WD My Book users wake up to find their data deleted

Post by roblabla » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 7:03 AM UTC

tomnipotent wrote: post #344

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should anyone ever again trust your company to keep their data safe? Because if you need a hard drive, your options are pretty much Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba, and they've all had their own problems.

> Because if you need a hard drive This is the third such major scandal from WD in as many years. First, selling SMR drives as CMR. Second, selling 7200RPM drives as 5400RPM. Now this. They've lost a lot of credibility, and I don't see any of the other manufacturers having issues rivaling WD.

Post by ale42 » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 7:05 AM UTC

SilverRed wrote: post #322

zamadatix wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's really no winning with this. You can release patches 6 years after your device is EoL but there will forever be more security issues and people using your ancient product (think how long it takes some versions of Windows to truly reach less than 100k active machines. Hell I wonder if Windows 3.1 has really reached that number or not. The long tail is going to be loooong). Not to mention you've created a prece…

Which is why I think if we are going to do IoT, it needs to all be behind some gateway designed by a company that will maintain security for decades. Make a NAS drive which exposes everything to the gateway without bothering for authentication and then let Apple/Google/Amazon work out how to defend access to the resource. Random OEMs are unable to pull off IoT safely.

Post by sam_lowry_ » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 7:07 AM UTC

tlavoie wrote: post #314

ivraatiems wrote: post #199

According to Western Digital[1], the CVE involved[2] has been public and unpatched since 2019. That's insane. There's "we don't support end-of-life devices" and then there's "we refuse to fix absolutely critical, crippling security vulnerabilities in devices just a few years old." This is well over the line. I smell (but have no idea of the merits of) a class action lawsuit. [1] https://www.westerndigital.com/support…

I have one, and looked into what I might put on it instead of the unsupported software some years ago. I had noticed shortly after purchase that it was basically a Debian install, on MIPS if I recall correctly. While WD had essentially washed their hands of the device ages previous, it wasn't going to have a current Linux to put on either. Maybe one of the BSDs could be an option. Instead of worrying too much about i…

Post by sascha_sl » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 7:10 AM UTC

roblabla wrote: post #381

tomnipotent wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because if you need a hard drive This is the third such major scandal from WD in as many years. First, selling SMR drives as CMR. Second, selling 7200RPM drives as 5400RPM. Now this. They've lost a lot of credibility, and I don't see any of the other manufacturers having issues rivaling WD.

> selling 7200RPM drives as 5400RPM I suppose you mean the other way around? Otherwise, what's the problem with selling a higher RPM device as a lower one? Isn't higher RPM better? (Genuine question, I don't know much about HDD).

Post by sbierwagen » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 7:14 AM UTC

throwawayboise wrote: post #297

freeone3000 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue here is "end of life" is defined way too soon for portable hard drives. The mechanical parts have a 4% annual failure rate, or a half-life of 12.5 years. The software should be supported for that long.

12 years? Typical business life of a computer is 5 years. Typical service/support agreement is 1-3 years. Try getting Apple to address a failed hard drive that's 12 years old. They'd laugh in your face.