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

[leadeater]

25 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

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.

Then you are walking for ill-informed reasons so it's not two wrongs at all, it's you just not buying something because you have a perception about something which isn't correct.

 

Now if you are saying you don't want to buy a current WD Red because of reported issues and are not satisfied they are fixed, great excellent reasoning. If you are in a situation where you have actually purchased one and it's not working for your needs and you wish to return it, do so, and you also do not wish to purchase any more WD Red onging also great reasoning.

 

What's not great reasoning is taking that further and placing the blame on something you don't actually know is the cause.

 

You don't have to make ill-informed assumptions and throw around blame needlessly, forever tainting your opinion of a technology that may have nothing to do with the issue.

 

You don't have to assume anything at all, that's the point. If you don't know what the issue is and lack the evidence then simply do not blame it. Just wait out the evidence because I can guarantee there will be people(s) testing this right now.

 

It's not a material change if it's not a material change, why can't you just wait on evidence. You can still choose to not buy the disks and advise others do not while waiting. 

[Mihle]

3 hours ago, TechyBen said:

 

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

I never said that, I am on your side in that.

Its just that you talked like Toshiba did disclose it in the spec sheet always, while they arent. I was just trying to be devils advocate.
Seagate surfer said Ironwolf are not SMR, and Toshiba NAS drives are not SMR, both do desktop drives with SMR without saying it anywhere, so to me it looks like they are in the same boat. While WD is worse because they do it to the WD Reds.
Unless Seagate does the same thing as WD, I will go Seagate over WD in the future.

[CarlBar]

Skipped the last page and a bit as it felt like things where a bit circular so this is more of a general broad comment.

 

Depending on quite a few factors that would really need a full legal court case to decide on customers in the EU for which the downsides of SMR specifically would be an issue could still have WD and the others bent over a barrel on the issue. If your product, either as a brand or as a general product class has a perception of certain features/capabilities/e.t.c in the public consciousness of the customers buying that product and you don't meet all those expectations you are required to state that it doesn't meet those expectations somwhere, depending on how major an expectation it is there's also i believe occasions where you can't bury it in the small print it has to be pretty clearly stated in a more front leading way than would be the case with small print. Now weather NAs drives as a whole or WD Red as a brand has created a perception that there won't be SMR is way above my pay grade. But in potentia, they could still be in some real trouble in europe.

[TechyBen]

4 hours ago, Mihle said:

I never said that, I am on your side in that.

Its just that you talked like Toshiba did disclose it in the spec sheet always, while they arent. I was just trying to be devils advocate.
Seagate surfer said Ironwolf are not SMR, and Toshiba NAS drives are not SMR, both do desktop drives with SMR without saying it anywhere, so to me it looks like they are in the same boat. While WD is worse because they do it to the WD Reds.
Unless Seagate does the same thing as WD, I will go Seagate over WD in the future.

Nah. Me liking Toshiba and Samsung is historical, and if they follow suit, I won't buy those products (but do realise they are massive companies... so if Sony Music make DRM breaking cds, I may still buy Sony headphones  , but won't buy Sony music/cds etc).

 

I'll go back to a company if I can trust it. But really. I don't want the hassle, so I avoid those companies that give me hassle.

[TechyBen]

2 hours ago, CarlBar said:

Skipped the last page and a bit as it felt like things where a bit circular so this is more of a general broad comment.

 

Depending on quite a few factors that would really need a full legal court case to decide on customers in the EU for which the downsides of SMR specifically would be an issue could still have WD and the others bent over a barrel on the issue. If your product, either as a brand or as a general product class has a perception of certain features/capabilities/e.t.c in the public consciousness of the customers buying that product and you don't meet all those expectations you are required to state that it doesn't meet those expectations somwhere, depending on how major an expectation it is there's also i believe occasions where you can't bury it in the small print it has to be pretty clearly stated in a more front leading way than would be the case with small print. Now weather NAs drives as a whole or WD Red as a brand has created a perception that there won't be SMR is way above my pay grade. But in potentia, they could still be in some real trouble in europe.

I don't even think it requires a downside. Sometimes it does, other times it's just if the customer was mislead, or if the customer was not told, of certain specifics. See the AMD case, which they did list specs, but made marketing claims they could not back up (IIRC which was the only reason they lost/settled out of court for that one).

[TechyBen]

7 hours ago, leadeater said:

Then you are walking for ill-informed reasons so it's not two wrongs at all, it's you just not buying something because you have a perception about something which isn't correct.

 

Now if you are saying you don't want to buy a current WD Red because of reported issues and are not satisfied they are fixed, great excellent reasoning. If you are in a situation where you have actually purchased one and it's not working for your needs and you wish to return it, do so, and you also do not wish to purchase any more WD Red onging also great reasoning.

 

What's not great reasoning is taking that further and placing the blame on something you don't actually know is the cause.

 

You don't have to make ill-informed assumptions and throw around blame needlessly, forever tainting your opinion of a technology that may have nothing to do with the issue.

 

You don't have to assume anything at all, that's the point. If you don't know what the issue is and lack the evidence then simply do not blame it. Just wait out the evidence because I can guarantee there will be people(s) testing this right now.

 

It's not a material change if it's not a material change, why can't you just wait on evidence. You can still choose to not buy the disks and advise others do not while waiting. 

?

Company removes listings of specs for fear customers won't buy them. I care less what the other customers do. I don't like a company removing the spec, or starting to hide their practices.

 

An example, theoretical. Phone companies stop listing battery MAH because it's misleading. A phone with a fast but power efficient chip (using better tech, say 4nm instead of 14nm) would last longer on a smaller battery, than a wasteful chip on a bigger battery... So they stop listing it.

 

That's fine, right, we only care about "talk time" and "screen on time" and "standby time", and those are still listed? I might be ok with that. If they also drop those metrics, because dirty witch hinter consumers are stupid, I'm out and not buying it. Why? Because I'll not know if they swapped for smaller/worse parts mid release cycle (happens), and tries to swindle me/consumers. They might have a good reason for doing it. It will have unintended consequences though. Besides, *it's pointless* hiding specs from consumers, buyers can make their own list by buying, checking/disassembling/xraying products and (if nondestructive examination) returning. 

 

 

So, WD not listing something, makes me reluctant to buy their products. Just as I might not buy Samsung TVs as they don't list certain features/display tech, and (IIRC along with other companies) mix in tech and product lines, and you might get OLED/backlight/zones/etc different to the similar model that looks the same. Without seeing/using it in person to know I like it, and not seeing specs online, I would skip.

Quote

You don't have to assume anything at all, that's the point. If you don't know what the issue is and lack the evidence then simply do not blame it. Just wait out the evidence because I can guarantee there will be people(s) testing this right now.

 

It's not a material change if it's not a material change, why can't you just wait on evidence. You can still choose to not buy the disks and advise others do not while waiting.

PS, where did I blame SMR for making these drives fail in NAS boxes?  It is a change though. SMR is not PMR. 

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, TechyBen said:

Company removes listings of specs for fear customers won't buy them

WD never listed anything at all, for them you are wanting to add something that was never before under the belief it would somehow have informed you before the fact that it would impact you. Like I keep saying and will keep saying, DM-SMR usage could be utterly inconsequential and you wanting to know doesn't change anything. A company is perfectly within their right to not tell you this if it has no impact on you and the intended usage of the product.

 

As I've also said I'd like it listed, but I'm not going to stand around and try and claim that it being on the spec sheet would have done anything at all. You have no idea how DM-SMR impacts the disk at all, you don't know how it was designed. You don't know how large the PMR zone is in the disk and that is likely commercially sensitive information. There are things you just do not need to know and don't actually have a right to demand to know.

 

You are still attributing malice to the act of using DM-SMR, you are still saying with complete confidence it actually affects you and you are still saying it would affect your purchase choice on that ill-informed information. 

 

Again DM-SMR to you may as well be irrelevant, if the product functions correctly, has expected performance knowing DM-SMR is used is just an informative nice to have. If WD thinks it's a marketable technology that would increase sales it'll be slapped all over the box and shouted to high heaven, but it's not so it isn't.

 

Edit:

Also to be really clear you cannot claim you have been mislead when your argument is premised on these user claims and reports that DM-SMR is the cause of the problem. This is why you think there is a problem, this is why you think it even matters at all. As such you and everyone else are misleading themselves and I'm just telling you not to do that. You want to make some kind of consumer being mislead claim you will need evidence, which you currently lack.

 

You can ignore everything I'm saying and just trundle down the path you are but without evidence behind what you are saying it's just baseless complaining which holds water like a sieve.

[TechyBen]

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

Spoiler

 

WD never listed anything at all, for them you are wanting to add something that was never before under the belief it would somehow have informed you before the fact that it would impact you. Like I keep saying and will keep saying, DM-SMR usage could be utterly inconsequential and you wanting to know doesn't change anything. A company is perfectly within their right to not tell you this if it has no impact on you and the intended usage of the product.

 

As I've also said I'd like it listed, but I'm not going to stand around and try and claim that it being on the spec sheet would have done anything at all. You have no idea how DM-SMR impacts the disk at all, you don't know how it was designed. You don't know how large the PMR zone is in the disk and that is likely commercially sensitive information. There are things you just do not need to know and don't actually have a right to demand to know.

 

You are still attributing malice to the act of using DM-SMR, you are still saying with complete confidence it actually affects you and you are still saying it would affect your purchase choice on that ill-informed information. 

 

Again DM-SMR to you may as well be irrelevant, if the product functions correctly, has expected performance knowing DM-SMR is used is just an informative nice to have. If WD thinks it's a marketable technology that would increase sales it'll be slapped all over the box and shouted to high heaven, but it's not so it isn't.

 

Edit:

Also to be really clear you cannot claim you have been mislead when your argument is premised on these user claims and reports that DM-SMR is the cause of the problem. This is why you think there is a problem, this is why you think it even matters at all. As such you and everyone else are misleading themselves and I'm just telling you not to do that. You want to make some kind of consumer being mislead claim you will need evidence, which you currently lack.

 

You can ignore everything I'm saying and just trundle down the path you are but without evidence behind what you are saying it's just baseless complaining which holds water like a sieve.

 

 

They removed platter numbers.

 

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that was never before under the belief it would somehow have informed you before the fact that it would impact you.

This is not correct. SMR will impact me in certain workloads.

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DM-SMR usage could be utterly inconsequential and you wanting to know doesn't change anything.

*Could be*. Could also not be. I can test this, and thus the argument is invalid.

 

Quote

 You have no idea how DM-SMR impacts the disk at all, you don't know how it was designed.

Yep. But I wish to make informed choices. WD not allowing me to, will mean I go else where (I can look up reviews, but it takes longer than checking a spec sheet with other companies). Hence why I went for a Samsung SSD over Cruicial, burnt once with a lemon there, not going back for a while.

 

Quote

You are still attributing malice to the act of using DM-SMR

No. To the fact of hiding that they are using it.

 

Quote

Again DM-SMR to you may as well be irrelevant, if the product functions correctly, has expected performance knowing DM-SMR is used is just an informative nice to have. If WD thinks it's a marketable technology that would increase sales it'll be slapped all over the box and shouted to high heaven, but it's not so it isn't.

As a customer, I'm not giving them the choice to not tell me.

 

Quote

Also to be really clear you cannot claim you have been mislead when your argument is premised on these user claims and reports that DM-SMR is the cause of the problem. 

If it is or if it isn't is inconsequential. The drives are failing. Currently the only difference seen is SMR. If it's the firmware/seek time and the NAS controller is failing, it's still a material change the consumer could not have accounted for *because they were not told*.

 

Quote

You can ignore everything I'm saying and just trundle down the path you are but without evidence behind what you are saying it's just baseless complaining which holds water like a sieve.

Baseless? Baseless that I request a company tell me what they are doing or what they sell me?  Fault or no fault, I ask for hands open deals, not closed fists (as a sign language expression would put it).

[mr moose]

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

 

Edit:

Also to be really clear you cannot claim you have been mislead when your argument is premised on these user claims and reports that DM-SMR is the cause of the problem. This is why you think there is a problem, this is why you think it even matters at all. As such you and everyone else are misleading themselves and I'm just telling you not to do that. You want to make some kind of consumer being mislead claim you will need evidence, which you currently lack.

 

You can ignore everything I'm saying and just trundle down the path you are but without evidence behind what you are saying it's just baseless complaining which holds water like a sieve.

This,  why does this need to be said and why are we seeing a lot of it recently.    I get the need to be concerned and that's fair enough, as consumers when things go wrong we should be wary of why.  However we don't know shit about this, hell,  we don't even know how big the problem is, for all we know there are only 15 cases and the confounding factors could literally be hundreds of things other than SMR.   

 

Has anyone got any stats on how many cases there are and what the actually performance difference is between SMR and CMR (in any use case)?    There is no point in trying to demand manufacturers list things unless you know if that thing has any effect on end use. 

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, TechyBen said:

They removed platter numbers.

 

This is not correct. SMR will impact me in certain workloads.

 

Which ones and by how much? 

 

1 minute ago, TechyBen said:

 

*Could be*. I can test this, and thus the argument is invalid.

Show me the test.

 

I put it to you that the only benchmarks and reviews on HDD's out there are userbenchmark and maybe the odd crystal diskmark that people upload.   None of them can tell you the difference between SMR and CMR so there is no way to actually put a figure on it that would make knowing the feature a benefit.   This is the problem, no one knew there was a performance issue and these drives have been in circulation for a bit now.  We only know about the whole issue because someones silvering process failed and they were clued in enough to deduce the disk was SMR.   Other than that we have no other information.   There is a distinct problem with trying to workout what eh cause of the problem iis when you  only have one or two media articles and the word of a few people that there are issues with hte disk itself.  Independent testing needs to be carried out to find out what the problem is and what the solution is.

 

 

So far all I see is a feature that gives us more storage (at a performance penalty that is yet to be determined) has become a dirty word because of the internet insatiable desire not to think anything through before demanding it knows everything.

 

.

 

 

 

[TechyBen]

23 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Spoiler

 

Which ones and by how much? 

 

Show me the test.

 

I put it to you that the only benchmarks and reviews on HDD's out there are userbenchmark and maybe the odd crystal diskmark that people upload.   None of them can tell you the difference between SMR and CMR so there is no way to actually put a figure on it that would make knowing the feature a benefit.   This is the problem, no one knew there was a performance issue and these drives have been in circulation for a bit now.  We only know about the whole issue because someones silvering process failed and they were clued in enough to deduce the disk was SMR.   Other than that we have no other information.   There is a distinct problem with trying to workout what eh cause of the problem iis when you  only have one or two media articles and the word of a few people that there are issues with hte disk itself.  Independent testing needs to be carried out to find out what the problem is and what the solution is.

 

 

 

So far all I see is a feature that gives us more storage (at a performance penalty that is yet to be determined)

Spoiler

has become a dirty word because of the internet insatiable desire not to think anything through before demanding it knows everything.

 

.

 

 

 

And at that. I'm out. You admit there is a performance penalty, but not mentioned by the manufacturers, but above you claim there is no difference ("prove it" then say "there is a penalty")! As said, Samsung QVO is quad cell SSD, vs their older 3 cell, and other companies have platters/arms/vibration/power capacitor power off safety/etc/etc and are open about it. Here they were not. That's as much as needs to be said.

 

PS, thread from June last year, as an example of them *not* performing the same. Granted, they were not failing, but they were throwing errors, as the users were not expecting SMR, thus the latency was a problem (I assume/guess due to mixed disk performance, because *the consumer was not notified before purchasing*). https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/smr-resilver.77964/

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, TechyBen said:

And at that. I'm out. You admit there is a performance penalty, but not mentioned by the manufacturers, but above you claim there is no difference ("prove it" then say "there is a penalty")! As said, Samsung QVO is quad cell SSD, vs their older 3 cell, and other companies have platters/arms/vibration/power capacitor power off safety/etc/etc and are open about it. Here they were not. That's as much as needs to be said.

 

There is a performance penalty on paper as per how it was designed.  But that was 6 years ago,  technology has changed so much that there may not be a penalty anymore.  And if there is it may not be big enough to warrant any mention.  There are literally hundreds of different parts and features of each part that have an effect on performance, why does SMR warrant a specific mention over any of the other parts?  we have just as much information on them as we do SMR.

 

Do you see how many may's and and maybe's there are in all this?  it cannot be treated as an absolute as there is just not enough information to do that.  Please find a website or something that has performed benchmarks on various drives and concluded that today's SMR tech is indeed slower or the cause of certain issues.  Do that and you absolutely can legitimately call it a problem that needs  resolution,  like having it listed on drives that are advertised for specific uses like raid arrays or for boot drives.   But until you have that information, you are literally claiming consumer wide problem because some people have had an issue and a lot of maybes surrounding one aspect of those products.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, TechyBen said:

If it is or if it isn't is inconsequential. The drives are failing. Currently the only difference seen is SMR. If it's the firmware/seek time and the NAS controller is failing, it's still a material change the consumer could not have accounted for *because they were not told*.

You don't need to account for it if it's not actually the problem and is unrelated, correlation is not causation and you're being a great sample of this. Show me that causal evidence link otherwise it doesn't matter.

 

Just like it doesn't matter what the platter is made out of, or the composition of the magnetic film applied to it. Did you know there are difference for both and these have changed over the Years?

 

You also know that the number of platters have changed over the years, even on PMR disks, so do you think the number of these matter? Does a 4 platter 1TB disk perform better than a 2 platter 1TB disk or a 1 platter 1TB disk? If you don't know the answer to this then saying it needs to be on the spec sheet just because it's different is a not a good argument, you have no idea if it's even relevant or why you need to know, or even if it has an impact at all.

 

1 hour ago, TechyBen said:

No. To the fact of hiding that they are using it.

It's not hiding if it's irrelevant and you don't need to know. You haven't proven you need to know, you haven't evidenced how it impacts you at all.

 

1 hour ago, TechyBen said:

*Could be*. Could also not be. I can test this, and thus the argument is invalid.

Then EVERYTHING you have been saying is also invalid, so are we done? You haven't tested anything, you have no evidence and everything you say is just coulds. It could be space ghosts? No it is space ghosts causing this problem. It could be so I demand WD tell me if WD Reds contain space ghosts!

 

How about like I said wait for evidence around the issue so you can be better informed about the problem so you can know what information to ask for and why you need to ask for it.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, TechyBen said:

PS, thread from June last year, as an example of them *not* performing the same. Granted, they were not failing, but they were throwing errors, as the users were not expecting SMR, thus the latency was a problem (I assume/guess due to mixed disk performance, because *the consumer was not notified before purchasing*). https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/smr-resilver.77964/

No, and everyone saying anything like this is wrong, the source of the information never said this either. I actually have coming up 25 years experience in RAID, I know what I'm talking about. The person who reported the problem and is using ZFS also knows what he is talking about too.

 

The disks not being an exact match is not the issue. It's not the issue. The issue is literally spelled out in the source articles.

 

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In the case of ZFS, resilvering isn’t a block level “end to end” scan/refill, but jumps all over the drive as every file’s parity is rebuilt. This seems to trigger a further problem on the WD40EFAXs where a query to check a sector that hasn’t been written to yet causes the drive to internally log a “Sector ID not found (IDNF)” error and throws a hard IO error from the interface to the host system.

 

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.

 

 

Edit:

Also these new disks will only have a potential performance problem if you are adding it to an existing ZFS pool to rebuild a failed disk or adding it to a traditional RAID array that is largely full. After the disk has been rebuilt in to an array or added into an existing array, like disk revisions or not, these new revisions of disks will perform better than the old ones for the target market they are for, small NAS systems of less than 8 disks.

 

If you try and fill the entire array from empty to full all in one go you also may encounter a performance problem, however unless you have 10Gb network connection it would be impossible to trigger this situation as your sustained throughput is too low.

[TechyBen]

19 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Spoiler

 

No, and everyone saying anything like this is wrong, the source of the information never said this either. I actually have coming up 25 years experience in RAID, I know what I'm talking about. The person who reported the problem and is using ZFS also knows what he is talking about too.

 

The disks not being an exact match is not the issue. It's not the issue. The issue is literally spelled out in the source articles.

 

 

 

 

Edit:

Also these new disks will only have a potential performance problem if you are adding it to an existing ZFS pool to rebuild a failed disk or adding it to a traditional RAID array that is largely full. After the disk has been rebuilt in to an array or added into an existing array, like disk revisions or not, these new revisions of disks will perform better than the old ones for the target market they are for, small NAS systems of less than 8 disks.

 

If you try and fill the entire array from empty to full all in one go you also may encounter a performance problem, however unless you have 10Gb network connection it would be impossible to trigger this situation as you're sustain throughput is too low.

 

 

And. Did you read those posts in that forum? "I wish to keep to PMR drives" because they already had PMR drives. You are saying they don't have the right to make that decision to ask what type of drive it is and decide to buy/not/redesign their NAS/RAID/ZFS/failure redundancy on that? and not changing tech/design/spec = better knowledge of the hardware = (generally) less "new adoption" failures errors. This could be a normal firmware bug. But those *opting* to buy like for like to avoid new firmware bugs (mainly from new features) have the choice to chose.

 

They don't if companies withould that info till it fails in use.

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

And. Did you read those posts in that forum? "I wish to keep to PMR drives" because they already had PMR drives. You are saying they don't have the right to make that decision to ask what type of drive it is and decide to buy/not/redesign their NAS/RAID/ZFS/failure redundancy on that?

He can like what ever he wants, they are saying this because they believe DM-SMR is the source of the problem. And yet again you do not need to redesign the NAS because of this, these disks can be used along side the old one and it will operate fine. Yes there is an issue with the new revisions of the disk, what exactly is the cause of the problem is unknown.

 

WD has replaced the old revision with the new, unless you can find a source of the old revision you have to buy this one.

 

Do you even know how many revisions of the WD Red line there has been? It's not 2.

[TechyBen]

25 minutes ago, leadeater said:

He can like what ever he wants, they are saying this because they believe DM-SMR is the source of the problem. And yet again you do not need to redesign the NAS because of this, these disks can be used along side the old one and it will operate fine. Yes there is an issue with the new revisions of the disk, what exactly is the cause of the problem is unknown.

 

WD has replaced the old revision with the new, unless you can find a source of the old revision you have to buy this one.

 

Do you even know how many revisions of the WD Red line there has been? It's not 2.

?

?

They asked for a PMR drive. That is what they were asking for. That is what they wished to purchase. I hope you never serve me at a restaurant. 

 

Quote

Do you even know how many revisions of the WD Red line there has been? It's not 2.

I would test every product before rolling out. Because I don't trust them or the products they release to perform as expected (note "expected", I still expect them to perform some way, just assume they will change their mind without noting it in a spec sheet). Their spec sheets are not reliable/avaliable. So I'd probably go to a competitor. What is your defence against them again?

 

Unless you have access to some additional data, such as SMR total PMR cache zone size, or consistent throughput rate etc. AFAIK Samsung (and others) don't supply this for SSDs, but constant throughput rates can be seen in available benchmarks (theoretical example "450mpbs over 50gb till the 1 bit 4 bit cell cache is used up, then 350mbps after that" and/or "450mbps sustained on an empty drive or with overprovisioning, 350mbps when full disk"). We don't have those for  these WD SMR drives because *we were not told they were SMR*. But we are told SSDs do/don't have cache (though some companies try to hide if it has a ram cache or not, but as said, disassembling it can find out!).

 

For those who need certain performance/behaviour type, they can just buy/test/refund or buy/disassemble (to see what platters/cache chips are on the PCB for HDD/SSD) and post reviews (at a cost mind ) to test. So hiding the specs is pointless from a marketing/business practice and only hurts those customers if it's cheaper/more convenient/more reliable to go to their competitor. WD wins a large bulk low effort consumer space, but loses out to those who need the reliability/openness. Note, "openness" need not have a fault. These could be 1000% reliable, yet not being told, that is where people feel uneasy.

[leadeater]

8 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

They asked for a PMR drive. That is what they were asking for. That is what they wished to purchase. I hope you never serve me at a restaurant. 

He asked for it because he doesn't know what the problem is and like yourself are applying bad logic and assumptions to the situation. You can wish what ever you like, just don't give me incorrect and faulty reasoning as to why you want something.

 

If you don't like this being pointed out then just try not to use it in your arguments with me. 

 

If you want DM-SMR listed on the spec sheet cool, just say that. Avoid bringing anything up like this as to you why want it, otherwise I'm going to repeat to you again why that reasoning is flawed.

 

You can avoid this circular debate by avoiding unevidenced reasoning.

 

I want it on the spec sheet, end of sentence.

[TechyBen]

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

He asked for it because he doesn't know what the problem is and like yourself are applying bad logic and assumptions to the situation. You can wish what ever you like, just don't give me incorrect and faulty reasoning as to why you want something.

 

If you don't like this being pointed out then just try and use it in your arguments with me. 

 

If you want DM-SMR listed on the spec sheet cool, just saying that. Avoid bringing anything up like this as to you why want it, otherwise I'm going to repeat to you again why that reasoning is flawed.

 

You can avoid this circular debate by avoiding unevidenced reasoning.

 

I want it on the spec sheet, end of sentence.

He asked for a PMR drive. He can be told "yes or no". Right? I have that one question. Can he ask WD "Is this drive PMR or SMR"?

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, TechyBen said:

? He asked for a PMR drive. He can be told "yes or no". Right? I have that one question. Can he ask WD "Is this drive PMR or SMR"?

He can, people have, WD responded to them. But yet again it's irrelevant, you are basing this discussion on flawed reasoning and information. It's not going to get you anywhere.

 

Using that forum post is not going to help you here.

[TechyBen]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

He can, people have, WD responded to them. But yet again it's irrelevant, you are basing this discussion on flawed reasoning and information. It's not going to get you anywhere.

 

Using that forum post is not going to help you here.

?

OK. So he can ask them. That's great. You don't have a problem with him (or me, or anyone) asking them if a drive has PMR or SMR.

 

Thanks. Can I also ask you. Are we allowed to ask them how large the PMR cache is inside the SMR drive?

[edit] Hope you get to read this too, I am saying what they have done, just as you are saying what WD have done. Does not mean we agree with their reasoning does it? Besides, that person *fixed their issue by going to the PMR drives*, tech totally unrelated, the changed of a hidden spec listings, is what fixed their problem quickest/easiest).

[leadeater]

10 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

OK. So he can ask them. That's great. You don't have a problem with him (or me, or anyone) asking them if a drive has PMR or SMR.

I only have a problem if you then go on further to say or use forum posts that say the current problem is because of the usage of DM-SMR and that is why you want to know that information.

 

10 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

Thanks. Can I also ask you. Are we allowed to ask them how large the PMR cache is inside the SMR drive?

You can, I already brought this up with you anyway. It doesn't mean they are going to tell you though but you can ask. You can ask them anything.

 

10 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

Besides, that person *fixed their issue by going to the PMR drives*, tech totally unrelated, the changed of a hidden spec listings, is what fixed their problem quickest/easiest).

As I said if you have an issue with a product report it and get it replaced or refunded, what someone chooses of those options is none of my business, If they want a refund and buy someone else's product because they are not satisfied with the product also not my business.

 

If they go around spreading misinformation that DM-SMR are not suitable for NAS usage and it's that which caused their problem and don't have the required evidence to prove it then I do have a problem with that. What gets thrown around is important, because you could very well be denying yourself the usage of products and technology on the basis of bad information.

 

Edit:

If you are making buying decisions based on bad information you are not making an informed decision.

[GDRRiley]

13 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

. You don't have a problem with him (or me, or anyone) asking them if a drive has PMR or SMR.

 

Thanks. Can I also ask you. Are we allowed to ask them how large the PMR cache is inside the SMR drive?

They should encoded with a fixed character in the model number. Given 0-z can hold 36 different meanings they can easily encode. HAMMR vs PMR vs SMR. It should also be on the spec sheet. 
 

platters should be listed as well on the data sheet 

 

this is some sort of firmware not related to the drive type however the drive type should be listed. 

Edit: I’ll add on standardize character by brand or in a perfect world everyone agrees. 
example 
0 PMR

1 SMR

3 PMR helium field. 

Edited April 21, 2020 by GDRRiley
added more detail

[TechyBen]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I only have a problem if you then go on further to say or use forum posts that say the current problem is because of the usage of DM-SMR and that is why you want to know that information.

? Is there some sort of magic that means SMR can never fail? Fact is, it's failure and function mode is different to PMR. Thus, someone asking for PMR is valid. Even if PMR is phased out (as with tube TVs, gramophones etc). It's a valid request. Faulty or perfect post singularity device... it is a valid request.

 

Quote

You can, I already brought this up with you anyway. It doesn't mean they are going to tell you though but you can ask. You can ask them anything.

 

As I said if you have an issue with a product report it and get it replaced or refunded, what someone chooses of those options is none of my business, If they want a refund and buy someone else's product because they are not satisfied with the product also not my business.

 

Then like that customer they may buy a different product line, or eventually go with a competitor. It may not "hurt" WD, as there are enough other types of customers. But I'm not arguing for a side. There are results to the action, and they are different from putting a tiny little "SMR" or "50gb PMR cache" or "seek times while empty" etc list in the spec sheet. I don't know of Samsung getting hurt because customers won't buy the new QVO vs the old drives (which I did exactly today, purchased an EVO line because I want an EVO, not a QVO right now). They listed the difference, instead of trying to pass the QVO off as an EVO but changing 1 barcode digit.  (Samsung does do similar to WD in other products though)

 

Quote

If they go around spreading misinformation that DM-SMR are not suitable for NAS usage and it's that which caused their problem and don't have the required evidence to prove it then I do have a problem with that. What gets thrown around is important, because you could very well be denying yourself the usage of products and technology on the basis of bad information.

Huh? They had a PMR array. Adding SMR to it crashed those SMR disks. That is what they said. If they decide "red cars go faster, green ones are trash and break down all the time", it's wrong, but it's their right to be wrong. We are talking about a choice and opinion on purchasing and lifestyle, not mission critical choices in life support hardware or national vaccine programs, right?

[leadeater]

9 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

? Is there some sort of magic that means SMR can never fail? Fact is, it's failure and function mode is different to PMR. Thus, someone asking for PMR is valid. Even if PMR is phased out (as with tube TVs, gramophones etc). It's a valid request. Faulty or perfect post singularity device... it is a valid request.

I never said it was an invalid request, I said the reasoning applied was invalid. You can ask things for the wrong reasoning, it doesn't mean I'm saying nobody should ask for that information or asking for it is wrong.

 

Like I said if you want to know sure, we all do.

 

9 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

but it's their right to be wrong. We are talking about a choice and opinion on purchasing and lifestyle, not mission critical choices in life support hardware or national vaccine programs, right?

It's also my right to correct them if they go about spreading misinformation, be wrong in your head, do it out loud and you'll be corrected. You should not fear or be annoyed at gaining better understanding, we have all been wrong about something at some point, many times, and it'll happen to us all again. What you do with information matters, you can decide to take it on-board or you can ignore it. I cannot force anyone to learn.

 

I mean how many posts are we at and you're still missing the point, thus proves I cannot force people to learn.