Western Digital - Mislabeling specs on drives

[Kisai]

On 9/8/2020 at 8:59 AM, NumLock21 said:

Some complain it's loud and hot. But if your system have front case fans that draws in cool air and blows over the HDD, you'll be fine, no matter if it's 5,400RPM and all the way up to 15,000RPM. The person who did that dumb test is nitpicking to the extreme, so don't take that article seriously.

Think beyond that. 5400RPM drive are exclusively a laptop and "external drive" class of drive. If you're using these inside a PC, they're likely not being used in a RAID. 5400RPM's are used in things like PVR's, stand-alone NAS and Surveillance devices, but usually they're more of a PVR type of system where as long as it meets the write speed for several drives (eg 1080p60 can get away with 8-25mbits,l which translates to 1-4MB/sec, which is easily achievable by a 5400RPM drive. So if you have 10 cameras, that drive is still fine. In fact since 1Gbit could only be saturated by 125MB/sec and a single 5400RPM may peak between 80 and 100MB/sec, access-time not withstanding, 25 cameras at 25mbits would be needed to saturate a 5400RPM that can do 100MB/sec.)

 

Like the only real complaint that can be made by remarking 7200rpm drives as 5400rpm is that the drives probably are 7200RPM drives where the cache or controller has been binned. Like if you look at WD's blue page, both 5400 (most models to 6TB, oddly enough only the 2TB and 6TB models have 256MB cache while the 3TB and below are 64MB) and 7200rpm (500GB and 1TB models) models are listed (2yr warranty), where as Black only lists 7200rpm (5 year warranty) to 6TB, with 256MB cache (4TB and 6TB). Like just at a glance I'd say 7200rpm blue's are binned black's, and models with 256MB on the blue are probably also binned. 

 

The variable speed drives are the Green models are no longer listed (except SSD's.) They were the most unreliable nonsense WD ever released with most of these drives ending up in external chassis and having failures from the aggressive start-stop cycles in the firmware. The drives I have are actually a WD Blue drive Passport (WD40NMZW-11GX6S1) (2.5") and Mybook Green (WD30EZRX-00DC0B0).

 

[dalekphalm]

Just now, wanderingfool2 said:

Actually one can look at the data sheet to get power draw (assuming WD isn't playing fast and loose with those numbers).

True - and for things like Idle, that's probably pretty accurate.

 

However, load can be fairly variable - is the data sheet listing max possible power draw? Average load? A review can go into better details on this to give you a more accurate picture.

 

But I digress - let's assume you're correct and you can trust the data sheet (let's be honest, they're probably pretty accurate numbers) - it's still a separate spec over spindle speed. Some 7200 RPM drives will use more power than others.

Just now, wanderingfool2 said:

The only real world argument could potentially be the tone of the drive and loudness (I would assume a 5400rpm drive would create a 90hz tone, which to me is gentler on the ears than a 120hz tone)  *Either way though, you are correct the biggest thing here is WD stretching the truth.

Agreed, loudness is basically the only real world complaint I could see here - and even then, like with most things, not all 7200 RPM drives are equal. Some are loud AF and some are fairly quiet.

Just now, wanderingfool2 said:

With that said the added heat/noise can't be 100% overlooked if that was the reason why people were initially looking into this.

For the heat, maybe. But we're talking single digit Watt differences most likely. I honestly don't see where this would actually be a problem. Even if you had an 8-bay NAS loaded with 7200 RPM drives, you're not going to cook them to death unless something is outright broken.

Just now, wanderingfool2 said:

To those saying it's things like nitpicking though, what is preventing them from starting to do 7200rpm class drives but actually using 5400 rpm?

If they could actually make a 5400 RPM HDD that performs like a 7200 RPM drive... well... that would make WDC a fuckload of money.

Just now, wanderingfool2 said:

See and this is where it gets interesting...how do you know Red's are 5400RPM?  (If the real RPM isn't listed, and as WD put it, "5400 RPM class" you cannot accurately say which drive runs at what RPM.

You don't - and one could argue if there is any practical reason to care, if the 7200 RPM drive hits all the metrics you care about (heat, noise, power draw, etc).

 

Personally, I want WDC to list actual hard specs, rather than "Performance Class". But if the drive performs the way I want it to during reviews, ultimately I don't care that much if they're calling it "this class" or "that class".

 

4 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Think beyond that. 5400RPM drive are exclusively a laptop and "external drive" class of drive.

No.. that's not true. "Most often", yes, I would give you that. But "exclusively" is simply flat out wrong. There have been many examples of 5400 RPM drives used internally - or even in RAID.

 

There's also another "class" of drive that isn't talked about much - 5900 RPM. That's what (some) Seagate Ironwolf drives use. WDC uses the term "Intellipower" to often describe their 5900 drives, which are often used on WDC Green's.

4 minutes ago, Kisai said:

If you're using these inside a PC, they're likely not being used in a RAID.

This is fairly accurate. Most people that buy 5400 RPM drives are likely just popping in a drive to expand storage. Although there are plenty of people who run - for example - WDC Green's in RAID (even though that's not part of the recommended usage - though most problems occur when running them in Hardware RAID specifically as the controller will often drop the drive due to error correction taking too long).

[wanderingfool2]

17 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

If they could actually make a 5400 RPM HDD that performs like a 7200 RPM drive... well... that would make WDC a fuckload of money.

Or you know...they could just take a loose definition of what a 7200 RPM performance class drive means.  The entire point though is they should be writing true specs, and not ones where they come up with the interpretation of the definition and mask what it truly is.

 

22 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Personally, I want WDC to list actual hard specs, rather than "Performance Class". But if the drive performs the way I want it to during reviews, ultimately I don't care that much if they're calling it "this class" or "that class".

Reviews on drives aren't always available (or hard to get comparisons of models running with the same tests).

 

It's all about properly disclosing what a drive is (which they aren't doing).  It's like the SMR thing, they felt that SMR belong in NAS grade drives (but not everyone agrees with that...which is why information and accurate information is important)

[dalekphalm]

56 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Or you know...they could just take a loose definition of what a 7200 RPM performance class drive means.  The entire point though is they should be writing true specs, and not ones where they come up with the interpretation of the definition and mask what it truly is.

I agree - but from a practical perspective, if they can make a drive that runs at 5400, but performs the same (or better) as their competitors 7200 drives... well that would be a pretty good selling feature.

 

But in any case, I agree that they should be listing actual specs, even if they want to also list some kind of "performance class" alongside it.

56 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Reviews on drives aren't always available (or hard to get comparisons of models running with the same tests).

True - though usually any of the big name HDD series (eg: Red, Red Pro, Ironwolf, etc) will have tests done via one of the big testing sites like Toms, and tests are usually standardized.

 

The harder part would be comparing drives of older generations (therefore no recent reviews) against newer generations - as the testing methodology can often change over the years.

56 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

It's all about properly disclosing what a drive is (which they aren't doing).  It's like the SMR thing, they felt that SMR belong in NAS grade drives (but not everyone agrees with that...which is why information and accurate information is important)

Agreed.

 

Honestly with the SMR thing - the biggest concern I can see there is people mixing non-SMR drives with SMR drives because they are "branded" the same - that could cause performance issues and would be a super massive headache to troubleshoot without knowing that fact.

[WereCatf]

3 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

you can run 7200 RPM drives inside a NAS without problem

Of course you can and I never said you can't. I, myself, am using a completely random collection of drives with random amounts of cache, spindle-speeds, manufacturer and even whether they are 3.5" or 2.5"

3 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

However, many of the reasons people are complaining about don't have much real world impact

Don't have much -- or any, really -- real-world impact for you or for most people, but, like with everything else, there are still people for whom this is punch below the belt. I am not one of them, but I can still see why a thing like this could cause some grey hairs for someone else, like e.g. someone for whom the noise of the NAS is important and who tends to buy 5400RPM - drives because of that, but then, for one or another reason, buys these WDC-drives and ends up baffled as to why their NAS is suddenly noisier.

 

Thermals and vibrations can come into play in smaller cases without much airflow, or if the case is particularly sturdy -- budget-builders come to mind. This is also what I meant with the effects of multiples of these kinds of drives compounding, but you just immediately jump to thinking of Enterprise-setups and dismiss these considerations as meaningless.

[dalekphalm]

5 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Of course you can and I never said you can't. I, myself, am using a completely random collection of drives with random amounts of cache, spindle-speeds, manufacturer and even whether they are 3.5" or 2.5"

You didn't say you can't, but you heavily implied that you shouldn't. Perhaps I read into that more than you intended - if so, my apologies.

5 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Don't have much -- or any, really -- real-world impact for you or for most people, but, like with everything else, there are still people for whom this is punch below the belt. I am not one of them, but I can still see why a thing like this could cause some grey hairs for someone else, like e.g. someone for whom the noise of the NAS is important and who tends to buy 5400RPM - drives because of that, but then, for one or another reason, buys these WDC-drives and ends up baffled as to why their NAS is suddenly noisier.

I agree that WDC should be upfront about hard specs like RPM - I've said this multiple times. I think they should include that, and they can also include their Performance Class numbers too if they wish.

5 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Thermals and vibrations can come into play in smaller cases without much airflow, or if the case is particularly sturdy -- budget-builders come to mind. This is also what I meant with the effects of multiples of these kinds of drives compounding, but you just immediately jump to thinking of Enterprise-setups and dismiss these considerations as meaningless.

Sure it can happen. But it can also be mitigated essentially completely with little cost by getting rubber screw cushions. Some cases include these by default, but I doubt most do - but they can be ordered online for next to nothing.

 

But aside from that, NAS's kept getting brought up - by yourself and others. Even consumer grade NAS's should have zero issues with 7200 RPM drives - vibrations and heat included.

 

Airflow can be a bit of an issue - if the case is particularly bad - but the HDD getting a bit warm is the least of your worries in a situation like that.

 

In any case, in basically all of these examples, reading reviews can tell you a lot about whether it'll be a problem or not.

[Moonzy]

don't care if it's better or worse, misleading specs are still bad.

 

i dont wanna go out and buy RAM with label "3600 CL18 _equivalent" and go home to find out it's 3200 CL16

 

there shouldnt be anything resembling crucial spec in marketing terms, imo

[NumLock21]

On 9/10/2020 at 4:05 AM, WereCatf said:

You are really trying not to understand what the complaints are about, are you? 7200RPM drives consume more power and run hotter and that matters in e.g. NAS-use, because you don't want a hot, noisy NAS that draws more power than it needs to. It also gets worse the more drives you have in it, the effect compounds rather quickly!

If you have sufficient cooling, then it won't matter if your drives are running at 5400 or 7200RPM. Most will opt for the faster drive, so data can be accessed quicker, those using 5400RPM drives, it's mostly for storage and data isn't accessed that much. Besides some 7200RPM drives are specifically designed to be used in a NAS system, enterprise uses drives rated at 10,000 to 15,000RPM, or tape drives, so I don't where you're trying to go with that statement of 7200 rpm drives running hotter and consumes more power.

[WereCatf]

5 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

I don't where you're trying to go with that statement

Already explained.