Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM”

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 140 posts

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

#121

Post by swiley »

ric2b wrote: post #117
acidbaseextract wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

There isn't a lot of competition on GPU's, which happen to be one of the most expensive components. That market is basically just Nvidia (80%+ market share and still dominating in performance/features).

> That market is basically just Nvidia

I'm typing this on a machine with a fairly powerfull AMD GPU. The market for Nvidia is basically just Nvidia, everyone keeps using their special APIs. Their cards are not significantly more powerful than what AMD offers and their drivers suck because they're constantly using them for anti-competitive crap.

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

#122

Post by taylodl »

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.

The problem is if you don't buy from the commercial line you're asking for trouble. I just had a Seagate drive fail after 2 years of use. The WD drive it replaced had been in service for years. Consumer grade has apparently really degraded quite significantly the past few years, so much so I'm seriously starting to reconsider whether the "Apple tax" might be worth it - or is Apple now using low-grade components too?

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

#123

Post by ryandrake »

pmiller2 wrote: post #54
strombofulous wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that based on the amount of lumens it produces

It is, and that's the point: you can screw a 60W equivalent LED into any socket where you previously had a 60W incandescent and have about the same amount of light for a much lower energy cost.

So why not use the actual measurement that the customer is interested in: The light quantity? Power consumption (W) seems to be the wrong measurement since you're comparing apples to oranges.

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

#124

Post by ryandrake »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #17
fouc wrote: post #15

This sort of misrepresentation should be outright illegal. Why does it feel like big corporations are just getting more blatantly evil these days?

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

More like what they did with the "X" value of CDROM drives. 1X, 2X, 3X, etc. It started out being a rough multiple of the expected data rate. Eventually manufacturers realized they could change it to measure something else (I think rotational speed or something) so they could inflate the "X" value more and more without a corresponding increased data rate for the user. This will inevitably happen when you let marketing define your units or there is no regulatory body enforcing basic truth in advertising.

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

#125

Post by curryst »

ryandrake wrote: post #123
pmiller2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, and that's the point: you can screw a 60W equivalent LED into any socket where you previously had a 60W incandescent and have about the same amount of light for a much lower energy cost.

So why not use the actual measurement that the customer is interested in: The light quantity? Power consumption (W) seems to be the wrong measurement since you're comparing apples to oranges.

Are they just basing it on lumens? There might be more interplay, i.e. if you can get by with fewer lumens if you emit in a different wavelength.

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

#126

Post by boomboomsubban »

throw0101a wrote: post #115
ATsch wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It just randomly so happened that drive manufacturers used the meaning of what the SI folks said the meaning actually was.

While I'll admit they do have a slightly better case here, basically every OS's definition is more important than the SI. They clearly did it to make their drives look bigger. As proof, why are they sticking behind old SI definitions 25 years after they added the other ones?

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

#127

Post by ac29 »

aidenn0 wrote: post #95
orbital-decay wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a solid technical reason for that though, as ISPs have no control over the performance of your connection's remote part. Sure, it leaves plenty of room for abuse, but this is a necessary disclaimer, not some slippery marketing.

They have total control over your connection's speed, particularly when they mandate you use their equipment.

Only as far as the first bottleneck though - if 1000 customers in a neighborhood pay for 1Gbps connections, that doesnt mean the neighborhood actually has 1Tbps of capacity to the wider internet. Its probably a tenth of that at best, even in well connected areas.

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

#128

Post by michalhosna »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #17
fouc wrote: post #15

This sort of misrepresentation should be outright illegal. Why does it feel like big corporations are just getting more blatantly evil these days?

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

This one is wrong on the OS side of thigs.

KB = Kilobyte, which from SI definition of kilo means 10^3.

KiB = Kibibyte, was formaly defined later by IEC in 1998 as 2^10

OSes (Windows/Mac/Linux), are the ones doing it wrong, using 2^10 internaly, but presenting using SI prefixes.

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

#129

Post by pseudalopex »

michalhosna wrote: post #128
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 one is wrong on the OS side of thigs. KB = Kilobyte, which from SI definition of kilo means 10^3. KiB = Kibibyte, was formaly defined later by IEC in 1998 as 2^10 OSes (Windows/Mac/Linux), are the ones doing it wrong, using 2^10 internaly, but presenting using SI prefixes.

Apple uses powers of 10 now.

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

#130

Post by pseudalopex »

wtallis wrote: post #36
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.

kB, MB, GB, etc. were genuinely ill-defined when the drive manufacturers started using them to their advantage. Those units were not standardized by SI or ISO, there was precedent for both the binary and decimal interpretations, the unambiguously binary KiB, MiB, etc. had not yet been introduced, and industry standards organizations like JEDEC and IEC were not particularly helpful in resolving the situation. None of…

Different 500 GB models have different capacities. They're just guaranteed to hold at least 500,000,000,000 bytes.
Post reply on HN