure of 8 or less bays (typically companies will give it for free) and requesting keys for testing is not out of the question and typically would be widely accepted, for your "excuse" of being a small % isn't even remotely a good one for WD.

 

First it's not objective, it is fact a failure will happen. Second the Reds with SMR are no cheaper than the CMR counterparts, nor do they offer more space since the SMR drives range from 2-6TB. The issue is you want rebuilds to take less time, not more, by selling a product that does just that shows you do no care about your customers.

 

Like I have said time and time again SMR is great in NAS for day to day, but in rebuilds is where it shows its weakness. If WD was able to remove that weakness then the court case would have no merit, however as it stands depending how they go with the suit WD is screwed.

 

Except for QNAP as well, and like I said if QNAP in that video test was not using ZFS then WD Reds could make it much worse.

 

If WD releases a Firmware update that fixes the issue then great, but that isn't going to stop the suit, it'll make it harder sure but many questions that justify it are still left unanswered.

 

In order to have a drive that works as intended rebuild times need to be relatively equal to that of a CMR drive because WD is advertising "Designed for RAID environments", and as stated if the test with QNAP isn't using ZFS WD has already technically and legally speaking failed to uphold that claim because even a 25% increase in time because of a new platter tech where the old platter tech can still be used (aka no benefit to the end user, no real cost to manufacture either since they are still making them) is unacceptable when it comes to recovery of data where faster is better.

I really am having trouble keeping up with this conversation.  It's has gone from what are known fact into a whole lot of assumptions and suppositions regarding motive and intent etc.   You can;t form an argument surrounding false advertising based on supposition and motive.

 

Just now, Egg-Roll said:

You clearly don't understand how courts work, because if courts never looked at facts,

Again, go and look at the court cases I have mentioned, facts were absolutely ignored.  

 

Just now, Egg-Roll said:

if jury never looked at facts murders would never go to prison even if their dna was all over the victims body and all innocent people would instead.

DO I need to remind you of the mcdonalds case,  one juror was interviewed after the case and said that even though McDonald's should have won, the reason they found them guilty was based on their attitude and not the facts of the case. they literally ignored expert advice and facts surrounding the relevant laws.

Just now, Egg-Roll said:

Right now WD has their DNA all over the place, with many many unknowns to everyone. More tests need to be made, less assumptions. I literally don't care about market shares and all that what I do care about is having safe data, spending 30-60% longer to recover a lost drive isn't safe, let alone 9 days. If WD can fix it they might be able to convince the suit to be dropped, but WD has to fix it not ZFS not freenas, as even tho it is technically a zfs issue WD brought a drive in to a market that negatively affects users because of that issue, freenas didn't ask for it not did the creators of zfs. CMR worked equally for all platforms before SMR so it is to be assumed SMR should hold to at least those standards, which it has not.

 

Now I do have a theory as to why WD has pushed so many SMR drives to the world, apparently they are not doing so well financially, so they might be trying to cut corners in saving money.

https://www.westerndigital.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/2020/2020-01-30-western-digital-announces-financial-results-for-second-quarter-fiscal-year-2020#:~:text=Western Digital Announces Financial Results for Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2020,-SAN JOSE%2C CA&text=Western Digital Corp.,or (%240.47) per share.

 

Maybe they are suffering maybe they are pushing the enevelope, but in keeping witht he topic and not trying to derail from the legal issue,  The plaintiff still needs to prove that SMR is the root cause of any issues.

Grammar and spelling is not indicative of intelligence/knowledge.  Not having the same opinion does not always mean lack of understanding.  

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4 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

I would like to point out something to both of you, QNAP isn't exactly the best example to make any type of defense for SMR drive 🤣

https://www.qnap.com/en-us/compatibility/?device_category=3.5 hdd&brand=wd They litterally state it is OK to put Reds in a TS-2888X which is a 28 bay layout, which I guess is ok if all SSDs less the 8. However I did find one model that has 4 middle drives being surrounded by 8 other drives, which according to them is ok.

This actually has nothing to do with this issue at all, QNAP saying it's ok doesn't make it correct and if you got the disks through QNAP and they are going to warranty them then that is on them. This doesn't at all affect the SMR topic at all.

 

You were pointing out QNAP uses ZFS, well as I explained in better detail where that is happening and when. The above doesn't change that.

 

4 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

If QNAP was using ZFS during that test, which by the sounds of it may not have (they never stated) then there could have been a argument that the main issue is freenas and how it implements zfs.

Did you not read what I wrote, it is literally impossible to use QuTS therefore ZFS on those models of QNAP. None of them other than the 3 I linked to and the already existing enterprise ZFS models can use ZFS.

 

Edit:

Most people do not know how to correctly operate and maintain ZFS and the disk expansion limitations that currently exist with it actually make it a poor choice for most of these users who expect to grow the number of disks in their systems.

 

Also on the not quoted section about ZFS not being the one that need to fix it, that is simply utterly wrong. If it's a ZFS specific issue then only they can fix it. Now as I've said actually saying SMR was being used should have been done but purely on this point no, together yes, WD only no. If it has to come down to SMR can never be used with ZFS then that will just have to be the way it is and purchasing has to change, WD doesn't have to stop selling or using SMR on behalf of ZFS.

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1 hour ago, Egg-Roll said:

You linked a link to pre built market shares, not actual market shares.

Because like computer hardware sales DIY is actually extremely small, Dell could very well be selling more in a single quarter than all DIY sales over a year or even multiple years. The problem is it's much harder to capture DIY sales, if it was a trivial matter to include it in the graphs I would think it would be. There is very little data for any market sector and hardware component for DIY but as you get in to more professional sectors and business get larger DIY get even smaller (DIY storage server building is certainly smaller than DIY PC sales relative market share wise).

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2 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

It also wouldn't be a large assumption a significant portion goes to home sales, because no business will buy 5400 RPM drives for backups less conserving power. However those companies would then see the Cloud as a good alternative over having a onsite server. The 5400 RPM units are very likely targeted to users that do not fall under the 50+ category, because if you have 50 employees and need a server you are not going to be buying a 5400RPM drive due to speed limitations.

I hate to have to keep nit picking but this is wrong. Most small businesses operating small NAS's do in fact use 5400 RPM disks, not even just for backups, as low end NAS disks are generally 5400 RPM and when you purchase a NAS of these kinds that come with disks they come with 5400 RPM disks. Most of the 4 bay to 6 bay NAS's I've installed or existed already that I service used 5400 RPM disks apart from ones that had disks dating back to before 5400 RPM was used in the NAS market. These NAS's were also highly popular as backup targets for networks all the way up to 1500 users.

 

There really isn't that much of a performance difference between them as the workloads aren't high IOPs or long sustained transfers that exceed the OS buffers.

 

5400 RPM disk usage is actually much larger in the last few years due to the rise of SSDs, now each end of the spectrum makes the most sense and the middle grounds are pretty well irrelevant. 10K and 15K RPM SAS died years ago for the same reason.

 

Edit:

Btw SMR technology usage is here to stay and will get used more, irrespective of what Seagate is saying right now they will use it that I can guarantee. Pushing past the 20TB barrier simply requires it so market competition will require them to use it. Along with traditional types of SMR other future platter technologies are going to be using SMR as well as other methods, HAMR and HDMR. It simply is a case of CMR is coming to the end of it's days.

 

Seeing usage now isn't a surprise and neither is it that WD tried it in the most low risk market first, because if you think finding an issue like this under this situation was bad try it again but this time in multi million dollar storage systems for customers with enough buying power and reputation to really hurt you.

 

Like I've said before it doesn't make much sense to use SMR in smaller disks but you have to start somewhere and it likely made the most business sense for WD to start with WD Reds of those capacities.

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10 hours ago, leadeater said:

I hate to have to keep nit picking but this is wrong. Most small businesses operating small NAS's do in fact use 5400 RPM disks, not even just for backups, as low end NAS disks are generally 5400 RPM and when you purchase a NAS of these kinds that come with disks they come with 5400 RPM disks. Most of the 4 bay to 6 bay NAS's I've installed or existed already that I service used 5400 RPM disks apart from ones that had disks dating back to before 5400 RPM was used in the NAS market. These NAS's were also highly popular as backup targets for networks all the way up to 1500 users.

 

There really isn't that much of a performance difference between them as the workloads aren't high IOPs or long sustained transfers that exceed the OS buffers.

 

5400 RPM disk usage is actually much larger in the last few years due to the rise of SSDs, now each end of the spectrum makes the most sense and the middle grounds are pretty well irrelevant. 10K and 15K RPM SAS died years ago for the same reason.

 

Edit:

Btw SMR technology usage is here to stay and will get used more, irrespective of what Seagate is saying right now they will use it that I can guarantee. Pushing past the 20TB barrier simply requires it so market competition will require them to use it. Along with traditional types of SMR other future platter technologies are going to be using SMR as well as other methods, HAMR and HDMR. It simply is a case of CMR is coming to the end of it's days.

 

Seeing usage now isn't a surprise and neither is it that WD tried it in the most low risk market first, because if you think finding an issue like this under this situation was bad try it again but this time in multi million dollar storage systems for customers with enough buying power and reputation to really hurt you.

 

Like I've said before it doesn't make much sense to use SMR in smaller disks but you have to start somewhere and it likely made the most business sense for WD to start with WD Reds of those capacities.

I know you work in the industry so what you say is fair game, I've been far too busy to do much in the way of reading/research sadly.

 

I know SMR is here to stay however I don't think it should be in situations like the one WD put them in. Sure it's technically a small market however what all 3 companies have done is unacceptable by releasing SMR out w/o letting anyone knowing, consumer grade is one thing, but people should still be able to know about it. For 20TB drives yes I would expect them to be SMR for now. That said why would anyone buy a 20TB SMR when there is a 18TB CMR? Remember SMR has penalties because of the nature of design whereas the CMR drive does not.

 

That said I don't think CMR is going to die, at least not till SMR fixes its issues, or software figures out how to work around them to the point where in all aspects SMR and CMR are equal at least.

 

Truth be told SMR in a 2TB drive makes sense so does having it in every drive in 2TB increments, because in a 2TB drive it means 1 platter not 2 in a 4TB it means 2 not 3, etc. Based on knowing WD is in a financial crunch it makes sense for them to throw all drives possible into SMR land to save money, however throwing them into consumer grade like everyone else no one will likely notice for day to day use, but because they are in a financial crunch I think that is why they proceeded to introduce SMR into the NAS line. Personally I'm surprised they haven't done it to Blacks as well, or Purples for that matter, where no one will likely see issues or care.

 

Funny thing of all this is I actually got bored this morning and read the suits, while after reading the US one I don't think they have a hope in hell in winning based on the direction they have taken it. However the US suit did provide me a very interesting link...

Typically NAS won't see negative effects stated in the video however every setup is different, esp when companies use the drives for large projects that need continuous saving. Small market in that sense but still falls under the "do not use smr".

 

Now the other suit in Canada actually has a higher likelihood of winning, because I only caught 2 issues with the documentation, beyond that the Canadian suit seems to be going after them for the fact that they hid the change removing consumers rights to make educated choices. One common issue in both suits are calling SMR inferior to CMR and (I think the canadian one) going as far as claiming they NAS units are equal to the non NAS units which I know for a fact is not ture at least firmware and extra hardware wise which would justify the increase in costs. However that brings up another question, will non-NAS SMR perform just as well as NAS SMR?

 

Synology to date is the only one that doesn't seem to care about SMR/CMR based on rebuild times with data given so far. To me SMR has its place, and that place is in long term storage write once, or stupidly large capacities where CMR can't go, yet. Won't lie I'm interested in HAMR and HDMR, both have potential, however the current state of SMR doesn't belong in a nas system, they may work great day to day and they should work in rebuild so long as the drive that is being built is not a smr itself.

 

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/western-digitals-smr-disks-arent-great-but-theyre-not-garbage/

To me any significant increase in time (article shows a 30% increase) due to a new platter tech is unacceptable, however that said this article is also only a small fragment of testing that needs to be done, however so far all results have been in favour of the claims of drives being bad for rebuilding. Remember 100 minutes more is still 100 minutes more, or nearly 2 more hours.

 

The interesting part of that whole article is not the article it self but one comment...

Quote

To WDs credit they actually agreed to replace the drives after I logged a complaint. I just received the CMR replacements yesterday. But it shouldn't be necessary. Really.

You know you fucked up bad when you willingly hand over CMR drives. TBH the best thing WD can do now to get the suits dropped and under that condition: stop producing WD SMR Reds issue a voluntary recall where they will swap out for CMR variants (apparently already doing based on that comment, tho they were a worse case) and bring out a new line for SMR like they should have done in the first place. This makes it so consumers can chose SMR to CMR and WD Reds go back to being all CMR, however reading the Canadian suit that suit might not be dropped with those terms as it might not be "good enough" due to the direction the suit is being taken. So the real question for WD here is what is cheaper? Going threw the class action suits hoping to win (US will likely be just that, the way it's worded is just pure nonsense unless there is a section of the law I am unaware about), or issue a recall that many will likely not do anyways and make a new line for SMR? WD same with Seagate have kept SMR/CMR drives separate in enterprise drives based on models, however Seagate did switch their Archive drives to Exos 5E8 which could cause confusion however the data sheet is obviously stating both archive and SMR. So why treat the rest differently?

 

13 hours ago, leadeater said:

Because like computer hardware sales DIY is actually extremely small, Dell could very well be selling more in a single quarter than all DIY sales over a year or even multiple years. The problem is it's much harder to capture DIY sales, if it was a trivial matter to include it in the graphs I would think it would be. There is very little data for any market sector and hardware component for DIY but as you get in to more professional sectors and business get larger DIY get even smaller (DIY storage server building is certainly smaller than DIY PC sales relative market share wise).

No doubt, my point is regardless how small it is, it is still part of a user base correct? I'm sure WD knows the community exists and the time it takes to build 1 or 2 benchmark units to test the one or 2 most popular DIY setups isn't that financially demanding, set up plug in run scripts to fill drives yank one out put new one in walk away, the CEOs secretary could prob do it on their morning coffee run kind of deal. Or think of it like issuing hardware claiming it works with Mac Windows and Linux (aka the "NAS" part of the Red line), however because Linux needs you to install something you skip it just to find out that it doesn't work with the most popular kernel but works with everything else that is not based on it. That is what WD did, they seemingly ignored a tiny % of users because too small and claiming it will work, not because it would be financially impracticable but because they see it as too small to matter.

 

Now how well is that "too small to matter" working out for them? If freenas has a clientele base of 50,000 people, that's 50,000 now potentially angry people around the world, 50,000 potential people to cause financial harm esp considering how WD did their SMR move in secrete in a sector at least 1 of their competitors have stated they would never do. Now the issue with the current situation is now everyone is looking into rebuild times, and those are not looking good in many cases (like I said only Synology is handing out the IDGAF, everywhere else is having issues to some degree) or are weary of buying WD products, because if they snuck in SMR into a NAS product w/o announcing where else could they have done it and not announce it?

 

I personally would love to test this, however there are 2 issues. First the pandemic has put a budget on my spending habit, making the "stupid spending" all but go away, even if someone was to ship me 15 WD Reds SMR for me to test I can't because my stupid LSI SAS cards became a no show and had to get a refund and rebuy from someone else. Second it's not my job, it's WD to do proper testing before releasing something, so imo let them fall. Like I have said only Synology (known) is the one raising the IDGAF flag, QNAP even without ZFS had issues (tho with the new ransomware attack one prob shouldn't buy them anyways) Raid 6 in the article above. I look at numbers in terms of what matter, so if people want to say SMR is great w/o (for day to day use, yes, but everything dies at some point) displaying the data that matters for the when it happens then they can do that. However I've stated time and time again only one system has not cared about drive tech, but that is only one, so far you have 3 at least that don't do equal but suffer at least a 30% penalty in rebuild times. That's 30% longer a drive in a nas has to work, it's not like the SMR drive is telling its buddies to take it slow those drives are still likely working hard trying to push data to the drive, no coffee breaks till it's done. So faster = Better.

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6 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

  That is what WD did, they seemingly ignored a tiny % of users because too small and claiming it will work, not because it would be financially impracticable but because they see it as too small to matter.

 

Now how well is that "too small to matter" working out for them?

This moves into a different issue all together,  now the debate is being shifted from "SMR is the problem" to "WD should have tested their drives in every possible end use scenario".  What I was trying to explain earlier is that if the judge decides to hold them accountable for not testing in a DIY/modified and uncontrollable end use case, then that opens the way for everyone to sue MS, Apple and Google every time an update breaks/bricks a product.  Because the same argument applies, they should have tested in every end use scenario.  

 

At some point we have to accept that some end use cases are just too small and/or numerous or beyond the ability to adequately test and account for. No manufacturer can absolutely account for systems that are modified/built by the user, the best they can do is send out the product to be tested by enough end users in hopes to catch as many issues as possible (introducing the insider program). 

 

So I don't think it is a matter of financial viability but of actual ability.  I also don't think they will win in any country because the precedent it sets means that manufacturers will either become liable for everything regardless whether they can account for it or not (as I said above) or manufacturers will narrow down the specific end use definitions to the point you won't have a product warranty unless you put your red into a synology XXXX or an Asus XXXX and so on.  Imagine not being able to get a warranty on any HDD because you are running freenas? It will be like domestic car warranties being void because you are driving them as a taxi.    This is a very possible outcome if this case succeeds. At least currently if you bought a red and it failed in freenas you can get a refund or swap it for another drive that will. 

 

 

Grammar and spelling is not indicative of intelligence/knowledge.  Not having the same opinion does not always mean lack of understanding.  

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2 hours ago, mr moose said:

This moves into a different issue all together,  now the debate is being shifted from "SMR is the problem" to "WD should have tested their drives in every possible end use scenario".  What I was trying to explain earlier is that if the judge decides to hold them accountable for not testing in a DIY/modified and uncontrollable end use case, then that opens the way for everyone to sue MS, Apple and Google every time an update breaks/bricks a product.  Because the same argument applies, they should have tested in every end use scenario.  

 

At some point we have to accept that some end use cases are just too small and/or numerous or beyond the ability to adequately test and account for. No manufacturer can absolutely account for systems that are modified/built by the user, the best they can do is send out the product to be tested by enough end users in hopes to catch as many issues as possible (introducing the insider program). 

 

So I don't think it is a matter of financial viability but of actual ability.  I also don't think they will win in any country because the precedent it sets means that manufacturers will either become liable for everything regardless whether they can account for it or not (as I said above) or manufacturers will narrow down the specific end use definitions to the point you won't have a product warranty unless you put your red into a synology XXXX or an Asus XXXX and so on.  Imagine not being able to get a warranty on any HDD because you are running freenas? It will be like domestic car warranties being void because you are driving them as a taxi.    This is a very possible outcome if this case succeeds. At least currently if you bought a red and it failed in freenas you can get a refund or swap it for another drive that will. 

 

 

I still think SMR is the problem, because w/o it all systems would work well within margin. You throw in SMR that is when things get weird, now if WD created a new product line as they should have then that would fall onto the consumer buying said drive.

 

I agree testing every piece of software is impossible, however testing the most popular one isn't. That is what WD failed to do, or did but thought it wasn't worth noting, if that's the case any finding is always worth noting. For this instance it isn't exactly hardware built by the end user causing the problem, it is the clash between SMR and the NAS software and as I've pointed out QNAP not using ZFS also has issues proving it is not just the DIY sector.

 

WD will likely win the USA because that felt like a rage comment more than anything, where as the Canadian one (did you even read it? if not you should) isn't really going after WD because the drive is a pile of steaming poop, but because they forced it onto users and the fact it is not operating equally with CMR units.

 

I don't think if Canada wins (or some miracle US) against WD it will mean the end of warranties as you put it, it will mean the death of SMR as known in the WD Red line, or the death of the line itself. However the issues at hand is the fact that so far WD has snuck in a drive (that is what they did) using a new(ish) platter tech that is currently proving to be worst than the old still produced tech. Numbers don't lie, if everyone else selling CMR drives and old CMR drives all provide similar numbers using the same setup, yet when you throw a SMR drive in times get extended anywhere from the currently known 30-???% it's not the the hardware or software, it's the drive.

 

Raid 6 30%

QNAP 50%?

and we all know the stupidity time of freenas...

 

Like I said I would love to test it myself as it would genuinely give me something to do some parts of the day when I get bored at home (no not why I'm here right now), but yay pandemic. Obviously results will vary that's going to happen all around but when people clearly show CMR vs SMR and the pattern is consistent across a large amount of devices including pre-built ones, it's no longer "software" or "hardware"(users side) only and could easily be seen as "victim blaming" (end user/maker of the product built around CMR tech) in claiming as such. Like I said I don't expect them to test everything, instead test the popular one or 2, it doesn't take long and those devs would likely hand them a key for doing so, for prebuilts it would be easier for them to send a case or 2 of drives for them to test and return the results and decide if (or which ones) the drives would work.

Like I stated WD basically threw Linux on their product without testing to make sure it worked with Ubuntu (that still is the popular one right?) and it turns out it doesn't. AKA they put the word NAS never stating pre-built models only, and failed to test the most popular NAS OS out there (freenas). Like I said for Canada they are more going after consumer rights along with the fact the drive in some cases are infierrior to CMR drives, I think Canada has a fighting chance of winning, will they get everything they want? No, no one usually does, will Canadians see a refund of somesort? Maybe, at the very least if WD loses in the Canadian courts they could face heavy fines, and force potential legislation that could force the whole industry to change, and as we know when one country changes it's typically "easier" to go with it on a global scale. So in that sense you as a end user better hope at least that happens, because if legislation doesn't happen WD Seagate and Toshiba will likely start hiding their platter tech again in a year or so time.

 

The best thing for WD for now is to pray people stop testing their SMR drives or offer what I've suggested, because more people testing and more potential bad results that could easily be duplicated in less than a week becomes more evidence against them at least in Canada. Like I said the US suit sounded like a stupid rant going wa wa I got scammed...

 

Edit: I also forgot to mention this topic as well on Reddit. While not WD Reds nor technically NAS drives I found it interesting.

 

Wonder if WD Red SMR drives would fair better in that situation.

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https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/western-digitals-smr-disks-arent-great-but-theyre-not-garbage/2/

 

Quote

Conclusions


We want to be very clear: we agree with Seagate's Greg Belloni, who stated on the company's behalf that they "do not recommend SMR for NAS applications." At absolute best, SMR disks underperform significantly in comparison to CMR disks; at their worst, they can fall flat on their face so badly that they may be mistakenly detected as failed hardware.

 

With that said, we can see why Western Digital believed, after what we assume was a considerable amount of laboratory testing, that their disks would be "OK" for typical NAS usage. Although obviously slower than their Ironwolf competitors, they performed adequately both for conventional RAID rebuilds and for typical day-to-day NAS file-sharing workloads.

 

We were genuinely impressed with how well the firmware adapted itself to most workloads—this is a clear example of RFC 1925 2.(3) in action, but the thrust does appear sufficient to the purpose. Unfortunately, it would appear that Western Digital did not test ZFS, which a substantial minority of their customer base depends upon.

 

These tests may not be great news for either the American or Canadian class-action lawsuits currently underway against Western Digital, but they aren't the end of the line for those lawsuits, either. Even in the best case, the SMR models of WD Red underperform their earlier, non-SMR counterparts substantially—and consumers were not given clear notice of the downgrade.

 

If the same firmware was being used to make substantially larger drives available to consumers than would otherwise be possible, and the limitations of those drives were adequately explained, we would probably be gushing over its utility and function. Unfortunately, Western Digital has so far only chosen to use it to cut manufacturing costs on small disks, without even passing the savings along to the consumer.

 

You own the software that you purchase - Understanding software licenses and EULAs

 

"We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the american public believes is false" - William Casey, CIA Director 1981-1987

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40 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

I still think SMR is the problem, because w/o it all systems would work well within margin. You throw in SMR that is when things get weird, now if WD created a new product line as they should have then that would fall onto the consumer buying said drive.

 

I agree testing every piece of software is impossible, however testing the most popular one isn't. That is what WD failed to do, or did but thought it wasn't worth noting,

They work on the major vendors NAS systems.  So far the only one that doesn't work is the freenas systems, how is that failing to test on the most popular one?  Clearly synology, Dlink, Qnap, etc are far more popular than freenas.

 

40 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

if that's the case any finding is always worth noting. For this instance it isn't exactly hardware built by the end user causing the problem, it is the clash between SMR and the NAS software and as I've pointed out QNAP not using ZFS also has issues proving it is not just the DIY sector.

I don't follow your logic here,  so fare freenas seems to be the only nas using zfs so pointing out qnap doesn't means what?

 

40 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

WD will likely win the USA because that felt like a rage comment more than anything, where as the Canadian one (did you even read it? if not you should) isn't really going after WD because the drive is a pile of steaming poop, but because they forced it onto users and the fact it is not operating equally with CMR units.

The Canadian suit is going to require them to show how listing SMR is important.  Just claiming they didn't tell us is still not good enough.  Manufacturers change the underlying tech of products all the time and don't make mention of it. 

 

40 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

I don't think if Canada wins (or some miracle US) against WD it will mean the end of warranties as you put it, it will mean the death of SMR as known in the WD Red line, or the death of the line itself. However the issues at hand is the fact that so far WD has snuck in a drive (that is what they did) using a new(ish) platter tech that is currently proving to be worst than the old still produced tech. Numbers don't lie, if everyone else selling CMR drives and old CMR drives all provide similar numbers using the same setup, yet when you throw a SMR drive in times get extended anywhere from the currently known 30-???% it's not the the hardware or software, it's the drive.

 

Raid 6 30%

QNAP 50%?

and we all know the stupidity time of freenas...

That still comes down to fit for purpose.   do they work? yes,  do they do as advertised? yes are they performing better? not in all situations but in most they perform the same or a bit better.  So They are going to have to argue that one metric where they perform worse is enough to offset the better performance and same performance elsewhere on top of the capacity improvements.    This is not a case of I can point to a shit metric therefore it's false advertising,  It's a case of proving that labeling the drives as SMR would have resulted in a different outcome.    Labeling it SMR does not tell anyone how long the rebuild time takes, If you want to know that you have to look up yourself,  in which case you have obtained that information and the label did not help in any way. 

 

Or to put it another way,  you can choose drive A or drive B,  if you want to know which is better do you make assumptions from the specs or do you look at benchmarks?  The cache size can only give you so much of an idea how it will perform.  Having a large cache does not guarantee better performance does it. likewise if it was labeled SMR, that doesn't guarantee it will perform worse.  the only way to know how it will actually perform is to test it.   Ergo, it is going to be hard to prove that labeling the drive SMR actually gives the consumer any information that would change the outcome. 

 

40 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

Like I said I would love to test it myself as it would genuinely give me something to do some parts of the day when I get bored at home (no not why I'm here right now), but yay pandemic. Obviously results will vary that's going to happen all around but when people clearly show CMR vs SMR and the pattern is consistent across a large amount of devices including pre-built ones, it's no longer "software" or "hardware"(users side) only and could easily be seen as "victim blaming" (end user/maker of the product built around CMR tech) in claiming as such. Like I said I don't expect them to test everything, instead test the popular one or 2, it doesn't take long and those devs would likely hand them a key for doing so, for prebuilts it would be easier for them to send a case or 2 of drives for them to test and return the results and decide if (or which ones) the drives would work.

Like I stated WD basically threw Linux on their product without testing to make sure it worked with Ubuntu (that still is the popular one right?) and it turns out it doesn't. AKA they put the word NAS never stating pre-built models only, and failed to test the most popular NAS OS out there (freenas). Like I said for Canada they are more going after consumer rights along with the fact the drive in some cases are infierrior to CMR drives, I think Canada has a fighting chance of winning, will they get everything they want? No, no one usually does, will Canadians see a refund of somesort? Maybe, at the very least if WD loses in the Canadian courts they could face heavy fines, and force potential legislation that could force the whole industry to change, and as we know when one country changes it's typically "easier" to go with it on a global scale. So in that sense you as a end user better hope at least that happens, because if legislation doesn't happen WD Seagate and Toshiba will likely start hiding their platter tech again in a year or so time.

 

In the consumer law world home made stuff largely doesn't count.    No company can (or is expected to) guarantee their product in a home made device.   They do not need to make it known that DIY products are excluded.

 

40 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

The best thing for WD for now is to pray people stop testing their SMR drives or offer what I've suggested, because more people testing and more potential bad results that could easily be duplicated in less than a week becomes more evidence against them at least in Canada. Like I said the US suit sounded like a stupid rant going wa wa I got scammed...

Or as we have seen, the more people test the more they realize it's not that bad.

 

40 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

Edit: I also forgot to mention this topic as well on Reddit. While not WD Reds nor technically NAS drives I found it interesting.

Reddit is an echo chamber of blinkered people in my book.    Too many assumptions and accusations and not enough thought or evidence for most of the claims.  I don't even bother going there anymore. you may as well link a facebook or dailyfail post as evidence.

 

40 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

Wonder if WD Red SMR drives would fair better in that situation.

 

Assuming everything I have read is accurate so far, yes they would, being designed for that purpose unlike the cuda which are basically the most generic of drives in every way. (nothing against the cuda's I have them in my nas, I just don't expect them to do anything other than hold data).

 

 

Grammar and spelling is not indicative of intelligence/knowledge.  Not having the same opinion does not always mean lack of understanding.  

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1 hour ago, mr moose said:

They work on the major vendors NAS systems.  So far the only one that doesn't work is the freenas systems, how is that failing to test on the most popular one?  Clearly synology, Dlink, Qnap, etc are far more popular than freenas.

 

How is a 30%+ increase in rebuilds called working? In that sense then sure SMR works GREAT on freenas as well as RAID 6, because OBVIOUSLY time isn't an issue when your data is on the line... I thought the testing from the video where mixed drives rebuild, but apparently those are fine the horrid part of rebuilds is full FAX drives

image.thumb.png.3e2caa908f92441a0f1dc5551fb05917.png

 

Oh yea they work GREAT, don't they...

So while SMR won't impact old users, new users are going to be swimming up a fast flowing river when one dies, now won't they?

 

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Or to put it another way,  you can choose drive A or drive B,  if you want to know which is better do you make assumptions from the specs or do you look at benchmarks?  The cache size can only give you so much of an idea how it will perform.  Having a large cache does not guarantee better performance does it. likewise if it was labeled SMR, that doesn't guarantee it will perform worse.  the only way to know how it will actually perform is to test it.   Ergo, it is going to be hard to prove that labeling the drive SMR actually gives the consumer any information that would change the outcome. 

 

Ok, how does one get to choose A or B when the old A was CMR and the new A is now SMR? Also you are suggesting people to go out and buy a new drive to test it instead of entrusting the company making claims it will work just as well or what is assumed by the community to work equally like CMR or better. Sure SMR works fairly good and sometimes better than CMR, however the issue isn't really day to day use with SMR, it's when a drive fails.

 

Labeling on the drive SMR/CMR would actually disolve any liablility which is now on all drive manufactures heads now, more so on WD.

 

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

In the consumer law world home made stuff largely doesn't count.    No company can (or is expected to) guarantee their product in a home made device.   They do not need to make it known that DIY products are excluded.

 

Read the suit will you... Stop assuming.

Here's a link for you to make it easier for you to read: http://www.westerndigitalclassaction.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Western-Digital-FILED_NOCC-22-May-2020.pdf

Reality is if you sell a drive to a consumer IT COUNTS! That's the whole point of selling internal drives by themselves! If WD didn't want the issue they should have stated "these drives are for purpose built NAS units", however they didn't now did they?

 

All someone needs to do for #29/30/33 in the Canadian suit is to grab a bunch of SMR consumer grade drives raid them and compare them to the results of the equivalent to Red SMR. If equal or within tolerance WD has then technically broke that law. There is more to that(NASware, extra tech in the drive etc), that could give them an escape goat but overall that is all that is needed to make WDs life harder.

#31/32 WD can't escape, simply put because they failed to mention SMR on the drive or datasheet. They will lose that one, question is will they get hit with a fine, walk or worst?

Now after quickly going threw is again I did notice they too are trying for Fraud, however un 380(2) which states:
 

Quote

Affecting public market
(2)Every one who, by deceit, falsehood or other fraudulent means, whether or not it is a false pretence within the meaning of this Act, with intent to defraud, affects the public market price of stocks, shares, merchandise or anything that is offered for sale to the public is guilty of an indictable offence.

Here's the thing the direction of the overall case in at least Canada WD will actually have to prove their intent was not to defraud threw deceit. That said even if won the most people would get really is the difference between WD Blues and Reds based on that front (or prorated). Equally because WDs are typically a few bucks more than Seagates...

 

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Or as we have seen, the more people test the more they realize it's not that bad.

 

No... Like I said 30% is a bad margin to call good, sure it's only 100 minutes more (in the link above), but that is still 100 minutes of unsafe data. If the drives are spinning and heads are moving the risk is still there for 100 more minutes. Like I said no coffee breaks till it's done. 

Mixed rebuild times for both QNAP and Synology in that video are really equal, it's for users using all SMR drives where it becomes a massive issue, aka someone buying a new NAS today along with WD Reds. So by saying all's good because it doesn't affect you personally isn't not what the suits are about nor what the laws about. If you can't buy and build any NAS using SMR drives w/o seeing increased rebuild times then they are not adequate for the setup. Now are the?

Pure SMR drives took 3.5-7.5 hours longer for that video vs mixed. Not good at all.

 

Reading someone saying "it's ok" and actually looking at numbers are 2 completely different things. The person writing that article could say something like "blah blah blah, you're still going to think I'm talking... Blah, jokes on you I'm eating my lunch now so you get you hear Nom Nom Nom, btw don't bother looking at the charts the drives are 24k solid gold, go buy them the gold is worth far more than what you are paying", does that mean it's true when the numbers clearly don't state that? People will say what they need to to get media attention. 30% increase isn't ok by any standard, less that 30% is performance, which it isn't.

 

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Reddit is an echo chamber of blinkered people in my book.    Too many assumptions and accusations and not enough thought or evidence for most of the claims.  I don't even bother going there anymore. you may as well link a facebook or dailyfail post as evidence.

 

And in this case that is your own failure. Both OP and one other person both have all SMR setups both are fine with them, both also have seen longer than sanity should allow performance issues during stressful tasks. Also it is on Synology, not Datahorders. I understand the hate towards Reddit, but that is still where a lot of information gets posted, mostly because when information gets posted it's usually via issues and one needs a fast reply, you just have to be smart and look past all the shit.

 

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

Assuming everything I have read is accurate so far, yes they would, being designed for that purpose unlike the cuda which are basically the most generic of drives in every way. (nothing against the cuda's I have them in my nas, I just don't expect them to do anything other than hold data).

 

It would be interesting to see no? I do think NASware will be of help but all the other fancy extra internal hardware that justifies the name isn't going to be useful since those are more safety features being shoved inside a box with tons of drives near by.

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20 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

How is a 30%+ increase in rebuilds called working? In that sense then sure SMR works GREAT on freenas as well as RAID 6, because OBVIOUSLY time isn't an issue when your data is on the line... I thought the testing from the video where mixed drives rebuild, but apparently those are fine the horrid part of rebuilds is full FAX drives

image.thumb.png.3e2caa908f92441a0f1dc5551fb05917.png

 

Oh yea they work GREAT, don't they...

So while SMR won't impact old users, new users are going to be swimming up a fast flowing river when one dies, now won't they?

It works, I didn't say it worked at the same speed. A tractor won't get you to LA from NY as fast as a viper, but it will still get you there.   And people are still treating that one metric as if it is the only metric.

 

20 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

Ok, how does one get to choose A or B when the old A was CMR and the new A is now SMR? Also you are suggesting people to go out and buy a new drive to test it instead of entrusting the company making claims it will work just as well or what is assumed by the community to work equally like CMR or better. Sure SMR works fairly good and sometimes better than CMR, however the issue isn't really day to day use with SMR, it's when a drive fails.

Talk about over complicating the issue.  When you buy a new product you look at the benchmarks for to know how they perform, you don't look at the spec label and assume how it will.     Next time you buy a GPU are you going to go of the number of cuda cores or are you going to look at benchmarks?   Labeling the drive as SMR gives the customer no useful information regarding rebuild times.   The only way you know there is a difference is because you have looked at benchmarks and testing. 

 

20 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

Labeling on the drive SMR/CMR would actually disolve any liablility which is now on all drive manufactures heads now, more so on WD.

So knowing it is SMR tells you how fast it will rebuild?  no it doesn't, only a test and comparison will do that. 

20 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

Read the suit will you... Stop assuming.

What assumption?

20 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

Here's a link for you to make it easier for you to read: http://www.westerndigitalclassaction.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Western-Digital-FILED_NOCC-22-May-2020.pdf

Reality is if you sell a drive to a consumer IT COUNTS! That's the whole point of selling internal drives by themselves! If WD didn't want the issue they should have stated "these drives are for purpose built NAS units", however they didn't now did they?

And following that logic windows should only be advertised as for prebuilt computers.    You are not seeing how that argument is flawed from a consumer law perspective.  You are literally expecting a company to somehow verify their products work in home made solutions or specifically rule out their use in that scenario.   This has exactly the same effect as them not warranting the device for anything other than prebuilt NAS systems.

 

20 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

All someone needs to do for #29/30/33 in the Canadian suit is to grab a bunch of SMR consumer grade drives raid them and compare them to the results of the equivalent to Red SMR. If equal or within tolerance WD has then technically broke that law. There is more to that(NASware, extra tech in the drive etc), that could give them an escape goat but overall that is all that is needed to make WDs life harder.

29: It's already been proven that they do in fact recover in a rebuild from a disk failure.   There are several videos showing this.

30: one metric is slower the rest is within spit or better.  + the improved capacity, what's there to prove?

33: how is it grossly overpriced?  that one is the worst stretch of all of them.

 

 

 

20 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

#31/32 WD can't escape, simply put because they failed to mention SMR on the drive or datasheet. They will lose that one, question is will they get hit with a fine, walk or worst?

Now after quickly going threw is again I did notice they too are trying for Fraud, however un 380(2) which states:
 

31:They first have to prove that being SMR is in fact a problem before not stating it can even be considered a problem.  Given so far they work as advertised this is going to be hard.

32:The drives work as advertised, This entire claim rests on knowing about SMR giving the consumer more information. As I said before they are going to have to prove that SMR by itself can be used to predict the performance of a drive before claiming not listing it results in consumer ignorance.  You can't determine performance from cache size, sata throughput, magnet type, so how are they going to prove SMR is any different?

 

 

20 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

Here's the thing the direction of the overall case in at least Canada WD will actually have to prove their intent was not to defraud threw deceit. That said even if won the most people would get really is the difference between WD Blues and Reds based on that front (or prorated). Equally because WDs are typically a few bucks more than Seagates...

Deceit is going to be very hard to prove seeing as all the customers have seen is that the new drives rebuild slower and nothing else.   And even then this only became an issue for them after someone else had an issue and there was some hard testing. 

 

20 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

No... Like I said 30% is a bad margin to call good, sure it's only 100 minutes more (in the link above), but that is still 100 minutes of unsafe data. If the drives are spinning and heads are moving the risk is still there for 100 more minutes. Like I said no coffee breaks till it's done. 

Mixed rebuild times for both QNAP and Synology in that video are really equal, it's for users using all SMR drives where it becomes a massive issue, aka someone buying a new NAS today along with WD Reds. So by saying all's good because it doesn't affect you personally isn't not what the suits are about nor what the laws about. If you can't buy and build any NAS using SMR drives w/o seeing increased rebuild times then they are not adequate for the setup. Now are the?

Pure SMR drives took 3.5-7.5 hours longer for that video vs mixed. Not good at all.

 

You keep going on one single metric.  Rebuild times is not the only metric in these drives.  99% of the drives use is reading and writing data from a network.  large and small files.  For 99% of the time these drives are in use they are performing exactly as expected from the marketing.   When a drive fails and they need to rebuild they will rebuild,  it just takes longer than the old drives used to.   Stop trying to make out a 1% of the time performance degradation is larger than everything else.

 

20 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

Reading someone saying "it's ok" and actually looking at numbers are 2 completely different things. The person writing that article could say something like "blah blah blah, you're still going to think I'm talking... Blah, jokes on you I'm eating my lunch now so you get you hear Nom Nom Nom, btw don't bother looking at the charts the drives are 24k solid gold, go buy them the gold is worth far more than what you are paying", does that mean it's true when the numbers clearly don't state that? People will say what they need to to get media attention. 30% increase isn't ok by any standard, less that 30% is performance, which it isn't.

What does that even mean?

30% on it's own is shit, no one is saying other wise,  what I am saying is that the drives perform within spit or better than their older models 99% of the time.  rebuilds is just one part and frankly shouldn't happen that often that the rebuild is even a problem.  I mean we are literally talking about maybe what? 20 extra hours a year for a decent size NAS.   Knowing whether the device is SMR or not does not change the facts surrounding the product.  And the best you can claim is that knowing it has SMR might make you ask how long the rebuild is for those once a year events?   Given WD has already offered them a refund/replacement putting all this into perspective makes the case look stupid.  Again, some lawyer is getting their new merc out of this while some dumb consumer enables them to screw the industry up a gain for the rest of us.

 

20 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

And in this case that is your own failure. Both OP and one other person both have all SMR setups both are fine with them, both also have seen longer than sanity should allow performance issues during stressful tasks. Also it is on Synology, not Datahorders. I understand the hate towards Reddit, but that is still where a lot of information gets posted, mostly because when information gets posted it's usually via issues and one needs a fast reply, you just have to be smart and look past all the shit.

If people in reddit weren't morons I'd pay a bit more attention, but I am not going to take anecdotal evidence from a forum full of echo's.  That's not my failure, that's them behaving in such a way that they lose credibility.  This world is moving to fast for me to waste time trying to investigate which forum posts are true and which ones are BS.  When the majority of a forum is posting rubbish (like facebook) I just put the whole thing in the bin, we don't need that kind of information source making matters more confusing.

 

 

20 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

It would be interesting to see no? I do think NASware will be of help but all the other fancy extra internal hardware that justifies the name isn't going to be useful since those are more safety features being shoved inside a box with tons of drives near by.

I'll wait with abated breath.  I see this thing dying down and being a big nothing in the community in a few months.  But the ramifications mught ripple on for a while.  Either the people that work on ZFS or WD will fix the issue with that, freenas will have patches that catch it up to the others in rebuild times.  Then WD will improve DM SMR to the point there is no performance difference.  What will happen in the meantime is that we might end up with more expensive drives in that range as all the manufacturers deal with capacity versus performance issues.  Everyone wants more capacity, faster drives and the NAS market is growing exponentially.  Therefore with SMR, WD and seagate (for all their wax lyrical machinations ATM) won't have an option but to go SMR.  

Grammar and spelling is not indicative of intelligence/knowledge.  Not having the same opinion does not always mean lack of understanding.  

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On 6/7/2020 at 3:28 AM, Egg-Roll said:

Sure it's technically a small market however what all 3 companies have done is unacceptable by releasing SMR out w/o letting anyone knowing, consumer grade is one thing, but people should still be able to know about it.

I don't think anyone has said they shouldn't have, the closest is make sure you know why you're asking because what people think they know about SMR or believe to be the situation isn't always the full story.

 

On 6/7/2020 at 3:28 AM, Egg-Roll said:

That said why would anyone buy a 20TB SMR when there is a 18TB CMR? Remember SMR has penalties because of the nature of design whereas the CMR drive does not.

Pretty much cost, I know these smaller disks using SMR don't actually make much sense neither cost less but SMR on larger capacities actually gets cheaper. WD is already sampling 20TB SMR disks in their higher end product lines and if that works out they'll start expanding out towards 40TB-50TB which you can't do with CMR.

 

Seagate is pining their hopes on HAMR being ready soon, or sooner than later, and is leaving SMR in their archive products for now. But the thing about HAMR with the much larger capacities is that is actually also using SMR, however with the heat assisted technology with that the performance is less meh. A 32TB HAMR disk is 45% cheaper than a 16TB CMR (per GB I would likely assume as not properly mentioned, #marketing).

 

I think HAMR is taking longer to be market ready than projected and it's also possible WD's progress is slower than Seagate's, no idea on that. But I think WD is pushing for market share and revenue growth through short term capacity lead in the market per disk. That's what it looks like to me.

 

On 6/7/2020 at 3:28 AM, Egg-Roll said:

That said I don't think CMR is going to die, at least not till SMR fixes its issues, or software figures out how to work around them to the point where in all aspects SMR and CMR are equal at least.

Not at the 6TB and below mark, I don't see how the tiny margin would make any difference there and it would make sense to keep making CMR as you're not going to upgrade every facility to do all the new HDD tech all at once. There will be 6TB buyers for likely the next 5 years and anything other than CMR doesn't make any sense at these sizes.

 

Small capacity SMR belongs in laptop HDDs and external HDDs, or in literally the worst OEM PCs but no OS today on a new product should be installed on anything other than an SSD but not everyone seems to agree with that sadly.

 

Regardless of the technical points as far as the lawsuits go if they just stick to the non disclosure of product change they have the best shot at winning, granted a jury trial or not that is the most compelling argument and most effective in a jury trial.

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10 hours ago, mr moose said:

It works, I didn't say it worked at the same speed. A tractor won't get you to LA from NY as fast as a viper, but it will still get you there.   And people are still treating that one metric as if it is the only metric.

First off, a series of horses would be likely faster (depending on the tractor you have in mind), not to mention cheaper. Secondly that's a personal timeframe that has no consequences, the second you put a consequence in people will no longer want to use a tractor. The consequence in the NAS systems is the potential failure of a second disc. Hence a slow down that exceeds 10-15% isn't something I would call "working".

 

10 hours ago, mr moose said:

Talk about over complicating the issue.  When you buy a new product you look at the benchmarks for to know how they perform, you don't look at the spec label and assume how it will.     Next time you buy a GPU are you going to go of the number of cuda cores or are you going to look at benchmarks?   Labeling the drive as SMR gives the customer no useful information regarding rebuild times.   The only way you know there is a difference is because you have looked at benchmarks and testing. 

 

How is the inability to compare drives properly over complicated? If one uses CMR and is $10 cheaper (seagate) known to work in any solution vs a SMR drive that is known to cause delays in at least one environment, should you not have the right to know? That's not over complicating anything.

 

Labeling SMR on SMR drives would give the user the ability to look into the tech if so wished, and as stated would absolve WD from any claims. By not stating SMR on the drive/product page/datasheet they literally put themselves in a bad situation. If they stated SMR there would be no suit, because there would be no claims, well US would likely try, because they are sue happy over there...

 

11 hours ago, mr moose said:

So knowing it is SMR tells you how fast it will rebuild?  no it doesn't, only a test and comparison will do that. 

Right... However a quick (custom) google search shows FAX drives have been out since May/June last yearish with claims of them being released in March. One would only assume if WD did they proper thing and state that the new Reds where SMR people would have tested them sooner. We are in 1 year of release and now only getting tests, that is 1 year of people who didn't know, one year of people putting them in systems that may or may not work nicely in rebuild situations. Not to mention WD has been doing the same BS of not telling people back then up till April. (synology forum, you'll need to scroll down a bit)

 

11 hours ago, mr moose said:

And following that logic windows should only be advertised as for prebuilt computers.    You are not seeing how that argument is flawed from a consumer law perspective.  You are literally expecting a company to somehow verify their products work in home made solutions or specifically rule out their use in that scenario.   This has exactly the same effect as them not warranting the device for anything other than prebuilt NAS systems.

No, windows breaking because Microsoft is careless. Before 10 Windows rarely broke (except Vista), so one can't compare WD to MS. However when shit does go wrong unlike WD, MS tries their damndest to fix it asap.

Personally I rather them voiding warranties for not putting them into prebuilts instead, esp once they made the switch. Would have stopped the issues in the their tracks now wouldn't it? Unless oh yea they also seem to suck in rebuilts too in various cases... Slower is not better, it's worst.

 

11 hours ago, mr moose said:

29: It's already been proven that they do in fact recover in a rebuild from a disk failure.   There are several videos showing this.

30: one metric is slower the rest is within spit or better.  + the improved capacity, what's there to prove?

33: how is it grossly overpriced?  that one is the worst stretch of all of them.

29: Actually 410 18(b) has no merit, however (c) does because SMRs do not always perform equally to their older tech CMR counterparts and previous generation of Reds.

"there is an implied condition that the goods will be durable for a reasonable period of time having regard to the use to which they would normally be put and to all the surrounding circumstances of the sale or lease"

30: Because the new Reds could be slower during rebuild times (testing is still too young to know for sure) compared to previous generations, the fact WD failed to mention this and likely knowing about the issue as well. Not to mention SMR drives are not getting a boost in capacity for price so that is a invalid point.

33: Like I stated that is a hard sell, esp once you put in the NASware etc, however for that claim to become true all one needs to do is hope a Raid x series of SMR Blues preforms just as well as a series of SMR Reds, and for shits and giggles CMR with the rebuild drive of being SMR for both types, because that's only fair. If the time is 0, WD would then have to provide a valid reason for the price increase, which can be done threw NASware, but if that test is done and the preform no worst, that is still a critical hit on WD even if successful to void out that part because that test then becomes public.

 

11 hours ago, mr moose said:

31:They first have to prove that being SMR is in fact a problem before not stating it can even be considered a problem.  Given so far they work as advertised this is going to be hard.

32:The drives work as advertised, This entire claim rests on knowing about SMR giving the consumer more information. As I said before they are going to have to prove that SMR by itself can be used to predict the performance of a drive before claiming not listing it results in consumer ignorance.  You can't determine performance from cache size, sata throughput, magnet type, so how are they going to prove SMR is any different?

31: Easy to prove, CMR drives rebuilt within a reasonable time between various systems, or at the very least consistent based on the software used to do the rebuild. However SMR in various cases have caused a increase in rebuild times, some not so much while others see a stupid amount. Just because they work day to day doesn't mean they work as they should in every situation. Since these drives are technically new they should not be failing yet, so the true potential issues may not have arised yet. So saying they work is really short sighted.

32: Actually your perception of #32 is all wrong, they are going after the fact that WD hid the information, however on that note after reading that law it does seem a little weird:

Quote

Unconscionable acts or practices

8   (1)An unconscionable act or practice by a supplier may occur before, during or after the consumer transaction.

(2)In determining whether an act or practice is unconscionable, a court must consider all of the surrounding circumstances of which the supplier knew or ought to have known.

(3)Without limiting subsection (2), the circumstances that the court must consider include the following:

(a)that the supplier subjected the consumer or guarantor to undue pressure to enter into the consumer transaction;

(b)that the supplier took advantage of the consumer or guarantor's inability or incapacity to reasonably protect his or her own interest because of the consumer or guarantor's physical or mental infirmity, ignorance, illiteracy, age or inability to understand the character, nature or language of the consumer transaction, or any other matter related to the transaction;

(c)that, at the time the consumer transaction was entered into, the total price grossly exceeded the total price at which similar subjects of similar consumer transactions were readily obtainable by similar consumers;

(d)that, at the time the consumer transaction was entered into, there was no reasonable probability of full payment of the total price by the consumer;

(e)that the terms or conditions on, or subject to, which the consumer entered into the consumer transaction were so harsh or adverse to the consumer as to be inequitable;

(f)a prescribed circumstance.

Now all these laws are BC so what it will do for Canada wide I'm not sure, but I guess customers could be ignorant in knowing if not told, but if you ask me that's not ignorance, however I guess that is where (f) comes in to play.

 

11 hours ago, mr moose said:

Deceit is going to be very hard to prove seeing as all the customers have seen is that the new drives rebuild slower and nothing else.   And even then this only became an issue for them after someone else had an issue and there was some hard testing. 

 

Know and not telling is still a form of deceit, and just because people are now just testing the drives and talking about them doesn't make it less deceitful if WD knew that they would hinder to some degree that consumers (rightfully) may not agree with or want the product.

 

11 hours ago, mr moose said:

You keep going on one single metric.  Rebuild times is not the only metric in these drives.  99% of the drives use is reading and writing data from a network.  large and small files.  For 99% of the time these drives are in use they are performing exactly as expected from the marketing.   When a drive fails and they need to rebuild they will rebuild,  it just takes longer than the old drives used to.   Stop trying to make out a 1% of the time performance degradation is larger than everything else.

 

I keep saying SMR work great in day to day, that is correct. However that one single metric is still a function of all NAS drives, a metric SMR can struggle with. So if no drives ever fail on you then rebuild times are 100% Irrelevant, however the second one fails on you (or you upgrade a drive) rebuild times become 100% relevant. The reason for all of this is because they take longer, and not only a few minutes longer but potentially sequential hard drive failure longer. Think of it if you buy all new drives today and in 5 years time one fails and all drives are SMR using Synology based on the time above which would you rather have 10 hours or 18 hours? Remember if one fails the others could follow, considering they are all the same age. A drive has to perform like its counterparts did which includes rebuild times, SMR fail that in a full SMR setup in at least the testing above. Stating 99% of the time is great and all but is really short sighted when 100% of drives die at some point like everything else on this planet, and sure you could upgrade drives when you believe issues may arise, but think of it in a 6 disc setup you are wasting up to an additional 48 hours (or weeks for the sad people over on freenas) to rotate those discs to new ones w/o buying a whole new system or cold storage the current data to do a hard refresh. That there is the issue, while YES they work day to day, they fail to comply with all obligations within resonable limits, like I said no issue if only 10-15% but most tests have exceeded at least double that so far. Someone today isn't going to necessarily get 5 CMR and 1 SMR for a Synology in hopes the SMR is the one that dies for a rebuild, they are likely to get all SMR from WD, that there is the issue, they can work great but you would have to be very short sighted to not look into the future and think "can I afford the 8 extra hours if one fails and risking all my data, or buy Seagate or Pro versions and know I get full performance all the time in any case given". That's where SMR fail, if you don't care about your data that is your choice, but many people have the other way of thinking. I personally wouldn't want to wait an additional second if it can be avoided when recovering from a failed drive, no logical person would.

 

12 hours ago, mr moose said:

30% on it's own is shit, no one is saying other wise
...
Given WD has already offered them a refund/replacement putting all this into perspective makes the case look stupid. 

Actually the person who wrote the article never brought up the fact it was 30%, they only stated it took longer.

 

Incorrect, if they believe they had a hope in hell in winning or believed that their product was not shit they'd be handing out middle fingers across the board instead like they did when people previously tried to get said information from them for the past year. Even if WD wins these suits are still beneficial to everyone because WD becomes the poster child of what happens when you try to sneak a tech in which likely shouldn't be put in that sector in its current state. Not to mention being successful in winning doesn't mean bad behaviour can continue, because the next one they could lose, and could be retro activated based on technology overriding previous decisions. 

 

12 hours ago, mr moose said:

If people in reddit weren't morons I'd pay a bit more attention, but I am not going to take anecdotal evidence from a forum full of echo's.  That's not my failure, that's them behaving in such a way that they lose credibility.  This world is moving to fast for me to waste time trying to investigate which forum posts are true and which ones are BS.  When the majority of a forum is posting rubbish (like facebook) I just put the whole thing in the bin, we don't need that kind of information source making matters more confusing.

 

It's still your failure when good evidence comes along, because then you blow it out of the water just because of the 99% ignoring the 1%.

Not to mention I just found out today since at least a month ago Synology has pulled all support for SMR Red drives, thanks to Reddit for that information!

https://www.synology.com/en-global/compatibility?search_by=category&category=hdds_no_ssd_trim&filter_brand=Western Digital&filter_class=NAS&p=1

all FAX (4TB isn't even listed) that are SMR are shown as incompatible.

 

12 hours ago, mr moose said:

I'll wait with abated breath.  I see this thing dying down and being a big nothing in the community in a few months.  But the ramifications mught ripple on for a while.  Either the people that work on ZFS or WD will fix the issue with that, freenas will have patches that catch it up to the others in rebuild times.  Then WD will improve DM SMR to the point there is no performance difference.  What will happen in the meantime is that we might end up with more expensive drives in that range as all the manufacturers deal with capacity versus performance issues.  Everyone wants more capacity, faster drives and the NAS market is growing exponentially.  Therefore with SMR, WD and seagate (for all their wax lyrical machinations ATM) won't have an option but to go SMR.  

It will die down, but only because people who know about the issue will no longer buy those drives, and that is going to hurt the Red market.

All ZFS has to do is put a statement out stating SMR drives will never be compatible or at least equals to CMR using their ecosystem unless manufactures do something. Because reality SMR drives are one of 2 things, large drives (unlikely to be put in a ZFS ecosystem) or smaller drives to save money on production, why should ZFS waste money for the profit of another company? Is WD going to pay them for it? Currently WDs logic of a fix isn't actually fixing the SMR drives, it's handing out CMR drives. Maybe SMR is unfixable in that sense or it will take a ridiculously long time to get a fix so the only logical option is replacement. If that's the case should they have really released them?

 

Like I pointed out only SMR drives in enterprise are 20TB, only SMR drives in consumer or mid range are 2-6TB drives currently. CMR can get to 18TB while the 2TB in some situations will result in better gains most who have seen the issues with WD currently will likely go towards the 18TB and suffer the 2TB loss and go for extra drives. I want more capacity too but not at the risk of performance loss which SMR drives could cause, and I'm not even talking about RAID in that sense but the overall limitations of SMR. SMR isn't faster (or much) than CMR and it likely won't ever be in its current state.

 

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Pretty much cost, I know these smaller disks using SMR don't actually make much sense neither cost less but SMR on larger capacities actually gets cheaper. WD is already sampling 20TB SMR disks in their higher end product lines and if that works out they'll start expanding out towards 40TB-50TB which you can't do with CMR.

 

Seagate is pining their hopes on HAMR being ready soon, or sooner than later, and is leaving SMR in their archive products for now. But the thing about HAMR with the much larger capacities is that is actually also using SMR, however with the heat assisted technology with that the performance is less meh. a 32TB HAMR disk is 45% cheaper than a 16TB CMR (per GB I would likely assume as not properly mentioned, #marketing).

 

I think HAMR is taking longer to be market ready than projected and it's also possible WD's progress is slower than Seagate's, no idea on that. But I think WD is pushing for market share and revenue growth through short term capacity lead in the market per disk. That's what it looks like to me.

Would the 20TB be cheaper than the 18TB however? Beyond stupid amounts of space SMR is only a cost cutting tool, which I still think is fine for desktop uses because the likelihood of someone bottlenecking a SMR on a daily computer is unlikely.

 

Isn't Seagate pushing year end for HAMR? I would love to see one in action and see how they actually perform in real life situations, if they really work I think it would be the better option to go with over SMR as a whole. As for pricing well, they don't want the consumers to know how much cheaper it is, because adopters tax...

 

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

external HDDs

Shhh don't tell them that I still want to get my enterprise grade drives 🤣 It's bad enough I can't grab 6TBs because blues are inside them, now potentially with SMR +head parking lot from Greens.

 

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Not at the 6TB and below mark, I don't see how the tiny margin would make any difference there and it would make sense to keep making CMR as you're not going to upgrade every facility to do all the new HDD tech all at once. There will be 6TB buyers for likely the next 5 years and anything other than CMR doesn't make any sense at these sizes.

 

Small capacity SMR belongs in laptop HDDs and external HDDs, or in literally the worst OEM PCs but no OS today on a new product should be installed on anything other than an SSD but not everyone seems to agree with that sadly.

 

Regardless of the technical points as far as the lawsuits go if they just stick to the non disclosure of product change they have the best shot at winning, granted a jury trial or not that is the most compelling argument and most effective in a jury trial.

I'd argue 8/10TB or below, current CMR platter tech is sitting at about 1.777TB a platter, making air drives at 10TB a thing(shuckers reporting 10TBs inside), if they can manage 2TB a platter then a theoretical 12TB CMR drive can be made using air.

 

Buy a computer with a drive in it spend $40 put a SSD inside and use the drive as a storage drive in the computer, prob be cheaper than buying one with a SSD already inside to begin with. Laptops should not have drives in them anymore.

 

Yea, closer look at the Canadian suit no jury was requested (or found), not sure if even allowed in BC. I'm hoping for a win at least on the non disclosure part, as if it was disclosed all testing would have been done a year ago instead of now, and the best part of it all would be WD wouldn't be getting sued over it either. The shittiest part is they deliberately hid the information when asked.

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5 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

First off, a series of horses would be likely faster (depending on the tractor you have in mind), not to mention cheaper. Secondly that's a personal timeframe that has no consequences, the second you put a consequence in people will no longer want to use a tractor. The consequence in the NAS systems is the potential failure of a second disc. Hence a slow down that exceeds 10-15% isn't something I would call "working".

I don;t think it increases the potential for a second disc failure.

5 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

How is the inability to compare drives properly over complicated? If one uses CMR and is $10 cheaper (seagate) known to work in any solution vs a SMR drive that is known to cause delays in at least one environment, should you not have the right to know? That's not over complicating anything.

There is no inability to compare drives.  You can compare the drives.

5 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

Labeling SMR on SMR drives would give the user the ability to look into the tech if so wished, and as stated would absolve WD from any claims. By not stating SMR on the drive/product page/datasheet they literally put themselves in a bad situation. If they stated SMR there would be no suit, because there would be no claims, well US would likely try, because they are sue happy over there...

Understanding the technology and seeing it work in the real world are two different things.  Right now we have people running around claiming SMR can't be used in raid and will crash every time. WE know that is not the case because we looked at actual tests.  How does putting SMR on the label help the consumer if that is the information they are getting?

 

5 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

Right... However a quick (custom) google search shows FAX drives have been out since May/June last yearish with claims of them being released in March. One would only assume if WD did they proper thing and state that the new Reds where SMR people would have tested them sooner. We are in 1 year of release and now only getting tests, that is 1 year of people who didn't know, one year of people putting them in systems that may or may not work nicely in rebuild situations. Not to mention WD has been doing the same BS of not telling people back then up till April. (synology forum, you'll need to scroll down a bit)

Yep, 1 year of people happily using them not realizing they were SMR.  Again I ask, how would SMR change their experience if it took someone to tell them it was SMR before they decided it was a problem they needed to sue over?  It wouldn't.  As I said before, being SMR does not change 99% of the disks usage experience.

 

5 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

No, windows breaking because Microsoft is careless. Before 10 Windows rarely broke (except Vista), so one can't compare WD to MS. However when shit does go wrong unlike WD, MS tries their damndest to fix it asap.

Personally I rather them voiding warranties for not putting them into prebuilts instead, esp once they made the switch. Would have stopped the issues in the their tracks now wouldn't it? Unless oh yea they also seem to suck in rebuilts too in various cases... Slower is not better, it's worst.

Windows broke all the time.  all versions of windows had issues.   WD are trying to fix it, It was sadi earlier in this thread that they are offering refunds/replacement and in their blog they invite anyone who has experienced a performance issue to call them as they "have options".    So you say you would rather they limit the warranty to prebuilts?  before you said that would not happen. Now you can have a NAS drive but no warranty or a generic drive that will likely fail early due to the workload on it.  You choice I guess.

 

 

5 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

29: Actually 410 18(b) has no merit, however (c) does because SMRs do not always perform equally to their older tech CMR counterparts and previous generation of Reds.

"there is an implied condition that the goods will be durable for a reasonable period of time having regard to the use to which they would normally be put and to all the surrounding circumstances of the sale or lease"

The drives actually fit that condition.  They are of merchantable quality (they didn't have flaws or know design bugs that prevented them from working) You'll note the law says "Durable" which means the drive needs to do what it says for a reasonable period of time, It does not require the drive to meet absolute performance metrics all the time.

 

5 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

30: Because the new Reds could be slower during rebuild times (testing is still too young to know for sure) compared to previous generations, the fact WD failed to mention this and likely knowing about the issue as well. Not to mention SMR drives are not getting a boost in capacity for price so that is a invalid point.

WD never guaranteed a rebuild time, in their old drives or the their current drives.  There is no misrepresentation.  Technology under the hood changes all the time in many products, but it is not mentioned iin specs or marketing.  Going back tot he start, they are going to have to prove that after a year of not having issues, they are going to have a shit fight proving there are too many issues with SMR and knowing that would have made them buy different.

 

5 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

33: Like I stated that is a hard sell, esp once you put in the NASware etc, however for that claim to become true all one needs to do is hope a Raid x series of SMR Blues preforms just as well as a series of SMR Reds, and for shits and giggles CMR with the rebuild drive of being SMR for both types, because that's only fair. If the time is 0, WD would then have to provide a valid reason for the price increase, which can be done threw NASware, but if that test is done and the preform no worst, that is still a critical hit on WD even if successful to void out that part because that test then becomes public.

WD charges about the same for their NAS drives as their competitors and charges more for their NAS drives over their generic desktop drives jut like their competitors.   They warrant accordingly just like their competitors,  I think 33 is throwing in to pad out the claim and give them more chance of a win, because if you look at the prices they are not excessive by any stretch of the imagination.    If law was that loose  then Apple would be fucked royal for their prices.

5 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

31: Easy to prove, CMR drives rebuilt within a reasonable time between various systems, or at the very least consistent based on the software used to do the rebuild. However SMR in various cases have caused a increase in rebuild times, some not so much while others see a stupid amount. Just because they work day to day doesn't mean they work as they should in every situation. Since these drives are technically new they should not be failing yet, so the true potential issues may not have arised yet. So saying they work is really short sighted.

The drives work as advertised,  It doesn't matter what you or I believe SMR does,  for 31 to be wrong the drives actually have to do or not do something outright claimed in the marketing.

5 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

32: Actually your perception of #32 is all wrong, they are going after the fact that WD hid the information, however on that note after reading that law it does seem a little weird:

There is a difference between hiding pertinent information and not mentioning less relevant information.  They have to prove the information is pertinent before they can claim it was being hidden.  Hiding in law has a different definition than hiding in general usage.   Hiding relevant information required to make an informed purchase is illegal.  In order to prove someone has done this you first have to prove the information was pertinent to the purchase choice. 

5 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

Now all these laws are BC so what it will do for Canada wide I'm not sure, but I guess customers could be ignorant in knowing if not told, but if you ask me that's not ignorance, however I guess that is where (f) comes in to play.

 

Know and not telling is still a form of deceit, and just because people are now just testing the drives and talking about them doesn't make it less deceitful if WD knew that they would hinder to some degree that consumers (rightfully) may not agree with or want the product.

The problem arises from the information though.  As I said before, all products have information that is not told.  if witholding information does not effect the end usage as advertised then it cannot be considered deceit.   

5 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

I keep saying SMR work great in day to day, that is correct. However that one single metric is still a function of all NAS drives, a metric SMR can struggle with. So if no drives ever fail on you then rebuild times are 100% Irrelevant, however the second one fails on you (or you upgrade a drive) rebuild times become 100% relevant. The reason for all of this is because they take longer, and not only a few minutes longer but potentially sequential hard drive failure longer. Think of it if you buy all new drives today and in 5 years time one fails and all drives are SMR using Synology based on the time above which would you rather have 10 hours or 18 hours? Remember if one fails the others could follow, considering they are all the same age. A drive has to perform like its counterparts did which includes rebuild times, SMR fail that in a full SMR setup in at least the testing above. Stating 99% of the time is great and all but is really short sighted when 100% of drives die at some point like everything else on this planet, and sure you could upgrade drives when you believe issues may arise, but think of it in a 6 disc setup you are wasting up to an additional 48 hours (or weeks for the sad people over on freenas) to rotate those discs to new ones w/o buying a whole new system or cold storage the current data to do a hard refresh. That there is the issue, while YES they work day to day, they fail to comply with all obligations within resonable limits, like I said no issue if only 10-15% but most tests have exceeded at least double that so far. Someone today isn't going to necessarily get 5 CMR and 1 SMR for a Synology in hopes the SMR is the one that dies for a rebuild, they are likely to get all SMR from WD, that there is the issue, they can work great but you would have to be very short sighted to not look into the future and think "can I afford the 8 extra hours if one fails and risking all my data, or buy Seagate or Pro versions and know I get full performance all the time in any case given". That's where SMR fail, if you don't care about your data that is your choice, but many people have the other way of thinking. I personally wouldn't want to wait an additional second if it can be avoided when recovering from a failed drive, no logical person would.

So the people bringing this case are going to have to prove that a product that works as intended, is just as good (if not better dues to capacity increases), has worked flawlessly for a year already is somehow much worse and requires a lawsuit because the rebuild time is longer.    That's all there is to it. 

 

5 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

Actually the person who wrote the article never brought up the fact it was 30%, they only stated it took longer.

 

Incorrect, if they believe they had a hope in hell in winning or believed that their product was not shit they'd be handing out middle fingers across the board instead like they did when people previously tried to get said information from them for the past year. Even if WD wins these suits are still beneficial to everyone because WD becomes the poster child of what happens when you try to sneak a tech in which likely shouldn't be put in that sector in its current state. Not to mention being successful in winning doesn't mean bad behaviour can continue, because the next one they could lose, and could be retro activated based on technology overriding previous decisions. 

You know there is a thing called PR, offering refunds is just their way of quelling the anger in the community.   If WD win, nothing will change.  SMR is here to stay anyway.  People are going to have to lose their parroting ideals on what SMR means and accept the facts of benchmarks and testing.   I just wish this would happen more often across the tech industry, maybe in a 15 years time we will have less echos and a more rational approach to technology and business.

 

5 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

It's still your failure when good evidence comes along, because then you blow it out of the water just because of the 99% ignoring the 1%.

Not to mention I just found out today since at least a month ago Synology has pulled all support for SMR Red drives, thanks to Reddit for that information!

https://www.synology.com/en-global/compatibility?search_by=category&category=hdds_no_ssd_trim&filter_brand=Western Digital&filter_class=NAS&p=1

all FAX (4TB isn't even listed) that are SMR are shown as incompatible.

Good evidence is not good evidence when there is not way to verify it and the source is not credible.   However when you have a serious of tests laid out in front of you from a more credible source and they lay out the testing methodology and apply liberal amounts of qualifiers then I would consider that evidence over reddit.  Lie the videos we have already seen.

 

 

 

5 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

It will die down, but only because people who know about the issue will no longer buy those drives, and that is going to hurt the Red market.

That would be the enthusiasts like us,  which isn't even a drop in their market.

 

5 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

All ZFS has to do is put a statement out stating SMR drives will never be compatible or at least equals to CMR using their ecosystem unless manufactures do something. Because reality SMR drives are one of 2 things, large drives (unlikely to be put in a ZFS ecosystem) or smaller drives to save money on production, why should ZFS waste money for the profit of another company? Is WD going to pay them for it? Currently WDs logic of a fix isn't actually fixing the SMR drives, it's handing out CMR drives. Maybe SMR is unfixable in that sense or it will take a ridiculously long time to get a fix so the only logical option is replacement. If that's the case should they have really released them?

Only time will tell, but to WD the number of effected people is so small it's like demanding a royal welcome when you arrive to clean out the toilet.

 

Grammar and spelling is not indicative of intelligence/knowledge.  Not having the same opinion does not always mean lack of understanding.  

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6 hours ago, mr moose said:

I don;t think it increases the potential for a second disc failure.

6 hours ago, mr moose said:

Good evidence is not good evidence when there is not way to verify it and the source is not credible.   However when you have a serious of tests laid out in front of you from a more credible source and they lay out the testing methodology and apply liberal amounts of qualifiers then I would consider that evidence over reddit.  Lie the videos we have already seen.

I'll agree, reddit isn't really the greatest source of information (similar to wikipedia, although with wiki you can at least find the sources).  The thing to note though, is no one really has done the testing where the SMR drives may fail-out (not like failing rebuilds, but behave in such a way that there could pose other risks/considerations).  The videos that have been seen only show SMR drives in more optimal scenarios.

 

Ultimately, the videos don't show there is enough evidence to say SMR doesn't affect something such as rebuilds.  It has already shown to be slower, but in a more optimal condition (i.e. rebuilding without putting any simulated load on the NAS, like even simple file saves every x minutes/opening a file x minutes  could potentially have drastic consequences based on the theory that since SMR's performance is so greatly reliant on the caching that random file calls could greatly sway the algorithms)....we won't know because these things weren't tested.

 

I'm suspecting *only based on what I know of the technology, and the pitfalls it can have*, that the numbers could be drastically difference in a scenario like above

 

6 hours ago, mr moose said:

The problem arises from the information though.  As I said before, all products have information that is not told.  if witholding information does not effect the end usage as advertised then it cannot be considered deceit.   

I think the deceit comes from switching the product (to one that is measurably different and behaves differently), without a rebrand change or notification of what was changed.  Part of the advertisement is the brand recognition as well "Red" drives

3735928559 - Beware of the dead beef

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2 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I'll agree, reddit isn't really the greatest source of information (similar to wikipedia, although with wiki you can at least find the sources).  The thing to note though, is no one really has done the testing where the SMR drives may fail-out (not like failing rebuilds, but behave in such a way that there could pose other risks/considerations).  The videos that have been seen only show SMR drives in more optimal scenarios.

 

Ultimately, the videos don't show there is enough evidence to say SMR doesn't affect something such as rebuilds.  It has already shown to be slower, but in a more optimal condition (i.e. rebuilding without putting any simulated load on the NAS, like even simple file saves every x minutes/opening a file x minutes  could potentially have drastic consequences based on the theory that since SMR's performance is so greatly reliant on the caching that random file calls could greatly sway the algorithms)....we won't know because these things weren't tested.

 

The things is, the videos show us nothing is really as bad as the claims make out (bar rebuild time) and the drives have been in the market for a year now without a higher rate of failure or any observation of problems.   If the failure rate was genuinely higher then we should have seen something by now,  usually in the tech world you hear about higher than normal failure rates within months of release.

 

 

2 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I'm suspecting *only based on what I know of the technology, and the pitfalls it can have*, that the numbers could be drastically difference in a scenario like above

 

I think the deceit comes from switching the product (to one that is measurably different and behaves differently), without a rebrand change or notification of what was changed.  Part of the advertisement is the brand recognition as well "Red" drives

This is where it comes down to personal opinion.  When I see the reds (just like the ironwolf's) I see a product guaranteed to last in a NAS environment. I do not see a products guaranteed to be faster than any other drive, just sturdier* and able to operate in a higher temp/vibrating environment.   To me the rebuild speed is simply the trade off for more capacity at the same price.

 

*the reason I think this will fail in the lawsuit is because the consumer laws centre around durability significantly more than performance (performance being a difficult metric to define legally).

 

Grammar and spelling is not indicative of intelligence/knowledge.  Not having the same opinion does not always mean lack of understanding.  

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Man I got a bit worried. 

 

Not long ago I bought 2 new drives for my NAS and they are AX drives. But I got the 8 GB drives and they seem to not be affected by this particular issue. 

 

Also I run 2 Raid 1 arrays in my nas (4-bay) so this probably isn't that big of a problem for my set up anyway.

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13 hours ago, mr moose said:

I don;t think it increases the potential for a second disc failure.

Each failure is different correct? If a head failure of any type one can assume if the drives were built the same time or of the same operation age they could fail as well, esp under load. It's how my Seagate 1TB died, worked one day dead the next because I was making it read/write all night. Technically it's not dead, but it's not trustworthy. Smart data usually will give warning so will the NAS however that doesn't mean it can go w/o warning.

 

13 hours ago, mr moose said:

There is no inability to compare drives.  You can compare the drives.

Now we can, before we couldn't and most people assumed SMR drives where a updated version of CMR, else this would have come out sooner.

 

13 hours ago, mr moose said:

Understanding the technology and seeing it work in the real world are two different things.  Right now we have people running around claiming SMR can't be used in raid and will crash every time. WE know that is not the case because we looked at actual tests.  How does putting SMR on the label help the consumer if that is the information they are getting?

Simple, by putting SMR on the drive people would have tested it sooner, giving most people in the public setting either no real right to complain or to make a more informed choice based on the NAS setup they are going with, think of it for the people who bought FAX drives for Freenas would they of a year ago if they knew the issues? Remember while a small community even if at 1% of total downloads (about 10 million from what I found, not reliable imo however) still use Freenas thats still 100,000 potentially affected people, big enough to justify a class action in itself.  Also those people who are claiming SMR can't be used in raids are facing rebuild issues, however if you ask me they are in a extreme case scenario.

 

14 hours ago, mr moose said:

Yep, 1 year of people happily using them not realizing they were SMR.  Again I ask, how would SMR change their experience if it took someone to tell them it was SMR before they decided it was a problem they needed to sue over?  It wouldn't.  As I said before, being SMR does not change 99% of the disks usage experience.

 

You're being short sighted again, potential issues of SMR have not shown in the wild yet or have only started to show up from drives failing, drives that may not be SMR but are being replaced by SMR. Now granted at least in Synology and QNAP CMR/SMR rebuilds are not bad, however a RAID 6 is. Claiming everyone is happy with SMR in their servers because of no issues now doesn't mean people are happy they put SMR drives in unknowingly or not knowing about the potential rebuild issues. Both of which should have been found out a year ago, if WD put SMR on their drive within the first week someone would have noticed it, others would have tested it and in about 1 month of the new drive being out (like now, roughtly 1 month since WD came clean) most people would know where the drives work or don't.

 

14 hours ago, mr moose said:

Windows broke all the time.  all versions of windows had issues.   WD are trying to fix it, It was sadi earlier in this thread that they are offering refunds/replacement and in their blog they invite anyone who has experienced a performance issue to call them as they "have options".    So you say you would rather they limit the warranty to prebuilts?  before you said that would not happen. Now you can have a NAS drive but no warranty or a generic drive that will likely fail early due to the workload on it.  You choice I guess.

 

BSoDs are not breaking, unless it is consistent and from a update, however in past versions of windows it was usually due to incompatibility of a 3rd party driver which would require you to uninstall/reinstall. I bought up the fact WD is doing the replacement option, however doesn't that also show guilt when they replace it with a CMR instead of another SMR? Also I'm sure their "options" are here is a CMR drive, once again not a good sign.

 

On the prebuilt note, the thing is I'm shucking drives, drives that are either not QA passed for enterprise grade use for "insert unknown reason here" or overproduction because the overall total cost of producing them is still no different, possibly cheaper (aka make 50,000 units in 6 hours or make 65,000+ units in 8, because you are paying employees 8 hours regardless). Equally since "most" issues appear to be in non-prebuilts or at least in the extremes, by stating prebuilts only would cut a good chunk of the complaints out, no?

 

14 hours ago, mr moose said:

WD never guaranteed a rebuild time, in their old drives or the their current drives.  There is no misrepresentation.  Technology under the hood changes all the time in many products, but it is not mentioned iin specs or marketing.  Going back tot he start, they are going to have to prove that after a year of not having issues, they are going to have a shit fight proving there are too many issues with SMR and knowing that would have made them buy different.

 

Actually they have, while not directly in wording but indirectly based on older tech and their rebuild times. (I'm not loading their PDFs again to find possibly more evidence...)

https://shop.westerndigital.com/en-ca/products/internal-drives/wd-red-sata-hdd#WD20EFAX

Quote

Seamless integration, robust data protection and optimal performance for NAS systems under heavy demand.

First the word seamless as defined by Webster: "having no awkward transitions, interruptions, or indications of disparity", SMR fails this during rebuild times as it takes longer than CMR and can be seen as either a awkward transition or a interruption to workflow (possibly), however the biggest killer is the last one "disparity", which is defined as (according to Webster again) "the quality or state of being different", however if courts favour Oxford... "A great difference." What is a great difference? Well, that really depends on those who are seeing over the case, but I have my doubts they would see a 40% let alone 30% increase not being a "great difference".

 

Nah they won't have a shit fight if done right, WD will. Like I have said and you have said the issues are not day to day. Since most drives (possibly all) are still in Day to Day operation the rebuild issues have not shown up yet, the key word is yet.

 

Oh last time a spec got changed to save a few pennies in the auto industry that got found out, people died from it and hundreds of millions in damages all because of a tiny little plastic piece, who knew right? However the change WD made would be similar to a Engine block being swapped out from a V8 to ecoboost like what ford did to the Mustang(and the F-150?) a few years ago, you know something that drives the unit in question, or something that is mentioned on the "spec sheet", w/o the platter you don't have a drive, next to the tiny motor that makes it spin (think of the motor as a battery for a car) you need the platter for the drive to actually work.

 

Simply put a SMR drive during rebuild is not seamless if it hinders the rebuild time outside of a resonable number (not 30+%) compared to a CMR drive.

 

15 hours ago, mr moose said:

The drives work as advertised,  It doesn't matter what you or I believe SMR does,  for 31 to be wrong the drives actually have to do or not do something outright claimed in the marketing.

Next to the fact no one should ever complain about getting extra features promised less issues, see above.

 

15 hours ago, mr moose said:

if witholding information does not effect the end usage as advertised then it cannot be considered deceit.   

See above, and tell me now that the potential increase in rebuild times is not worthy enough to mention SMR.

 

14 hours ago, mr moose said:

WD charges about the same for their NAS drives as their competitors and charges more for their NAS drives over their generic desktop drives jut like their competitors.   They warrant accordingly just like their competitors,  I think 33 is throwing in to pad out the claim and give them more chance of a win, because if you look at the prices they are not excessive by any stretch of the imagination.    If law was that loose  then Apple would be fucked royal for their price

Right... However has Seagate or Toshiba switched their NAS drives to SMR? No, no they haven't, one going as far to say basically SMR is shit for NAS, don't use it. Hell $10 cheaper for 0 issues? No wonder WD didn't want to disclose it. A issue is still a issue regardless how small it may be. However like I have stated SMR is only one thing in a drive, and a NAS drive has a bunch of other things normal drives do not have, so they could win based on that. However they still can lose regardless if the drives preform no better than say a WD Blue.

Apple is Apple, just like Samsung. You are paying for the name like BMW Bugatti Ferrari etc... Unless you are paying for the WD name a SMR drive should be cheaper than a CMR drive since it should be cheaper to make, esp in the 2-6TB sector.

 

15 hours ago, mr moose said:

There is a difference between hiding pertinent information and not mentioning less relevant information.  They have to prove the information is pertinent before they can claim it was being hidden.  Hiding in law has a different definition than hiding in general usage.   Hiding relevant information required to make an informed purchase is illegal.  In order to prove someone has done this you first have to prove the information was pertinent to the purchase choice. 

So let me get this straight, you'll gladly buy a car that hides the engine type? So you would be happy spending your money on say a $100,000 Ferrari that has a smart car 2 cylinder engine in it under the assumption because it is a Ferrari it has to be good?

SMR does matter for that very reason. If they changed the head tech or firmware as long as it doesn't shit bricks (aka Green/Blue) it shouldn't matter. However the second it can shit bricks, it does matter and should be mentioned. In the case for Blue/Green they claim it to be environmental/energy saving reasons, which is technically true.

Hiding platter tech is the equivalent to hiding engine specs in cars because they are the driving force of each unit. When it was only CMR platter tech was all the same, now there is 2 and soon to be 3 or 4, so displaying platter tech is now important.

 

I think the fact they are getting sued is enough evidence people don't want SMR, not to mention forums and Reddit all keep saying don't buy when asked, before this issue went extreme, and that will likely continue in the future as well. I for one will only buy a WD Red SMR drive if it was stupidly cheap, cheaper than a blue or at least equal in price because of SMR. That and I don't see myself needing any new drives less for NAS and those will be 8TB or higher anyways...

 

15 hours ago, mr moose said:

Good evidence is not good evidence when there is not way to verify it and the source is not credible.   However when you have a serious of tests laid out in front of you from a more credible source and they lay out the testing methodology and apply liberal amounts of qualifiers then I would consider that evidence over reddit.  Lie the videos we have already seen.

 

I'm not denying that, however the tests that are slowly coming out are not going in SMR favour now are they? That said we would need a real life situation not some stupid script creating junk data and calling that as a successful test. While easy it is far from perfect.

Plus the fact Synology has dropped all support for SMR isn't going well for WD, maybe they did internal testing once it hit mass media, not sure. It could have been quitely removed, no matter the case they have made it quite clear no SMR drives.

 

15 hours ago, mr moose said:

You know there is a thing called PR, offering refunds is just their way of quelling the anger in the community.   If WD win, nothing will change.  SMR is here to stay anyway.  People are going to have to lose their parroting ideals on what SMR means and accept the facts of benchmarks and testing.   I just wish this would happen more often across the tech industry, maybe in a 15 years time we will have less echos and a more rational approach to technology and business.

 

The issue is still the fact mass media mass hate mass everything to get something that should have been public knowledge from the beginning. Hell I would of been happy if it was tucked away in the fine print on the spec sheets, but it wasn't. So the anger, the hate, the everything (almost) is justified because WD (and others) were hiding the fact they started using SMR tech in their drives. If companies where more transparent in the tech industry about these changes which regarless what you may thing, are big then the world would be a happier place.

 

15 hours ago, mr moose said:

That would be the enthusiasts like us,  which isn't even a drop in their market.

Actually that isn't true, the industry now knows about it, those who are able to do internal testing likely are, if SMR works for them they'll not care however if it doesn't they obviously won't be buying it now will they?

For the average consumer depending on the person they will either go with whats cheaper (likely Seagate NAS), what family tells them, are brand loyal, or looks at the 3 companies and hopefully notices the cache difference and instead of outright buying it with the "bigger is better" mentality at the very least googles the "difference between Seagate NAS WD NAS" or something like that. At that time (last one) if they decide to go WD then any future issues are on them now isn't it?

 

15 hours ago, mr moose said:

So the people bringing this case are going to have to prove that a product that works as intended, is just as good (if not better dues to capacity increases), has worked flawlessly for a year already is somehow much worse and requires a lawsuit because the rebuild time is longer.    That's all there is to it. 

 

You are missing the biggest point here the whole point of a NAS drive is to function as a NAS drive and perform equally or better than the past generation of the NAS drives before it. Failing to improve but make rebuild times worst is actually failing that requirement part of the NAS ecosystem. Sure they get to "complete" the tasks in most cases, however at a cost in time and risk. That is the issue, in order for SMR to be welcomed into the NAS community there would have to be no time penalty in any task or a minimal one, SMR has failed that in rebuild times in a handful of situations, sure not real life, but who can say realife won't turn out worst? Sure it could be better, but those testing are testing easy stuff to recover.

 

Also rant time...

WHAT CAPACITY INCREASES? You are telling me I can go out today and get a WD Red SMR 4TB for the cost of a WD CMR 2TB because it uses 2 platters like the old 2TB model? Are you telling me that I now can get a 6TB model for the cost of a CMR 4TB unit as well? Shit do tell me where... I'll buy them in that case because that is a bargain and well worth the potential bullshit rebuilt times!

Oh wait...

image.thumb.png.e07f5d28a0ff6076f9258558f5e74590.png

 

NOPE, CAN'T GET MORE FOR LESS, IN FACT THEY ARE EQUAL PRICE ACROSS THE BOARD! Seriously just stop that nonsense already... You literally don't get more for equal price, else the 2TB SMR would be 4TB at 2TB pricing, 4TB would be 6TB at 4TB pricing, and the 6TB would be 8TB at guess what? 6TB Pricing. However none of that is happening! Only place where SMR is currently being used in YOUR wording is the 20TB drives that are not even out yet, and THEY only increase capacity by a WHOOPING 2TB compared to the 18TB CMR which is also not yet released! 

The only thing you do get more of with SMR is cache and potential headaches for the 2-6TB range, nothing else. Those transfer times, those should have a * attached because when the buffer runs out your speeds get flushed, don't they? Sure that would take a lot, but it sure can happen and is likely why SMR drives take longer to rebuild esp when they are breaking social distancing in NAS setups.

 

Till HAMR or MAMR or whatever tech is used to break the 18TB CMR range, SMR has no business really being in any grade of drives less archiving (something Seagate has stopped at 8TB). Only reason why I say they are acceptable in consumer grade is because MOST won't notice, infact MOST consumers will likely benefit from the extra cache given with SMR. That said CMR drives would likely destroy SMR with that amount of cache so there is that...

 

SMR drives at best give a extra 2TB possibly for the same price, and I could list a few companies/sectors that would actually use the extra 2TB per drive, and yes they do buy a shit ton. However in the NAS sector all SMR drives are (same with desktops), are a cost cutting tool, they are not cheaper than CMR, in fact if anything CMR drives have increased in price not by choice of the manufactures but threw consumer demand to boycott SMR.

 

I'm leaning into the position you own WD stock and really don't want them to lose. If that's the case just sell and cut the potential losses.

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On 6/2/2020 at 10:25 PM, leadeater said:

Generally speaking we know why it is a problem, as in it's the way ZFS interacts with storage devices and the type of I/O it puts on the storage device (pattern, block sizes, data placement etc). ZFS is quite advanced at what it does so it's a case of it being important for it to know what type of storage device it is so it can best handle it. These DM-SMR disks report features that other disks do not, like TRIM, so it's currently possible to identify if a disk is or is not DM-SMR by what the disk reports to the OS and storage controller so it's not out of the question that a fix is in the pipeline or can be put in to the pipeline to at least get the rebuild times to more acceptable time frames by making necessary adjustments to how the disks are handled. Additionally firmware optimizations and fixes may also be required by WD, I don' think it's as simple as WD alone creating a firmware fix for this.

 

However while it's fair to say WD should have detailed the change on the product sheet, or really created a new product line like WD Orange (not quite Red 😉), coming at from an angle that WD should not have released a disk that doesn't work with ZFS isn't exactly a good way to look at it. Computer systems are complex and it isn't necessarily up to WD to fix an issue with a product change they are releasing in somebody else's product unless they feel it directly affects them and competitively within the market it benefits them to do so e.g. AMD providing optimizations for Zen architecture for the Linux Kernel.

 

So it's on WD to make people aware of changes and also on others to check how these changes impact their product/software or systems they are responsible for. While I do think it was also short sighted for WD to have not tested the new revision under ZFS (this is just my suspicion) because it would have given them advanced warning of this problem I don't actually think they would not have gone ahead with the change. If ZFS was an important enough market to them for this particular model of disk to me it does not seem reasonable that it would not have been tested and thus been identified.

I still don't think, even ignoring ZFS, that a drive who is spec-listed as purely superior to the CMR variants in the same lineup commonly shows 25%+ reductions in moderate load (within design basis spec... .1DW/Day is spec) performance is an acceptable position. WD was not only 'lacking transparency' about the change, they were actively obfuscating the change. That is an entire other level of BS and is fully worthy of the suit in question.

 

Otherwise, I can mostly agree with your position here.

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10 hours ago, mr moose said:

The things is, the videos show us nothing is really as bad as the claims make out (bar rebuild time) and the drives have been in the market for a year now without a higher rate of failure or any observation of problems.   If the failure rate was genuinely higher then we should have seen something by now,  usually in the tech world you hear about higher than normal failure rates within months of release.

 

You: OOOO lookie at that pretty bar graph it must be truth. (sorry to mock you like that, but you really shouldn't look just at charts, they can lie, easily)

Me: looks at numbers turns them into %, complete trash, that is what that means.

They should have used a Pie chart over anything... Where bigger is worst, that hungry SMR drive would have eaten 30%ish of the pie extra than the rest, what a greedy SOB.

Better yet someone should put freenas into a pie chart for laughs, second thought, better not.

 

We are not talking failure rates here, we are talking about rebuild times, all tests have been around either current situations (SMR being put into CMR setups) or future failures with all SMR drives. I only found 2 or 3 claims of SMR will fail sooner(none mentioned in the suits from what I saw), all on Reddit, all of which I know is BS, SMR drives don't have extra moving parts so only way they could fail sooner is if the head fucks up in the read/write process needed for the SMR drive. Something I highly doubt would happen.

 

Edit: also no video I know of has posted bar charts less the freenas one, only the link I gave posted bar charts.

7 hours ago, Spindel said:

Also I run 2 Raid 1 arrays in my nas (4-bay) so this probably isn't that big of a problem for my set up anyway.

Unless both drives in the Raid 1 fail that is 🙄

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7 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

 

*snip*

 

Unless both drives in the Raid 1 fail that is 🙄

Which is statistically very unlikley unless the fail is because some kind of power surge (in that case no type of local raid will save me)

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1 hour ago, Spindel said:

Which is statistically very unlikley unless the fail is because some kind of power surge (in that case no type of local raid will save me)

Statistically yes very rare, risks increase with age or a minor issue with the hardware not yet known however, or if a simple tiny read error that happened 2 years ago rehappened could also cause a failure (not necessarily a drive one but a rebuild one), tho that would fall under extreme cases and should have been flagged as a bad sector if was the case(depending). So as the drives age one should consider failure chances to increase as well, esp once past the warranty period (mostly on-hours etc depicted in the spec sheet), which is easily tracked threw SMART.

 

You better have your NAS plugged into a UPS 🤣 Even if it contains reobtainable data you don't want to go threw that hassle, not to mention the additional costs of buying new equipment likely exceeding the cost of the UPS.

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1 hour ago, Egg-Roll said:

Statistically yes very rare, risks increase with age or a minor issue with the hardware not yet known however, or if a simple tiny read error that happened 2 years ago rehappened could also cause a failure (not necessarily a drive one but a rebuild one), tho that would fall under extreme cases and should have been flagged as a bad sector if was the case(depending). So as the drives age one should consider failure chances to increase as well, esp once past the warranty period (mostly on-hours etc depicted in the spec sheet), which is easily tracked threw SMART.

 

You better have your NAS plugged into a UPS 🤣 Even if it contains reobtainable data you don't want to go threw that hassle, not to mention the additional costs of buying new equipment likely exceeding the cost of the UPS.

Redundancy > parity

 

and yes I have been thinking of getting a small UPS

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6 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

  

Each failure is different correct? If a head failure of any type one can assume if the drives were built the same time or of the same operation age they could fail as well, esp under load. It's how my Seagate 1TB died, worked one day dead the next because I was making it read/write all night. Technically it's not dead, but it's not trustworthy. Smart data usually will give warning so will the NAS however that doesn't mean it can go w/o warning.

You are not talking about SMR or SMR related issues now.  you are talking purely about drive reliability and quality.

 

 

6 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

Now we can, before we couldn't and most people assumed SMR drives where a updated version of CMR, else this would have come out sooner.

They've had a year in use, that's a years worth of real world , hat more testing do you need?

6 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

Simple, by putting SMR on the drive people would have tested it sooner, giving most people in the public setting either no real right to complain or to make a more informed choice based on the NAS setup they are going with, think of it for the people who bought FAX drives for Freenas would they of a year ago if they knew the issues? Remember while a small community even if at 1% of total downloads (about 10 million from what I found, not reliable imo however) still use Freenas thats still 100,000 potentially affected people, big enough to justify a class action in itself.  Also those people who are claiming SMR can't be used in raids are facing rebuild issues, however if you ask me they are in a extreme case scenario.

 

You're being short sighted again, potential issues of SMR have not shown in the wild yet or have only started to show up from drives failing, drives that may not be SMR but are being replaced by SMR. Now granted at least in Synology and QNAP CMR/SMR rebuilds are not bad, however a RAID 6 is. Claiming everyone is happy with SMR in their servers because of no issues now doesn't mean people are happy they put SMR drives in unknowingly or not knowing about the potential rebuild issues. Both of which should have been found out a year ago, if WD put SMR on their drive within the first week someone would have noticed it, others would have tested it and in about 1 month of the new drive being out (like now, roughtly 1 month since WD came clean) most people would know where the drives work or don't.

 

BSoDs are not breaking, unless it is consistent and from a update, however in past versions of windows it was usually due to incompatibility of a 3rd party driver which would require you to uninstall/reinstall. I bought up the fact WD is doing the replacement option, however doesn't that also show guilt when they replace it with a CMR instead of another SMR? Also I'm sure their "options" are here is a CMR drive, once again not a good sign.

 

On the prebuilt note, the thing is I'm shucking drives, drives that are either not QA passed for enterprise grade use for "insert unknown reason here" or overproduction because the overall total cost of producing them is still no different, possibly cheaper (aka make 50,000 units in 6 hours or make 65,000+ units in 8, because you are paying employees 8 hours regardless). Equally since "most" issues appear to be in non-prebuilts or at least in the extremes, by stating prebuilts only would cut a good chunk of the complaints out, no?

 

Actually they have, while not directly in wording but indirectly based on older tech and their rebuild times. (I'm not loading their PDFs again to find possibly more evidence...)

https://shop.westerndigital.com/en-ca/products/internal-drives/wd-red-sata-hdd#WD20EFAX

First the word seamless as defined by Webster: "having no awkward transitions, interruptions, or indications of disparity", SMR fails this during rebuild times as it takes longer than CMR and can be seen as either a awkward transition or a interruption to workflow (possibly), however the biggest killer is the last one "disparity", which is defined as (according to Webster again) "the quality or state of being different", however if courts favour Oxford... "A great difference." What is a great difference? Well, that really depends on those who are seeing over the case, but I have my doubts they would see a 40% let alone 30% increase not being a "great difference".

 

Nah they won't have a shit fight if done right, WD will. Like I have said and you have said the issues are not day to day. Since most drives (possibly all) are still in Day to Day operation the rebuild issues have not shown up yet, the key word is yet.

 

Oh last time a spec got changed to save a few pennies in the auto industry that got found out, people died from it and hundreds of millions in damages all because of a tiny little plastic piece, who knew right? However the change WD made would be similar to a Engine block being swapped out from a V8 to ecoboost like what ford did to the Mustang(and the F-150?) a few years ago, you know something that drives the unit in question, or something that is mentioned on the "spec sheet", w/o the platter you don't have a drive, next to the tiny motor that makes it spin (think of the motor as a battery for a car) you need the platter for the drive to actually work.

 

Simply put a SMR drive during rebuild is not seamless if it hinders the rebuild time outside of a resonable number (not 30+%) compared to a CMR drive.

 

Next to the fact no one should ever complain about getting extra features promised less issues, see above.

 

See above, and tell me now that the potential increase in rebuild times is not worthy enough to mention SMR.

 

Right... However has Seagate or Toshiba switched their NAS drives to SMR? No, no they haven't, one going as far to say basically SMR is shit for NAS, don't use it. Hell $10 cheaper for 0 issues? No wonder WD didn't want to disclose it. A issue is still a issue regardless how small it may be. However like I have stated SMR is only one thing in a drive, and a NAS drive has a bunch of other things normal drives do not have, so they could win based on that. However they still can lose regardless if the drives preform no better than say a WD Blue.

Apple is Apple, just like Samsung. You are paying for the name like BMW Bugatti Ferrari etc... Unless you are paying for the WD name a SMR drive should be cheaper than a CMR drive since it should be cheaper to make, esp in the 2-6TB sector.

 

So let me get this straight, you'll gladly buy a car that hides the engine type? So you would be happy spending your money on say a $100,000 Ferrari that has a smart car 2 cylinder engine in it under the assumption because it is a Ferrari it has to be good?

SMR does matter for that very reason. If they changed the head tech or firmware as long as it doesn't shit bricks (aka Green/Blue) it shouldn't matter. However the second it can shit bricks, it does matter and should be mentioned. In the case for Blue/Green they claim it to be environmental/energy saving reasons, which is technically true.

Hiding platter tech is the equivalent to hiding engine specs in cars because they are the driving force of each unit. When it was only CMR platter tech was all the same, now there is 2 and soon to be 3 or 4, so displaying platter tech is now important.

 

I think the fact they are getting sued is enough evidence people don't want SMR, not to mention forums and Reddit all keep saying don't buy when asked, before this issue went extreme, and that will likely continue in the future as well. I for one will only buy a WD Red SMR drive if it was stupidly cheap, cheaper than a blue or at least equal in price because of SMR. That and I don't see myself needing any new drives less for NAS and those will be 8TB or higher anyways...

 

I'm not denying that, however the tests that are slowly coming out are not going in SMR favour now are they? That said we would need a real life situation not some stupid script creating junk data and calling that as a successful test. While easy it is far from perfect.

Plus the fact Synology has dropped all support for SMR isn't going well for WD, maybe they did internal testing once it hit mass media, not sure. It could have been quitely removed, no matter the case they have made it quite clear no SMR drives.

 

The issue is still the fact mass media mass hate mass everything to get something that should have been public knowledge from the beginning. Hell I would of been happy if it was tucked away in the fine print on the spec sheets, but it wasn't. So the anger, the hate, the everything (almost) is justified because WD (and others) were hiding the fact they started using SMR tech in their drives. If companies where more transparent in the tech industry about these changes which regarless what you may thing, are big then the world would be a happier place.

 

Actually that isn't true, the industry now knows about it, those who are able to do internal testing likely are, if SMR works for them they'll not care however if it doesn't they obviously won't be buying it now will they?

For the average consumer depending on the person they will either go with whats cheaper (likely Seagate NAS), what family tells them, are brand loyal, or looks at the 3 companies and hopefully notices the cache difference and instead of outright buying it with the "bigger is better" mentality at the very least googles the "difference between Seagate NAS WD NAS" or something like that. At that time (last one) if they decide to go WD then any future issues are on them now isn't it?

 

You are missing the biggest point here the whole point of a NAS drive is to function as a NAS drive and perform equally or better than the past generation of the NAS drives before it. Failing to improve but make rebuild times worst is actually failing that requirement part of the NAS ecosystem. Sure they get to "complete" the tasks in most cases, however at a cost in time and risk. That is the issue, in order for SMR to be welcomed into the NAS community there would have to be no time penalty in any task or a minimal one, SMR has failed that in rebuild times in a handful of situations, sure not real life, but who can say realife won't turn out worst? Sure it could be better, but those testing are testing easy stuff to recover.

 

I really don't know how to put it other than the fact that these drives actually do work in NAS as advertised.   It's like every time I point out what the flaw is with the law suit you go into huge detail saying the same thing over and over again.  The only metric that falls behind is rebuilds which is a very small part of a NAS 's work time. 

 

6 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

Also rant time...

WHAT CAPACITY INCREASES? You are telling me I can go out today and get a WD Red SMR 4TB for the cost of a WD CMR 2TB because it uses 2 platters like the old 2TB model? Are you telling me that I now can get a 6TB model for the cost of a CMR 4TB unit as well? Shit do tell me where... I'll buy them in that case because that is a bargain and well worth the potential bullshit rebuilt times!

Oh wait...

image.thumb.png.e07f5d28a0ff6076f9258558f5e74590.png

 

NOPE, CAN'T GET MORE FOR LESS, IN FACT THEY ARE EQUAL PRICE ACROSS THE BOARD! Seriously just stop that nonsense already... You literally don't get more for equal price, else the 2TB SMR would be 4TB at 2TB pricing, 4TB would be 6TB at 4TB pricing, and the 6TB would be 8TB at guess what? 6TB Pricing. However none of that is happening! Only place where SMR is currently being used in YOUR wording is the 20TB drives that are not even out yet, and THEY only increase capacity by a WHOOPING 2TB compared to the 18TB CMR which is also not yet released! 

The only thing you do get more of with SMR is cache and potential headaches for the 2-6TB range, nothing else. Those transfer times, those should have a * attached because when the buffer runs out your speeds get flushed, don't they? Sure that would take a lot, but it sure can happen and is likely why SMR drives take longer to rebuild esp when they are breaking social distancing in NAS setups.

So you think they are introducing SMR for some reason other than storage density?

 

 

6 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

Till HAMR or MAMR or whatever tech is used to break the 18TB CMR range, SMR has no business really being in any grade of drives less archiving (something Seagate has stopped at 8TB). Only reason why I say they are acceptable in consumer grade is because MOST won't notice, infact MOST consumers will likely benefit from the extra cache given with SMR. That said CMR drives would likely destroy SMR with that amount of cache so there is that...

 

SMR drives at best give a extra 2TB possibly for the same price, and I could list a few companies/sectors that would actually use the extra 2TB per drive, and yes they do buy a shit ton. However in the NAS sector all SMR drives are (same with desktops), are a cost cutting tool, they are not cheaper than CMR, in fact if anything CMR drives have increased in price not by choice of the manufactures but threw consumer demand to boycott SMR.

 

I'm leaning into the position you own WD stock and really don't want them to lose. If that's the case just sell and cut the potential losses.

Of the 3 computers (10 drives) I use,  I only have one WD drive and it's an ssd,  I just don't like jumping the gun and demanding a pitchfork until I have evidence.   And what you have presented to me is not evidence.

 

 

5 hours ago, Egg-Roll said:

 

You: OOOO lookie at that pretty bar graph it must be truth. (sorry to mock you like that, but you really shouldn't look just at charts, they can lie, easily)

Me: looks at numbers turns them into %, complete trash, that is what that means.

They should have used a Pie chart over anything... Where bigger is worst, that hungry SMR drive would have eaten 30%ish of the pie extra than the rest, what a greedy SOB.

Better yet someone should put freenas into a pie chart for laughs, second thought, better not.

 

We are not talking failure rates here, we are talking about rebuild times, all tests have been around either current situations (SMR being put into CMR setups) or future failures with all SMR drives. I only found 2 or 3 claims of SMR will fail sooner(none mentioned in the suits from what I saw), all on Reddit, all of which I know is BS, SMR drives don't have extra moving parts so only way they could fail sooner is if the head fucks up in the read/write process needed for the SMR drive. Something I highly doubt would happen.

 

Edit: also no video I know of has posted bar charts less the freenas one, only the link I gave posted bar charts.

Unless both drives in the Raid 1 fail that is 🙄

 

What bar charts are you talking about?  Are you mocking me being all sarcastic because you read "bar rebuild times" as meaning something to do with bar charts as opposed to what it actually means:  "with the exception of rebuild times"?

Grammar and spelling is not indicative of intelligence/knowledge.  Not having the same opinion does not always mean lack of understanding.  

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