Western Digital's Red 2 - 6TB NAS drives apparently aren't good for NAS use?

[TechyBen]

4 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

Technically it's its own model number(fax), but I know what you mean something like red smr.

This out lash towards smr reminds me of Ford using its 4 cylinder eco boost instead of its normal v6 in the f150 (and I think mustang), it'll die down people who need cmr will keep to them, those using nas drives for typical use (video storage, large file storage) will buy smr and likely not see a difference

Difference is, I don't think anyone expects a 2018 Ford to be the same as a 1978 one. If they do... what rock they been under?

It's more recent that pc tech is going so fast, things are having material differences (See 1030 with 3-4 different ram types and 2060 too, and like 50% performance difference, and *some* manufactures not noting it on the box, so it's pot luck on what you get).

[TechyBen]

6 minutes ago, leadeater said:

And the fault is not proven to be the change to DM-SMR, it's more likely a firmware issue. Firmware issues could happen at any point on any revision on any magnetic storage technology.

 

You're just parroting what you've heard without having the knowledge and proof to know if it is what you say it is and not something else. WD could come out with a firmware fix tomorrow that resolves this and it would look pretty dumb because that would mean DM-SMR was not the issue.

 

If you want honesty then apply that to yourself too, companies are reluctant to give out information you don't need that isn't actually necessary that people may avoid the product or try and hold them to years later when they want to progress the product line. Forcing them to dump the Red product branding simply because you are forcing them to only sell PMR disks under that doesn't actually help you, the Red product line will just end and a new one will start and you still have the same options as you did before.

People believe in luck and magic. So should companies not tell you the model has 13 of something in it? "Don't tell people it has peanuts in it, some people get all funny over it... who cares if some have a legitimate reason to".

 

As said, it's not a legal requirement. It's a dumb move to not list things for consumers. If consumers are not going to buy something because of their own bias/racism/uneducated decisions, then get better customers. The mafia have an excuse for their actions if we decide to blame the customers *choice* for our bad decisions.

 

HUH? I never said to dump the red product line. I said to change model numbers and/or list the tech. I said not telling customers is a poor move. Not that they *were* not telling customers, I said people posting here said that and *if* true is a poor move from Western Digital. I even thanked you for listing the (poor) spec list with the (good) model revision notice.

[Egg-Roll]

13 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

 

PS, so you saying AMD was ok in their half compute chips they got sued for?

That was a spec mislead where they claimed something. That's totally different from this since no company has claimed smr is superior.

 

2 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

Difference is, I don't think anyone expects a 2018 Ford to be the same as a 1978 one. If they do... what rock they been under?

The move was recent, a few years ago. People where pissed. 

 

5 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

Things such as the cache size, being different, for SMR, the seek/write times etc. Do make a difference, and only listing "its a drive!" is a poor move.

That's the thing tho most people are looking for just "it's a drive" built for a need. If you want to avoid smr the key features to look for are: cache size beefed up compared to older models (impossible for new 12TB+ afaik),  weight (fewer platters), and lower energy consumption.

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, TechyBen said:

As said, it's not a legal requirement. It's a dumb move to not list things for consumers. If consumers are not going to buy something because of their own bias/racism/uneducated decisions, then get better customers. The mafia have an excuse for their actions if we decide to blame the customers *choice* for our bad decisions.

Yea it's really not that simple, you don't get to control who your customers are, very few companies get that privilege. If DM-SMR is going to have no bearing on your 4 bay NAS usage then you don't really need to know it, using it won't kill you or put you in hospital. "If you want a NAS rated disk there here is one, the WD Red", for almost everyone that is enough, for the rest there is the spec sheet.

 

Would you risk putting something on your product spec sheet that realistically does not affect the usage of your product but has a common misbelief that would cause people to not buy it? Don't think so, that would be foolish.

 

Like I mentioned above in an edit you probably missed, far as I can tell some of the reports are coming from people with deployments of more than 8 disks which is above what the WD Red is designed for. More disks in a disk group the more stress on the disks rebuilding. In a way the new revision is worse than the old because the old one really wouldn't care about that, this one does. If you have a greater than 8 disk deployment then you should be using Red Pro or higher.

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

That's the thing tho most people are looking for just "it's a drive" built for a need. If you want to avoid smr the key features to look for are: cache size beefed up compared to older models (impossible for new 12TB+ afaik),  weight (fewer platters), and lower energy consumption.

Also the older Seagate spec sheets have head counts in them and the new ones don't.

 

Old:

ST2000DM008 is DM-SMR btw

 

DM006 PMR

 

New:

[TechyBen]

7 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Yea it's really not that simple, you don't get to control who your customers are, very few companies get that privilege. If DM-SMR is going to have no bearing on your 4 bay NAS usage then you don't really need to know it, using it won't kill you or put you in hospital. "If you want a NAS rated disk there here is one, the WD Red", for almost everyone that is enough, for the rest there is the spec sheet.

 

Would you risk putting something on your product spec sheet that realistically does not affect the usage of your product but has a common misbelief that would cause people to not buy it? Don't think so, that would be foolish.

 

Like I mentioned above in an edit you probably missed, far as I can tell some of the reports are coming from people with deployments of more than 8 disks which is above what the WD Red is designed for. More disks in a disk group the more stress on the disks rebuilding. In a way the new revision is worse than the old because the old one really wouldn't care about that, this one does. If you have a greater than 8 disk deployment then you should be using Red Pro or higher.

IMO DM-SMR will have a bearing. The company can say it won't. As a customer I will decide to go to their competitors who do show that info (as said, I go with Samsung, because I can check the chip tech/model type, no idea about HDDs just yet as not upgraded to +2tb internally, and already checked my external HDD tech type).

 

Other people might like inviting the idiot to the BBQ because they are famous... me? I like peace and reliability.

 

PS, again, dropping head/platter count also reeks of "remove anything anyone could use to drive SMR from!" It's like Boeing all over again. If a company *wants* to hide something, you need to ask very hard why... and "consumers don't like it" is not good enough... it's a poor metric (tin flavoured Pineapples anyone?)

 

Quote

Would you risk putting something on your product spec sheet that realistically does not affect the usage of your product but has a common misbelief that would cause people to not buy it? Don't think so, that would be foolish.

 

Yes. Yes I would. I lost a customer asking for a "kettle that uses less electric" as we did not sell gas stove kettles.

I lost customers who wanted me to do a job too cheap, I could have put a "SMR" type solution to the problem (make it cheaper, sell for same price) but that would give the customer *less* than they asked for. They asked for A, but wanted to pay B, so I declined.

[leadeater]

12 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

HUH? I never said to dump the red product line. I said to change model numbers and/or list the tech. I said not telling customers is a poor move. Not that they *were* not telling customers, I said people posting here said that and *if* true is a poor move from Western Digital. I even thanked you for listing the (poor) spec list with the (good) model revision notice.

I know but it's not going to matter, if you're looking for a WD Red 6TB you're realistically not going to notice the change at all. But the problem with listing it comes when you need to change it and then you get people like now trying to claim what ever the change is means it cannot be or is not allowed to be used in that product line.

 

That will just results in the retirement of WD Red for say WD Brown with the intended technology change anyway so you weren't actually any better off.

 

I'm not saying it shouldn't be listed I'm pointing to reasons why there is a reluctance to list it.

[Egg-Roll]

Just now, leadeater said:

Also the older Seagate spec sheets have head counts in them and the new ones don't.

 

Old:

ST2000DM008 is DM-SMR btw

 

DM006 PMR

 

New:

Maybe Seagate does have a brain for misleading people... Only reason for removing it. Or maybe it's deeper and harder to find, but removing something like that shouldn't be done as it makes deciding something that much harder, unless they fear smr would fail otherwise.

 

6 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Would you risk putting something on your product spec sheet that realistically does not affect the usage of your product but has a common misbelief that would cause people to not buy it? Don't think so, that would be foolish.

Personally I'd like it for uniformity more than anything. If I have all smr I'd like to keep it like that, same is true with cmr.

[TechyBen]

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I know but it's not going to matter, if you're looking for a WD Red 6TB you're realistically not going to notice the change at all. But the problem with listing it comes when you need to change it and then you get people like now trying to claim what ever the change is means it cannot be or is not allowed to be used in that product line.

 

That will just results in the retirement of WD Red for say WD Brown with the intended technology change anyway so you weren't actually any better off.

 

I'm not saying it shouldn't be listed I'm pointing to reasons why there is a reluctance to list it.

No. You are making things up now. Swapping from OLED to LCD does not stop something being in a product line. Having Cache RAM or no ram but using Cache QVO/TLC chips for same speed, does not drop it from the product line.

 

You *could* keep an iPhone brand and change the spec... oh wait!

 

 

PS, I know the reasons. Saying the reasons are poor form. Someone might say "Oh, your food is wonderful, I love it" when I accidentally put too much salt in. I know why they said it. I wish they were honest, so I could make the right decisions (learn to put less salt in).

 

Not telling customers it's SMR is poor form.

 

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

I lost customers who wanted me to do a job too cheap, I could have put a "SMR" type solution to the problem (make it cheaper, sell for same price) but that would give the customer *less* than they asked for. They asked for A, but wanted to pay B, so I declined.

You not accepting a job for a price is not at all the same thing. Any work quotations examples are non comparable, we are talking about products, thing you buy, not a service or contract. Very different things. 

[leadeater]

3 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

No. You are making things up now. Swapping from OLED to LCD does not stop something being in a product line. Having Cache RAM or no ram but using Cache QVO/TLC chips for same speed, does not drop it from the product line.

You're not understanding the point.

 

IF YOU REFUSE TO BUY A WD RED WITH SMR TECH IN IT WD WILL DISCONTINUE WD RED FOR SOMETHING ELSE INCORPORATING SMR ANYWAY

 

Clear enough?

[TechyBen]

Just now, leadeater said:

You not accepting a job for a price is not at all the same thing. Any work quotations examples are non comparable, we are talking about products, thing you buy, not a service or contract. Very different things.

No. My "product" was a service. The kettle is an example of a product (one I sold, not manufactured).

Customers want X, and if they are right or wrong, it is wrong of WD to pass of Y as it. Even if the customer is wrong, if they expected X, it's unfair.

 

Entire industries get fined in courts for changing a market/industry towards consumers (note, consumers) if it's a change in *expected* service/product. Even if it's an upgrade, if it is not *notified* to the consumer. That's the difference. Telling the consumer.

[TechyBen]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

You're not understanding the point.

 

IF YOU REFUSE TO BUY A WD RED WITH SMR TECH IN IT WD WILL DISCONTINUE WD RED FOR SOMETHING ELSE INCORPORATING SMR ANYWAY

 

Clear enough?

Me? I have that control? Who said I'm refusing to buy them? I like the tech, I just want to make informed choices. Are you telling me I am not allowed to make informed choices?

 

I refuse to buy WD because it's WD and I don't like their products or business practices currently. I sometimes do buy from them, if the product seems ok...

[Egg-Roll]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

You're not understanding the point.

 

IF YOU REFUSE TO BUY A WD RED WITH SMR TECH IN IT WD WILL DISCONTINUE WD RED FOR SOMETHING ELSE INCORPORATING SMR ANYWAY

 

Clear enough?

Which brings up a better question, why buy a red when a enterprise drive is cheaper in an enclosure

[TechyBen]

Yeah, I'm also not buying a "WD super gold" if it has SMR and I have a use case which need say SSDs... but WD saying "oh, customers might not buy our drives if they think they have platter tech, quick, don't mention if it's an SSD or platter... because it makes no differences!!!!"

 

 

 

[leadeater]

5 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

Me? I have that control? Who said I'm refusing to buy them? I like the tech, I just want to make informed choices. Are you telling me I am not allowed to make informed choices?

No that's the point I was trying to make but just didn't seem to understand it. You i.e. everyone i.e you are a consumer, you the collective.

 

And no I'm telling you why a manufacturer may not list something on their product sheet they know will not affect the intended use case and may cause people to not buy the product because of misinformation, ones thrown about in this thread.

 

Edit:

I don't have to agree with it but I understand why it may be chosen to be left out, I also know what it might just lead to which is what the manufacturer was going to do anyway, maybe just under a different name with the old no longer available like it was going to be anyway. DM-SMR is coming and it'll be here to stay that I am certain of. Just like MLC/3D-MLC is near as much gone from consumer now and it's all 3D-TLC. Stuff changes, things get better, thing get worse, some things get extolled as worse when not actually being worse or at least not as bad as made out.

 

If WD Red FAX end up being 20%-30% cheaper down the track because of the change most people will end up being happy with the change. Other will still be pissed off but finding out that all HDD manufacturers are moving to DM-SMR. All of them are bringing in products with that technology so you either have to buy smart now while you can or pay more for high tier products, but I bet WD Pro etc is not going to fall to current WD Red FRX prices.

[leadeater]

14 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

Which brings up a better question, why buy a red when a enterprise drive is cheaper in an enclosure

Dunno, I buy HGST (if I were to buy). Well actually I take home decommissioned disks from our servers and storage arrays so.... I get the most high end 7200k RPM SAS-NL disks 

[TechyBen]

26 minutes ago, leadeater said:

And no I'm telling you why a manufacturer may not list something on their product sheet they know will not affect the intended use case and may cause people to not buy the product because of misinformation, ones thrown about in this thread.

 

Wait. They get to withhold information on the product we are buying because they fear we may have misinformation? Do you realise what you are saying there?

Plus, as said, we have a legal and social expectation that consumers (as said, note "consumers") are given the details of the sale/service/product. A company is  not listing that, and reducing it's listings also!

 

Quote

Edit:

I don't have to agree with it but I understand why it may be chosen to be left out, I also know what it might just lead to which is what the manufacturer was going to do anyway, maybe just under a different name with the old no longer available like it was going to be anyway. DM-SMR is coming and it'll be here to stay that I am certain of. Just like MLC/3D-MLC is near as much gone from consumer now and it's all 3D-TLC. Stuff changes, things get better, thing get worse, some things get extolled as worse when not actually being worse or at least not as bad as made out.

 

If WD Red FAX end up being 20%-30% cheaper down the track because of the change most people will end up being happy with the change. Other will still be pissed off but finding out that all HDD manufacturers are moving to DM-SMR. All of them are bringing in products with that technology so you either have to buy smart now while you can or pay more for high tier products, but I bet WD Pro etc is not going to fall to current WD Red FRX prices.

I never said I don't understand why. I said it's a poor move towards the customer. It might benefit WD massively. But so would them eating puppies/kittens (cheap meat, saves dollars in the canteen... not illegal, but still socially a poor move!  ). PS, I now wonder how KFK would taste... isolation is really messing with my appitite!

 

Quote

DM-SMR is coming and it'll be here to stay that I am certain of

Great. Then why not note it on the spec sheet instead of pretending to customers just to boost a temp bottom line with marketing and sales but lose a lot of consumer trust in the process.  I know the "why", more a question of why take the route... why put money and short term profit over actual honesty... like, I see people buying loo rolls. It's their choice. Still a dumb and poor choice. WD is the loo roll buying in the supermarket... legal (at the time), but we have words to express it. Still a poor move.

 

Quote

Just like MLC/3D-MLC is near as much gone from consumer now and it's all 3D-TLC.

 

But I could find those specs/white papers. Again, apples/oranges/unfair comparisons.

 

Quote

Stuff changes, things get better, thing get worse, some things get extolled as worse when not actually being worse or at least not as bad as made out.

Where did I say SMR was bad?  I love this forum I really do.

Quote

If WD Red FAX end up being 20%-30% cheaper down the track because of the change most people will end up being happy with the change.

The law kinda trumps that when it comes to being honest to consumers. As said, here it's not against the law. But the arguments have absolutely nothing to do with the issues people raised.

 

But get angry if you think I'm disagreeing with you. I'm not. Just it seems you are pointing out the cute puppies WD also makes, which has nothing to do with the arguments OP and the conflict they suggested between consumers and WD.

[leadeater]

24 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

Wait. They get to withhold information on the product we are buying because they fear we may have misinformation? Do you realise what you are saying there?

Plus, as said, we have a legal and social expectation that consumers (as said, note "consumers") are given the details of the sale/service/product. A company is  not listing that, and reducing it's listings also!

If it has no actual bearing on the suitability of the product and it doing what it is being sold to do you are going to have a very hard time arguing any legal case. You don't get told the brand and spec information of the drive motor and actuator either. You don't even get told with the controller chip is for that matter, SSDs tell you that.

 

Wanting something listed and it needing to be are quite different things. Withholding non critical information to protect either competitive information or to protect product image is actually something you are allowed to do. Information that is currently supplied is detailed as it is, wanting more, needing more, requiring more entail quite different things.

[leadeater]

45 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

The law kinda trumps that when it comes to being honest to consumers. As said, here it's not against the law. But the arguments have absolutely nothing to do with the issues people raised.

People arguments are also assumptions on yet unproven causality so you really think those matter to me? They can argue as much as they like that DM-SMR is the cause of the issue or that DM-SMR should not be used in NAS disks but that doesn't make those arguments correct. Some of it could be, part of it could, conditional factors could be or DM-SMR could be entirely unrelated to the issues raise in the OP.

 

So my arguments very much do relate to the issues being raised. If you want to say something is a cause of the problem then clear evidence with testing method is going to be required. The source article makes the same points I do, not that anyone noticed but w/e.

 

Quote

Because I don’t have any Seagate SMR drives, I can’t test the hypothesis that the IDNF issue is a WD firmware bug rather than a generic SMR issue. But throwing an error like that isn’t the kind of thing I’d associate with SMR as such – I’d simply expect throughput to turn to shit.

 

[Mihle]

1 hour ago, TechyBen said:

(Hence why I get Samsung SSDs not crucial, and Toshiba HDDs not Seagate. ).

Toshiba also have desktop HDDs that is SMR, but the spec sheet does not mention it.

[RejZoR]

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

He meant major model or series aka "Red". Literally no one for home usage is buying drives based on these model numbers. No one. You only do this when you're looking for something ridiculously specific like I was chasing specs for WD UltraStar drives with HelioSeal and without instant secure wipe function but with 4Kn support. And you had to dig through bunch of specs to find the exact model number on which you then look for these exact models in stores. Because if you just search for "WD UltraStar" bunch of websites don't even show you all of them or they do all of them and then you wonder why one drive of same series and capacity costs almost 70€ more. It's that instant secure wipe thing for example. 4Kn also made it more expensive. And often these tiny details are not mentioned in online shops, I had to rely on vendor specs. But when vendor specs only list you useless things like SATA 6 Gb/s, you of course pick the one that's cheaper. It's been bunch of times that drives literally had no noteworthy differences which is why no one gives a damn about model numbers. But in this case, there was a huge difference inside. Not just firmware with tiny changes but whole different platter recording method and slower write speeds. That's a big deal. If people were warned ahead of time, they'd be careful about this and if spec sheet just had one extra actually useful like that just said "Recording method" and one would have CMR and another SMR and we wouldn't be discussing this at all.

[leadeater]

30 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

That's a big deal. If people were warned ahead of time, they'd be careful about this and if spec sheet just had one extra actually useful like that just said "Recording method" and one would have CMR and another SMR and we wouldn't be discussing this at all.

And the other side of that is the disk was designed for the task and supposedly tested to meet that and passed so mentioning the change wasn't required and only those people that do check spec sheets would of seen it, rest would have purchased either way.

 

Knowing Reds changed to DM-SMR ahead of time wasn't going to let know that it will have issues with ZFS for example. We are discussing a reported issue with the current revision of the disk yes, like I keep saying it has not been proven DM-SMR is the root cause of the problem nor the technology itself fundamental to not being suited for NAS usage, yet people are saying both.

 

If WD wants to change WD Red over to DM-SMR and the end product is fit for purpose the fact that DM-SMR is being used is actually inconsequential. It only matters to you and others right now because you believe that is the cause of problems.

 

Had there been no issues it could of been years before anyone noticed. You are retrospectively applying an alertness to a problem you could not possibly be aware of.

 

Your huge difference really may not be at all, considering the fact that for a lot of operations the DM-SMR disk is significantly faster too due to the large cache and fast PMR zone.

Large cache drives destroy PMR disks with small caches, even the most expensive 7200RPM Near-Line. 

 

WD Red is not a pure SMR only disk, it utilizes both technologies.

[TechyBen]

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

If it has no actual bearing on the suitability of the product and it doing what it is being sold to do you are going to have a very hard time arguing any legal case. You don't get told the brand and spec information of the drive motor and actuator either. You don't even get told with the controller chip is for that matter, SSDs tell you that.

 

Wanting something listed and it needing to be are quite different things. Withholding non critical information to protect either competitive information or to protect product image is actually something you are allowed to do. Information that is currently supplied is detailed as it is, wanting more, needing more, requiring more entail quite different things.

Then they lose me as a customer. That is the thing. Complain all you like about me being wrong. Or those customers being wrong. If there is no relationship with the seller, the buyer might walk.

'Customers might argue SMR should not be used in a NAS and it is the cause of the faults, they might be wrong' (To paraphrase)

So? Two wrongs don't make a right. The consumers have a failing product and find out a material change in the design, a functional difference in the processing of it's performance or function, is different. That is wrong on the case of WD.

 

As said, like with SSDs, if I had a Samsung EVO 860 xxxzzyA and an EVO 860 xxxzzyB and found out the Bs had no RAM cache, instead using extra/better designed FLASH cache, I'd be annoyed *if* those drives also failed/froze/hit bottlenecks at different times to the As.

 

If I was told in the spec sheet "Cache, 32mb RAM A and 32mb FLASH B" I'd not care, I'd go in with knowledge of my purchase.

 

Here in the UK, we have "chip shop condiment". It's vinegar flavour (chemically identical, but other source of acid), but not vinegar (grape/malt/cider sourced), thus they don't call it the same thing. Customers don't care, because they are not being wilfully deceived.

[TechyBen]

2 hours ago, Mihle said:

Toshiba also have desktop HDDs that is SMR, but the spec sheet does not mention it.

I never said I don't want SMR. Again... lol. I said companies not advertising specs/technology of the product may lose customers and is a poor move. I look up the Toshiba drives I get, I also don't use NAS yet. But I do try to find out if it's SMR/cache sizes/etc. If I find a Toshiba drive I don't like the reviews/spec to, I won't buy it. Same for the Samsung drives.

 

But somehow, people not liking the WD drives is wrong of them... even if these drives are failing in NAS?