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Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM”

arstechnica.com

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Re: Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM”

#101

Post by ATsch »

bleepblorp wrote: post #78
dependenttypes wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, there should be some regulation where they should be forced to mention the current and maximum allocation that they are willing to make as well as the average/median bandwidth that the active users enjoy per hour.

The UK has a rule which requires ISPs to only advertise speeds achievable by 50% of users during peak periods. Customers are also allowed to leave contracts without penalty if ISPs are unable or unwilling to provide advertised speeds to the end user[0]. Such rules are not within the American Overton window for the usual reasons. [0] https://www.broadbandchoices.co.uk/ask-our-expert/broadband-...

Germany has a website that lets you automatically file a complaint if your provider doesn't reach 90% of the advertised speed in measurements over two days

Re: Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM”

#102

Post by ATsch »

augustt wrote: post #71
jasonhansel wrote: post #67

This reminds me of how, to make a whole lineup of Intel chips, they just make the highest-price model, and then disable features to create the lower-price ones. Or how shorter-range Teslas have the same battery capacity as longer-range ones--they just disable using the extra capacity in software. In this case, the "5400 RPM" drive runs at 7200 RPM, but WD presumably makes it (either via software or hardware) perform…

They'll start with the same silicon design but manufacturing variability requires them to bin the chips based on functionality & performance, which is how you get all these different models.

That is true, especially if you're in a position like AMD is where they can sell every single good chip they get into a high margin server part (which is why ryzen can be scarce). But that's pretty rare overall. As a process node matures, the amount of perfect dies will go up dramatically, but there will certainly be no price drop to compensate.

Re: Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM”

#103

Post by ATsch »

throw0101a wrote: post #34
boomboomsubban wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is already what they did with "KB/MB/GB/TB." Evil, but not any more blatant.

> This is already what they did with "KB/MB/GB/TB." The 'confusion' as to whether the "K" prefix meant a factor of 10^3 or 2^10 goes back decades. In 1961 a book says "it is more usual to express the speed in bits or kilobits (1,000 bits) per second"; an IBM 1410 manual says ""The 40K core array requires 40,000 valid five-position addresses from 0,000 to 39,999." In 1962 an ACM paper referred to a "4K IBM 1401" which…

It just randomly so happened that drive manufacturers used the meaning that benefitted them and is not really used by anyone else

Re: Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM”

#104

Post by ATsch »

kohtatsu wrote: post #45
bleepblorp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't touch a Barracuda with a WD SMR drive duct taped to a 50' pole. The only way to get good hard drives these days is to buy from the enterprise lines e.g. WD Gold or Seagate Exos. They're extremely expensive, but this is the only way to get the kind of quality that used to be standard a few years ago.

You fell directly in line with what they wanted. It's reasonable to expect companies to honour their spec sheets, and to not lie in their firmware. Once they're caught doing otherwise it's important to hold them accountable, not throw our hands up and pay up anyway.

They're not going to be sitting in the board room panicking about the at most few ten thousand sales to DIY enthusiasts they're losing. Especially not with shipments declining by ten or so million per year.

Re: Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM”

#105

Post by tuatoru »

katbyte wrote: post #25
bfuclusion wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SSD volumetric capacity already exceeds spinning disk, and we're just waiting for the price to come down. The horse's dealer's competition wasn't more stables, it was the car.

SSDs expire, large long term r/w storage where speed isn’t important rust still wins

... rust on tape, that is.

Re: Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM”

#106

Post by swiley »

acidbaseextract wrote: post #76
swiley wrote: post #41

This kind of crap is why I hate shopping for computer hardware.

In general it's an amazing time to be a computer hardware consumer. There's real competition in pretty much every primary component hardware vertical. The spinning rust data storage market has been uniquely crappy of late. The sketchy stuff shows up in cheap components with slim margins (budget AIO watercoolers, budget hard drives, budget PSUs budget/no-name ebay video cards).

Eh. Or any kind of complex module/system like a laptop. I will agree that desktop hardware tends to be decent to shop for if you’re not trying to be a complete cheapskate. I built a desktop just like most other people during the lockdown and it wasn’t as bad as buying laptops trained me to expect.

Re: Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM”

#107

Post by crest »

augustt wrote: post #71
jasonhansel wrote: post #67

This reminds me of how, to make a whole lineup of Intel chips, they just make the highest-price model, and then disable features to create the lower-price ones. Or how shorter-range Teslas have the same battery capacity as longer-range ones--they just disable using the extra capacity in software. In this case, the "5400 RPM" drive runs at 7200 RPM, but WD presumably makes it (either via software or hardware) perform…

They'll start with the same silicon design but manufacturing variability requires them to bin the chips based on functionality & performance, which is how you get all these different models.

Nobody would complain if Intel sold of 8core dies with 6 working cores as 6core CPUs. Disabling the ECC or AES-NI support just to create artificial market segmentation is an asshole move.

Re: Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM”

#108

Post by m463 »

ashtonkem wrote: post #29
m463 wrote: post #24

I was expecting to read that 2x the heads would be marketed as spinning 2x faster, but ... it seems they are selling 7200 rpm drives as 5400. There might be more power consumption, but in this case they are selling you a faster drive. I kind of think this should be ok. I wonder if mustang guys ordered a 6-cylinder mustang and got the v8 - would they complain about gas mileage?

If I bought a Prius and they gave me a V8 I sure as heck would.

That's an interesting take on my analogy.

I don't know if they advertised it as a low power drive, but if they did it would be surprising in a negative sense.

Re: Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM”

#109

Post by ksec »

chrisseaton wrote: post #3

I think the TLDR is that Western Digital are selling faster drives marketed as being slower than they actually are, presumably due to lack of supply for the demand of the slower drives part of the market or something like that. You'd think nobody would mind until you remember some people want lower power and noise. Ideally these people would be buying based on those actual metrics, rather than the RPM as a proxy for…

Wondering why this isn't the top Comment.

Personally the only metric I care about now on HDD is reliability.

Re: Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM”

#110

Post by throwme45353464 »

bleepblorp wrote: post #82
gruez wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not get an external hard drive and shuck it? You end up paying half the price, but the drive is still the same (although you have to pay attention to reviews on /r/DataHoarder). The only disadvantage is the lack of warranty and having to shuck it.

Shucking isn't necessarily possible anymore. Some WD external drives will hang the boot process if the host computer probes the drive for bootability. These drives will even stop the host computer from booting if they're connected via USB, much less if they're directly connected. Some USB external drives have the USB controller embedded on the drive PCB and don't provide an accessible SATA interface.

Emphasis on _some_. This type of behaviour is more common on the compact 2.5" type external drives.

As of writing this comment, big external drives still come with 3.5" hard drives, with the only caveat being that some require you to disable the 3.3V rail on your SATA connector, either by cutting the wire or taping some pins on your HDD with kapton tape. Without the workaround some of these shucked drives will not power up properly when connected to a SATA power plug that also provides 3.3V.

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