Article Western Digital discloses specific drives containing SMR technology - Tom's

[Steltek]

WD Sets the Record Straight: Lists All Drives That Use Slower SMR Tech

WD drops the deets

www.tomshardware.com

Surprised that they bent over so fast on this.

Not surprised to see the Blues listed there, but a Black? I guess it remains to be seen what they are putting in the USB externals now. I'd bet within 6 months it will be in all of them.

 

[clubmember57]

I could just see it now, getting a nice new Black WD drive that has SMR and setting up windows 10 and transferring data and waiting... and waiting... and waiting......

 

[Steltek]

Random write speed is the problem, sequentials shouldn't be affected that much. So, Win10 probably installs just fine. It is only after install when you try to use it for anything strenuous that everything will probably seem to go to crap.

 

[MadAd]

sequentials shouldn't be affected that much

Only until the cache empties then you're down to ~40Mb/s sequential instead of 120+ of a CMR version.

The ag being kicked up about this is real, to me its basically bait and switch, people buying what they thought was a replacement is going to get a lemon, and if you are buying it as a drop in replacement for a NAS then look out for drop outs and failure, while WDs official response is currently 'user bought the wrong drive'.

 

[Steltek]

Only until the cache empties then you're down to ~40Mb/s sequential instead of 120+ of a CMR version.

The ag being kicked up about this is real, to me its basically bait and switch, people buying what they thought was a replacement is going to get a lemon, and if you are buying it as a drop in replacement for a NAS then look out for drop outs and failure, while WDs official response is currently 'user bought the wrong drive'.

Yeah, I've already been there and done that with a pair of Reds myself as detailed in another post. I agree that it is a ripoff, and I hope their business suffers for it. I fully expect that they'll be fighting class action lawsuits soon (if they aren't already) over this issue. Lawyers will get rich, the end users will end up with squat.

WD appears to be moving along the same route Seagate took - the consumer drive business doesn't interest them anymore because the money is mostly on the enterprise side. However, they are too greedy to just give up that little bit of consumer money, so they'll create and sell pure cheap junk to try to keep it.

 

[x1ife]

Only until the cache empties then you're down to ~40Mb/s sequential instead of 120+ of a CMR version.

Does the drive always write first to the CMR cache? Or can it write directly when the entire set of shingles is being written e.g. the space was not previously used for anything.