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16TB WD Easystore External USB 3.0 Hard Drive $254.99 @ Best Buy

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msg7086

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Speaking of which, I would actually hope that @Patrick can publish an article / video talking about the "RPM class" lies, similar to that about WD SMR drives. It would be easier to explain to people by sending them an article and let them read through all the facts and opinions.
 
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Samir

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Keep backpedaling and read my posts more carefully, you'll eventually arrive at what I've been saying all along in this entire thread.
There's no backpeddling. Buy whatever you want and I hope it works out for you. Don't peddle your false facts about consumer drives being enterprise drives--they aren't.
 

Samir

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An Ars Technica article on the WD External drive RPM speed controversy: Western Digital is trying to redefine the word “RPM”
The article has links to the r/Datahoarder tests.
This is pretty common--a lot of the drive manufacturers have been using the word 'class' to define a particular category of performance. And without the exact spec sheets, you don't really know what the real rpm is. And does it matter? If a 7200rpm drive performs like a 5400rpm and they told you this a part of the marketing material, what's the problem?
 
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msg7086

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The problem is someone on a forum would argue that a 7200RPM drive is 5400RPM.

The problem is someone compares a 7200RPM drive with a 5400RPM drive performance and claims the former must be running at 5400RPM because they are almost equally quick, but in fact it's the latter that's running at 7200RPM.

The problem is someone would prefer a "5400RPM class" drive because "5400RPM" produces less heat and has less vibration than a 7200RPM drive, and later find that's not the case.

You still don't see a problem? RPM is rev per minute, period. If you wanna talk about performance, we used to have WD black = top performance, green = least performance, etc, and that is the correct way to market. RPM is not about performance alone. We had 10k and 15k RPM drives in the past, and they perform worse than those WD Red 5400RPM drives. Should they be renamed to 1k and 1.5k RPM drives respectively? How about SSD? They should be advertised as 250000RPM or something? How about turkey? They should be advertised as chicken class or something?

I could never understand that people are ok with vendors deliberately misleading consumers. /rant
 

Samir

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This part is likely correct. They are the same drive in the sense of hardware parts, but not the same drive in the sense of quality.

However quality wise you should note that they are still better made than consumer grade drives, which uses cheaper parts and technology at the first place.

Warranty is not related at all. Warranty is a support service, and you can attach any period of warranty as you wish. For example, my ex company provides lifetime warranty for our servers with Seagate ES.3 drives. Of course, those drives are backed by only 5 year warranty, but we charge more and we self-warrant / self-insure. We replace the drives with brand new ones even after 7-8 years of purchase.

Another example is Seagate Exos drives shucked from expansions. They used to have warranty data on their website but they later revised them. New drives from RMA replacement also have different warranty (inheriting from the replaced drive).

Warranty cannot prove any of your points at all.


You are free to look it up. WD had admitted that they mislabeled some of the 7200RPM and claimed to correctly label them at near future.

The 8TB and above "5400 genuine red drive"s are also 7200 RPM drives.

In fact, WD never actually write "5400 RPM" on their drive specs. It has always been "5400 RPM Class", which has nothing to do with RPM at all.

It's like you buy a car that has "V6 power class" engine. Does it have a V6 engine? Maybe. It doesn't even need to have an engine. It can have an electric motor that produces V6-like power. Don't fool yourself with marketing terms and take that as "facts". You are not talking about "facts", you simply trust whatever they said. Which is reasonable because a regular consumer has no way to actually measure the RPM of a drive. It doesn't have a tachometer.
I have said the same thing about quality. And you need to make no mistake that these are consumer drives as the quality isn't enterprise aka 'real business'.

Anyone who knows manufacturing knows that you want an item to fail right outside of warranty to maximize sales. This is less than 1/2 the time for a comparable enterprise drive. You can push your luck for more, but manufacters looking for profit won't leave money on the table.

The warranty you're talking about is a third party warranty--I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about manufacturer's warranty.

The Seagate warranty variances were probably a mistake because even the mistaken warranty was not the normal 5yr warranty on those drives. Seagate fixed the issue because there would have been a bigger cost to warrantying excessive drive returns than making the change. Otherwise, they would have just left it. If you follow the money, the truth always reveals itself.

I don't need to look up anything because you, et al are trying to prove something that is different than what the manufacturer claims. If you have proof that refutes that in a real way with an article on par of the work of STH, then present it. Otherwise, this is just another 'Internet says so' argument. :rolleyes:

I think you need to re-examine what you determine 'facts'. No one besides the manufacturer has the data to prove your point--and hence the point cannot by nature be proven. On top of that, there is real-world experience to show that the point is false. End of story.
 

Samir

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The problem is someone on a forum would argue that a 7200RPM drive is 5400RPM.

The problem is someone compares a 7200RPM drive with a 5400RPM drive performance and claims the former must be running at 5400RPM because they are almost equally quick, but in fact it's the latter that's running at 7200RPM.

The problem is someone would prefer a "5400RPM class" drive because "5400RPM" produces less heat and has less vibration than a 7200RPM drive, and later find that's not the case.

You still don't see a problem? RPM is rev per minute, period. If you wanna talk about performance, we used to have WD black = top performance, green = least performance, etc, and that is the correct way to market. RPM is not about performance alone. We had 10k and 15k RPM drives in the past, and they perform worse than those WD Red 5400RPM drives. Should they be renamed to 1k and 1.5k RPM drives respectively? How about SSD? They should be advertised as 250000RPM or something? How about turkey? They should be advertised as chicken class or something?

I could never understand that people are ok with vendors deliberately misleading consumers. /rant
You really can't read--it's 5400 class, ie 'performance like 5400'. Does it matter what rpm it is moving if the job gets done within spec? No--that is why there are specs in the first place, for the job and the solution.

The problem is that it doesn't matter. The only reason rpm mattered in the past is because it was an indicator of performance. You know how fast a 15k velociraptor drive from a decade ago performs today? Even today's 5400rpm drives are faster. RPM means nothing these days except as a unofficial rating system. The exception to this is 10k and 15k sas drives which generally do represent performance differences.

You seem to expect some sort of glass door to see how the magic works so you can pick it apart. And a company has no obligation to provide that. In fact, more and more companies are completely sealing the details in a 'black box' that you can buy or not buy--they could care less. It is unfortunate that there isn't more transparency in places where it matters, like Mobil 1 engine oil removing zinc from some of their EU car formulas to the detriment of the cars, but except in cases where performance is 'out of spec' from the requirements, who really cares? This is very common in engineering as my dad would tell me stories of his days at Ford and design specs vs manufacturer's specs that were always changing. As long as everything exceeded Ford's specs, it didn't matter.

And btw, most processed turkey and chicken contains potato starch and those 'grill marks' aren't grill marks at all. These are things you can control if it matters to you. But in the end it probably doesn't change the performance of the turkey or chicken with regards to satisfying your hunger.
 

msg7086

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Didn't know being transparency about what people would get if they pay for the product is pointless and off topic. Sorry guys for bothering you. Imma out here.
 

Markess

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TLDR: WD, at least on the consumer side, is smarmy and rather untrustworthy.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Oh my, somehow I find myself agreeing with the core positions of both @msg7086 and @Samir .

In my opinion (that nobody asked for in the first place) The root of the problem is WD who, on the consumer side at least, have been misleading people for literally decades. They don't come out and lie, they just say things in a way that leads people to a false conclusion/assumption. Ever since "Intellipower" I've been very very very skeptical of ANYTHING WD says. In fact, other than saying "Look this is a storage device", I have trouble taking anything they say at face value.

Since then, we've had other gems from WD leading up to the recent SMR thing. On the consumer side, they remind me of the stereotypical used car salesman. For enterprise gear, I think people don't tolerate that sort of thing as much, so less obfuscation there.

Which leads me back to this drive. All we can expect from this consumer external drive is that it has an unformatted capacity of 16TB and it should work for 2 years. Above and beyond that, WD is going to be silent at best and misleading at worst. I personally think that 1) they know people shuck these drives. How could they not? 2) It probably saves them money to use existing casting and external cover designs, so even if they use cheaper, "less than enterprise quality" internals, they will still look like the enterprise products and 3) a drive needs a label, so why not make one that leads people to believe the drives are white label enterprise gear that can be had for a killer price. It takes no extra effort to create an Enterprise "look alike" that way, and I bet that's what they do. I wouldn't put it past them in the least. And since they sell it in an enclosure that isn't meant to be opened, they don't have to announce what's inside or justify anything to anyone. At its core, its a 16TB drive that should work for 2 years. Period.

That said, for my home setup I buy and shuck WD externals when they are on sale. Because hey, its still pretty much the cheapest way to get capacity. ;)
 
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i386

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RPM is not about performance alone. We had 10k and 15k RPM drives in the past, and they perform worse than those WD Red 5400RPM drives.
You know how fast a 15k velociraptor drive from a decade ago performs today? Even today's 5400rpm drives are faster. RPM means nothing these days except as a unofficial rating system.
RPM define how performant (sequential AND random io) hdds are when the platters have the same storage density :D
 
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evilpaul

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The TLER setting change is retained on reboots if anyone was wondering. I upgraded to U3 TrueNAS last night and it's still 7 seconds on all drives. So that (non?)mystery is solved!
 
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Fritz

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In today's world, if you want to be successful in business you need to learn how to take advantage of stupid people. If you don't your competitors will and leave you with no business. Big numbers echo in the heads of stupid people, this is a well known fact.
 

josh

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The TLER setting change is retained on reboots if anyone was wondering. I upgraded to U3 TrueNAS last night and it's still 7 seconds on all drives. So that (non?)mystery is solved!
That's great. I'll be getting some on the next drop I guess.
 

Weapon

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The TLER setting change is retained on reboots if anyone was wondering. I upgraded to U3 TrueNAS last night and it's still 7 seconds on all drives. So that (non?)mystery is solved!
Is there a good summary or guide to TLER? I’m using 24x shucked 8TB disks, never changed anything or noticed any issues