Western Digital up to dirty tricks, issuing warnings at exactly 3 years old

[MrRobinHood]

Sad to see WD up to this, tarnishing their reputation

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[LL0rd]

oooooookay........ No, it's not OK. We are fu**. No WD, what else? Seagate?? Don't think, they are better. And after their disaster with the DM001 Series of drives, I neither trust them. Hitachi? Just had 2 failed drives in the Data Center nearly at the same time. I was so glad, I had RaidZ2 on the System. Toshiba? Well, after 2 years their drives started to build bad sectors. To be honest, in the IT somehow everything is f up right now.

 

[Ri22o]

If you're not running a Synology system, is this an issue?

 

[Jim I.]

I was watching that SpaceRex YouTube video over the weekend. Sounds like the new policy effects pretty much all the WD NAS and surveillance hard drives. After 3 years the drive will get flagged as bad, so you won't get any bad sector alerts.

 

[samplenhold]

My three WD 10TB Purple drives in my BI server are 5 and 4 years old. They are just fine. I have a QNAP NAS with two 6TB WD Reds in there and they are over six years old and are fine. Just another alarmist video to get clicks for adds.

 

[Perimeter]

My three WD 10TB Purple drives in my BI server are 5 and 4 years old. They are just fine. I have a QNAP NAS with two 6TB WD Reds in there and they are over six years old and are fine. Just another alarmist video to get clicks for adds.

Sorry, I don't quite understand your logic here. If you have older drives where this isn't implemented yet, why is it alarmist to point out that they are implementing it for 3 years now?

Good journalism would have asked for a statement from the company. I didn't watch the full length, so I don't know if he did that.

 

[LL0rd]

If you're not running a Synology system, is this an issue?

Yes, of course. You get a SMART Warning. The Question is, how will the NAS behave. For example ZFS do not give a sh*t about SMART. Everything is in the hand of the User. But some NAS may be do. For example, they can say: Mimimi, this drive has bad SMART, so you can't create a new Array with this drive. What kind of NAS do this? No idea, because I threw my Synology NAS out of my network about 3 years ago.

 

[Ri22o]

Yes, of course. You get a SMART Warning. The Question is, how will the NAS behave. For example ZFS do not give a sh*t about SMART. Everything is in the hand of the User. But some NAS may be do. For example, they can say: Mimimi, this drive has bad SMART, so you can't create a new Array with this drive. What kind of NAS do this? No idea, because I threw my Synology NAS out of my network about 3 years ago.

I am not running any NAS, just the WD drives in my BI PC. Will this be a concern for a non-NAS system?

 

[LL0rd]

I am not running any NAS, just the WD drives in my BI PC. Will this be a concern for a non-NAS system?

Ok, then i have a question for you. Let's just imagine, one of your drives would fail. For example you get bad sectors or something like that. How would you notice that?

 

[Ri22o]

Ok, then i have a question for you. Let's just imagine, one of your drives would fail. For example you get bad sectors or something like that. How would you notice that?

You tell me.

 

[LL0rd]

You tell me.

idk, it's your system. And if you also don't know, probbably you don't have a monitoring solution for your drives at all.

 

[SpacemanSpiff]

According to the synology forum link in the OP, it is just a warning based on WDDA (Western Digital Device Analytics) power-on-hours data. The drive is still functioning and S.M.A.R.T. tests reveal no issue.

It might be a good thing for most who most likely do not have any type of S.M.A.R.T. monitoring enabled. Some might be proactive and establish a plan to replace drives (at some point) before they fail. Not as critical in a NAS when you have it set-up correctly. Hot swapping a failed HDD for a new one and watching the data rebuild is a great option to have. But if the drive is the sole purple/red drive in a machine storing data, a warning does not seem like terrible thing

 

[Ri22o]

Upon further inspection, I am not running any WD drives. I have Seagate SkyHawk and Exos HDDs in my machine.

Carry on.

 

[Ri22o]

In my defense, I do have a some WD Purples in the stack of drives I am not using.