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

Pickles von Brine
3 hours ago, mr moose said:

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

You are right I was, however I was also trying to make a point. Not every failure will be the same, one person might have a year to rebuild a RAID, yet the person next to them might only have 5 hours. It comes down to what drive performs the best in those cases. Can you tell me with confidence that SMR even has a hope to complete a rebuild w/o delay to attempt to prevent data loss? If so why not wager your own personal finances on it and offer those who have a failed rebuild because of SMR you will pay for the data recovery.

 

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

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

I've said it many many times, and I'll say it again... They work day to day, but that means jack shit on rebuilds, the time your data is the most vulnerable, the time that slow shity times actually do matter, where slower is worst, ESPECIALLY in 1 disc failure setups. I could care less if the drives took 50,000,000 hours just to build on a new setup or hell slower on day to day use, as long as it is no slower than any other drive on the market when it comes to rebuilding. That is what is needed, sure the tests being done now are half assed however thus far considering they are using relatively easy data to recover through repetition and same/similar file sizes completely ignoring reality and SMR is still struggling with it in various cases. What more do you need to start saying no to SMR in at least those setups?

 

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

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

Where's the data increase you keep claiming for the 2-6TB market? It doesn't exist.

Where's the price decrease in the 2-6TB market? It doesn't exist.

What drives do have a logical SMR presence in them? 20TB, and Seagates archive series (not built for NAS setups)

So lets count how many drives are actually being used based on your words? 🤔 2, one 20TB from each company (not sure about Toshiba), every other drive is either for a specific task (archive) or to push profits. There is no logical reason beyond cost cutting when there should be CMR in everything but 20TB drives or any drive that pushing high numbers for low prices, like I said where are the 4/6/8TB drives for the prices of 2/4/6TB SMR drives?

 

Give me proof they have in fact increase data storage for 2-6TB drives using SMR for the same cost as CMR 2-6TB drives, you literally can't, you know why? Because those 2-6TB drives still can only hold 2-6TB of data, they can't hold more.

 

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

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.

 

What more evidence do you need? Like I said I would love to get this "evidence" giving as many scenarios as I possibly can, however my money is pre-allocated thanks to the pandemic. The evidence or what has been given thus far isn't going very well for SMR on the rebuild front, the part that matters just as much as "day-day" use, because all it takes is one drive to die and you might not be sleeping for a week, esp if you are a unlucky person using freenas because WD was stupid, ignorant, and/or feared what is happening now and not telling users the new FAX drives from 2-6TB are SMR.

 

I want the people to win against WD because:
A) They did this likely because they are in financial trouble, while this will hurt them more, they do have a chance to cut losses now.

B) They hid the fact and kept hiding it, and dodging it for a year.

C) Out of the 3 companies they were the first and possibly going to be the only company to put SMR drives in NAS drives, likely due to A.

D) SMRs in anything but high TB range drives do not belong anywhere else, I would accept a 6 platter 12TB+ SMR drive so long as it's cheaper than its CMR counterpart. Why? 6 platters is really the maximum for air, however who would buy it? NAS users? Not anymore, not after this. Average consumers? Nah too much data on one disc, too much data in general. Enterprise? Once again nope, they much rather either 16/18 or 20TB drives, prob cheaper per TB as well, esp in bulk.

Why would I buy it? Cold storage backup, massive, cheap, and literally wouldn't be used everyday, no rebuilds no BS, plug in once a week/month spend a few hours powered on, shelved.

 

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

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"?

Ok, so I mistook your words and I do apologize for that.

 

However one shouldn't ignore a important duty of a NAS drive, that is begging for issues. Just because it hasn't doesn't mean it won't, for all we know tomorrow all or 1 CMR or 1 SMR drive in the case of all SMR setups start to fail in current raids and people had to buy the SMR drives because no one has CMR in stock, we'll quickly learn how well they work then in every situation making the world our guinea pigs. That is the current issue next to the fact WD hid SMR in NAS and went out of their way to hide it whenever asked. SMR drives might last for 1000 years or they might start dying the second I post this, that isn't the issue, it's how long will it take and will it be slower than the CMR counterparts, if so how much, if too much why did WD even do it and kept claiming they are still good for NAS? Those are the questions that need to be answered right now. SMRs have their place, NAS units is not one of them unless they are just as fast as CMR in every way. I'm fine with SMRs if they only took 10-15% longer, however current numbers state they take 30%+ which while should be ok in most cases, it's something many shouldn't need to risk because a company wants to save a buck due to financial issues.

 

 For you SMR drives might work great, for me they "might" work "ok", personally that is not a risk I'm willing to take, nor is it one for enough people apparently to call WD on it.

 

So for the sake of consumer rights, hope the consumers win. Maybe not everything as per the suits, but win enough to prove the government and people will not take such shit laying down. What the 3 did was dirty real dirty, replacing CMR drives with SMR drives and not disclosing it till after, WAAAAY after, not for storage increase, not to save the consumers money, but to save themselves money. WD just did the extreme case causing potential issues with data loss by putting them into NAS drives.

 

Do I agree with everything in the suits? No. Do I believe they need to be sued for what they did to some degree? Yes. However if you ask me the suits would be far better off if they went after all 3 for hiding SMR and not disclosing it, removing consumers rights to make informed choices, they all broke that, every single one and that is the one biggest thing I do not like about the suits is they are excluding the other 2.

 

I'm hoping (or one could say betting on) for HAMR/MAMR to make SMR great and hopefully surpass CMR, however in the current state SMR has one use and one use only, the badestest, sickest, biggest, D contest around. Doesn't matter if it is air or helium as long as SMR is giving the biggest space available for the drives "gas" tech, simply put 12s and 20s, nothing less and only more if platter density allows.

 

Happy? Prob not, however the reality is facts have been given, and I doubt any media channel is going to risk slander suits to make a handful of self centered egocentric butthurt Reddit assholes happy. They aren't the ones going to be paying for those suits, so the media has no reason to cater to their ignorances/stupidity. So next to doing the tests for yourself you are going to have to accept the test as what they are, simple dumbed down time crunched, pandemic delayed tests that don't result real world applications. However key words here are dumbed down, because reality is far harsher than those tests, not all Sunshine, Lollipops And Rainbows will likely be seen in real world applications for SMRs and their rebuild times, remember Synology is one of likely many to say no to SMR (not including the freenas family, that's a given).

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35 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

SNIP

 

 I respect your position as a consumer and your right to want things to change and for WD to be held accountable for their part in all this. I do understand that but clearly we aren't going to agree on many things.   I simply hold to a different position on the degree to which specific legal claims are valid for varying and different reasons.

 

Neither of us should agree to disagree but we aren;t getting anywhere either.   Thank you for the frank and honest discussion.

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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