Why are Drive Manufacturers in BIG TROUBLE?

[@gouveia00]

What a nice thing to see after buying a WD NAS drive.

[@trash3570]

gg better luck next time

[@hkalisvaart]

www.tomshardware.com/news/wd-lists-all-drives-slower-smr-techNOLOGY what size did you get?

[@grelymolycremp7838]

F

[@joshuabran4646]

And deploying a NAS Server with 20 of them :D

[@gouveia00]

@@hkalisvaart mine is a 3.5" 3TB WD Red. I haven't noticed any slow downs, but still, it's awful to see that they don't market the product right. To be honest I'm coming from a 3TB WD Blue (that fried itself after 3 years). Well, time to try to refund this bitch.

[@salted6422]

Other hard drives: whispers sweet nothings into their owner's ears. My hard drive: *REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.*

[@Creepercreep10]

Yeah dude I had to switch to ssd lmao

[@tjl2836]

all my hard drives broke :(

[@Real28]

Sounds like you need to back that up LOL

[@Medieva1]

TJ L THEN YOU BETTER GO CATCH IT

[@autresvoixx]

sad but true

[@daren210]

I’m waiting for Linus to say “this video is brought to you by seagate”

[@kokoleka808]

I'll always stick with Hitachi.

[@charleshines6155]

@@kokoleka808 I had a Hitaci drive in one of my laptops. Since then I have upgraded from it for more capacity. The Hitachi is now in a USB enclosure.

[@goldfate2592]

@@kokoleka808 hitachi huchiha

[@H4n_uL]

HGST

[@itchytastyurr]

those drives are kinda clicky- but got one and still works while a 2tb portible drive died on me without explanation- maybe i dropped it but i don't recall...

[@Junk4u999]

Linus: "Imagine having to rewrite an entire paragraph just to change a word"... Typewriters: "Hold my ink..."

[@bloodgain]

Actually, even typists had in-place correction figured out a long time ago. But I had this awful History teacher (the kind of guy that called everybody "hoss" and "sport" and used only last names, but without the politeness of Mr. and Miss) who would make us hand-write and then type our essays in 6th and 7th grade. If we made any mistakes while typing, which of course none of us were practiced at in 1993, we had to start the page over from scratch. Of course, computers already existed, and the school even had some, so this was a stupid, pointless exercise. Walmart even sold standalone word processors at the time that were the size of a standard typewriter (and oh how I longed for one during those assignments). I was the primary computer lab assistant and lived within eyesight of the school. I don't know why I didn't think to ask permission to type my essays on the school computers, except that maybe he had a rule against it, which would make sense with that asshole. I just had to look it up, but I think that old bastard is still kickin'. I found a 50 year wedding anniversary posting but no obituary in the local newspaper.

[@Vlad-1986]

Nah, sod it. I am more of the "backspace and smash the correct character till the paper bleeds" kind of person.

[@MrPopo-vr9gw]

Thats a good analogy

[@bigbob5103]

bloodgain when did I ask?

[@shaun1243]

@@bloodgain this was an interesting read - sorry that your teacher wasn't all that great my man.

[@JackSmith-kx7fe]

I'm still wondering why a WD red 4Tb drive is still $150, 5 years later...

[@arcraz5226]

Supply and demand

[@peruserprecurer1446]

Rare-earth metals

[@miscbits6399]

"Because they CAN"

[@Tpecep]

For same reason as prices on PSU, fans etc. Price of material.

[@hondacrx4909]

In my country is more than 200€, you are cheaper, lol

[@yumenomahiro]

THERE ARE NEARBY SHINGLES IN YOUR AREA. me who bought a wd drive: ah *shit*

[@pranayc94]

loooooooooool......

[@ilrompiscatole5414]

Me: Phew, glad I went with Seagate for my nas Linus: Seagate and Toshiba also sold unlabeled smr drives Me: stops breathing Linus: just not in their nas lineup WHOOOO, MAN, WHAT A RIDE 😂

[@solidsnakeandgrayfox]

Lol

Yea they are all doing it, been a know fact for many months now. 2020 is the year all consumer drives went SMR (and some prosumer, looking at you WD Red)

[@KeradSnake]

@ how to tell the drive is SMR/ CMR if they didn't label it? And does SMR/ CMR matters not just for prosumer, but also for normal consumer?

[@JAYJAY-ch4ik]

How’s Seagate drives? Never used it for about 5 years never had a great experience with it other than a portable Seagate that’s 320gb about 10 years old still Super strong the rest Nas and barracudas all failed and with data losses. Toshiba N300 drives are awesome I have 20 x 14Tb drives running so far for 1 year now with 5 drives fail safe and also remotely duplicated and backed up to another 20 x 14 Tb HGST NAS drives which are Super expensive but Uber reliable. Hitachi drives are the only manufacturer that does not advertise but guarantee reliable. Seagate partnered with Synology and would alert you to failure what I would love to know is how’s the sound and also operations on full tilt and do you think they are better now in terms of reliability? My research always shows me 2 sides of the camp. Personally the iron wolf pro seems awesome to me since it’s cheapest of all the options.

[@vanbuildit]

seagate st4000dm004 by any chance? not NAS drives per say but SMR according to the web.. just checked my Qnap DOH 2 of the Sh*ts

[@SKIMER]

Did he literally put his Rode shotg*n mic into the shot... ... just to make an ASMR joke?

[@ManBearPig617x]

Yup

[@Jimmeyyyyy]

@@ManBearPig617xIts a Sennheiser 416, a rode could never have delivered an ASMR joke that cleanly

[@firstlast8869]

Did you censor the word gun or was that KZbin?

[@Plane.]

? shotgu*n

[@californium-2526]

Ah, don't I love KZbin restrictions? "shotg*n"

[@costafilh0]

This is the transparency we expect from LTT even with thier usual sponsors! Once again... WELL DONE!

[@vulkunvision]

The private internet access sponsor didnt age well…

[@Oscarcat37]

Just looked into my drive I bought from WD Model is SMR FML

[@Pinak1264]

R.I.P :(

[@emerje0]

Started to panic a bit after buying two 4TB Reds in March on sale on Newegg, but it looks like I got the good ones, WD40EFRX

[@st0rm617]

@@emerje0 Got an WD30EFRX and an WD30EZRX in my NAS.. How do you check this??

[@Slavik81]

@@st0rm617 st0rm The affected model numbers are listed here: www.hattislaw.com/cases/investigations/western-digital-lawsuit-for-shipping-slower-smr-hard-drives-including-wd-red-nas/

[@bhargavagowda8434]

ask them to have it exchanged?

[@CarlJohnson-xz1rs]

Imagine getting a ASMR drive, at least its quiet

[@UltraNoobian]

*whisper* I'm writing your data to disk very gently.

[@chode009]

"I'm looking for a hard drive for war"

[@roebbiej]

It's free real estate

[@wonderLADder]

@@roebbiej i can't xddddd

[@yodaddy1]

Wait until it whispers "just let it happen" and you realize that you're actually in prison.

[@kbzplayz5886]

Imagine copying a 10 meg file and it takes 12 seconds

[@daedalus2097]

Ah, the good old days, when 10MB was a lot of data and using floppies made 12 seconds seem like no time at all.

[@PSjustanormalguy]

12 seconds? That would be crazy fast using floppies. 10MB in 12seconds is 10BaseT Ethernet fast 😎

[@jaynee8581]

I don't have to imagine that.

[@daedalus2097]

​@@PSjustanormalguy Yeah, I didn't really mean 10MB from floppies ;) I meant doing *anything* with floppies makes 12 seconds seem fast :p

[@jimitsoni18]

@@PSjustanormalguy lol it's 0.01baset

[@rougenaxela]

You keep saying things like "more capacity on the cheap" as if the drive manufacturers were instantly passing some portion of the savings along to consumers when switching to SMR... when no, at least in the short term they've often been pricing the SMR drives the same as the last non-SMR drives of the same capacity in the same same series.

[@DarKcS2]

Yeah it's sadly more likely engineers concerns were ignored in favour of corporate profits

[@710thcenturydigitalboy4]

yeah no kidding, they're stealing so much value from customers with this bullshit.

[@schizochicky7501]

Straight up a KO

yea thats the realy big problem I have with this. SMR is bad enough, the prices tough are the same or even going up now here in sweden on 2020 SMR editions of the same 2019 PMR editions.

[@Bert1268]

Trrruuueee

[@ScytheNoire]

Engineers: "Don't do this." Exectuives: "But we can save money and make more profit. Do it!"

[@happygimp0]

Yes. This always happens. I say we should not use the thing i just made for a demo in a productive environment. They use it anyway, they later cry that the data is not there and they need to make everything again and then they blame me and i have to find a way to solve the problem they created. So annoying.

[@TechyBen]

"Communication breakdown". Is this like "Surprise mechanics"?

[@Destide]

Marketing we did it last week

[@Hrafnskald]

Hence the lawsuit. Legal penalties educate Executives and incentivize compliance with disclosure standards :)

[@mechamicro]

You get what you got, cheap and slow. While expensive qnd fast

[@cameronlindhorst6311]

YOU JUST MADE MY DAY! I had this exact issue and I can't tell you how many hours I've searched online for answers. My WD 4 bay NAS took SEVERAL DAYS to upgrade from a 2 drive mirror to a 4 drive RAID5. Not only that, but it also explains why i randomly hear it running with nobody connected. All 4 drives are 6TB WD Red! What a waste of my time! Thank you for sharing!

[@jack.h99]

Me: Hey I just bought a 2TB Seagate drive and thought that I could get about the same if not better performance as the 1TB Seagate drive I bought 4 years ago. Seagate: You thought *_WRONG!_*

[@Aereto]

Seagate drives in a nutshell: Dead.

[@jack.h99]

@@Aereto yeah, I think I'm on team SSD for the forseeable future

[@TheXlen]

@@Aereto Actually in my experience WD dies a lot more and Toshiba doesn't die unless you do something idiotic to it.

[@TheXlen]

@@jack.h99 SSDs are only the way to go if you don't need large size drives.

[@Seppy39]

Same here my 1TB Seagate HDD last longer (in days and Data transfer) than my 2TB drive

I became aware of the issue a few months ago when I started to run out of space in my FilServer (NAS). I looked in to WD, Seagate and Toshiba and what I found was that basically ALL "consumer" drivers or to some extent prosumer drivers like WD Red now used SMR instead of PMR/CMR from 2020 and on. For example WD blue 6Tb, 2019 edition is PMR but if you get one from 2020 it will be SMR from what I could find out. Seagate and Toshiba have done the same with there "Desktop/Personal" driver series to. But what I find rely annoying except the fact that NONE of them are marketing there slow crappy SMR drives as SMR, is the fact that the price seems unchanged at least here in Sweden theirs no better deal to be had on the 2020 models compared to the 2019 models. Like Linus sad, manufactures can get 25-50% more density out of the platters with SMR instead of PMR so that means that a 6Tb driver of 2020 model has around 20-33% less platters and heads, but the prices seems to be the same. So that means the manufacturer are pocketing the difference as a strait up profit. Now I would not be bothered if SMR drives where CLEARLY marketed as SMR, like Seagate Archive series, where it was clearly stated they are best suited for single drive use (no raid) and just to store data in a linear fashion. For many of my uses that would be fine and a nice cost saving if I could get like 25% off the price. But no it seems as if WD, Seagate and Toshiba, basically all of the manufactures decided at the same time to rip off all there consumers by selling SMR drives under the same Make and Model as before. I ended up getting the old Toshiba N300 8Tb Drives, have one and as fare as I could tell they are not SMR as of yet and they Cost a lot less then WD now PMR ONLY drives. But my faith in any Hard drive manufacturer is now damaged and ANY new drive purchase will be investigated thoroughly to make SURE I dont get SMR crap for the price of PMR! They should all be sued and pay back the money they ripped consumers of that expected to get the "same" or better drive performance of 2019 models in 2020. NO ONE in the right mind expects a 2020 revision of the same drive to be WORSE in pretty much ever aspect! No shame on you HDD manufactures! SSD's are taking over and this is how you deiced to milk and exploit those that still need HDD's for mass storage?

[@suhdude9775]

Is this copy-paste from an entire book?

[@horusreloaded6387]

A small heads up: if you get 50% more efficient, that doesnt mean you can get the same result with half of the work. 50% more of 100 is 150 but 50% more of 50 is 75.

@@horusreloaded6387 Yes very true. Classic error by me there :P The only way to know how many heads and platters they use is to open up a 2019 PMR driver and the 2020 SMR equivalent and count them, that would tell us maybe what the cost savings are. But the fact remains, they are saving on cost and converting that strait to profit, the consumer is not getting a price reduction.

[@miscbits6399]

You came late to the party. Until Chris Mellor and I got the ball rolling none of the makers would _ADMIT_ they were using SMR in small drives and explicitly refused to tell customers Imagine putting 3 * 4TB REDs in your RAIDZ3 array to replace aging drives hitting 60,000 hour power-on time and having this happen which is what happened to me, then WD tried to claim they weren't SMR drives, then they tried to claim that I was doing RAID wrong.....

[@horusreloaded6387]

@ dont get me wrong, i was just pointing a small error to fix on an otherwise good comment

[@owerseer]

Sean Connery : "Shingles you shay" I'll see myself out.

[@crazywilly85]

😂😂😂👌

[@SupremeNerd]

LMAO that was random af

[@MarkoVukovic0]

Well played, shir oversheer :D

[@TASLundy]

"I'll take, "'Things your Mother gave you" for $400, Trebek"

[@dannyc7839]

You're the man now, Dawg!

[@JamesRussoMillas]

Me: *looks at my WD black 2TB* "that'll do pig, that'll do."

[@namyun2743]

If it's a 2.5" drive, chances are, it's SMR. Might want to check your drive against their list of SMR drives.

[@TheFourthWinchester]

Even one Western Digital Black is SMR. They are scamming everyone in all colours.

[@fredfinks]

Its the notebook 2.5" drives only affected. No farking way in hell a 3.5 black is smr. Blacks are superb drives. After many, many years Ive finally bid them farewell though as 6TB aint enough (remember Raptors?). Got 2x HGST/WD HC520 12TB. They datacenter drive (no more consumer HDDs for me). Fine for normal home pc use (non-NAS/raid). If getting datacentre drives, be sure to get the model versions without power disable. READ the spec & info sheets on company site to ensure. Power disable is a datacenter feature and cause compatibility issues with standard home pcs. You see a lot of bad reviews with datacentre drives because people bought the wrong model. Only buy from stores / sites that list specific full model number. BH Photo is a good one, ive imported from. Trust them way higher than newegg for example. (not that newegg is bad)

[@zeratulrus142]

Imagine having more than 1TB of storage

[@NoobGyver]

Got a wd red 2 tb can relate

[@mini-_]

HDD manufacturer using SMR without telling us? SMH..

[@08DrAke08]

I see what you did there...

[@Oldsah]

Literally a joke. You pay so much and they juke you.

[@_jack_ryan_9764]

Haha. Comedy

[@swordcrafted]

the first

[@honoredshadow1975]

Glad you got first and didn't even mention it like a boss. This is the way it should be :)

[@adamlennon750]

Imagine if you had to change a word in a paragraph... I remember not knowing how to turn insert key off thanks.

[@DeDean16]

About a year ago, it took me sooo much time to figure out why my new HDDs write speed suddenly dropped to ~150kB/s after writing about 10% of their capacity. After a lot of tests, guesswork and searching for vague symptoms online, I realised they were unlabeled SMR drives. I'm really happy those companies don't get away easily with hiding vital information about their products.

[@Mrplaysschecter]

Linus: "I made a similar argument a few months ago." *shows baby Linus* Me: "AHHHHH PUT THAT THING AWAY"

[@HeedlessDullahan]

It’s like a completely different person.

[@almostontimehero5415]

I miss teenage Linus. Manus isn't as friendly.

[@Beyondesp]

I still wont trust WD after this debacle. They labeled the DSMR drives their normal Red drives and the CMR is going to be Red Plus. So people will still accidentally buy the Red thinking its the same as the ones they used to have and not knowing that they need to buy the red plus to be the same... They should have labeled the SMR drives as Red Eco or something else..

[@Astraeus..]

There's this wonderful skill people usually have, it's called reading. When properly applied to things like sales listings for an item, as opposed to just reading the actual name and ignoring everything else, it can work wonders.

[@FinalKingX]

@@Astraeus.. It turns out that most customers buying NAS drives are corporations where they probably buy the cheapest NAS certified drives available. And I'm pretty sure the WD Red drives are cheaper than Red Plus so they will still get SMR drives.

[@gt362gamer]

@@Astraeus.. There's this wonderful skill companies should have, it's called predictability. If certains products of a certain line up have a x quality level, newer models of the same line up should be at least as good as the older models.

[@bloonsfamily2066]

or red smr

[@hauntedshadowslegacy2826]

Yeah, probably should've called 'em "Red SMR" and "Red CMR". Not including the type of storage in the name is the main problem. Still, though, if the primary consumer of Red drives are companies and corporations, they should be smart enough to learn the difference between Red and Red Plus.

[@ABlackPatriot]

THAT'S IT! I demand payment in the form of a 5 TB NVME SSD for every drive I own....

[@thermitekitty9070]

They'll find a way to make them for $5 each with 1mbps r/w.

[@_Aarius_]

Hadn't even known CMR/SMR was a thing to consider. Aaaaand now I know to check before i upgrade my HDDs. Thanks!

[@CataclysmZA]

What's worse is that the firmware is also different between the two drives. They might both be Reds, but the SMR drive may take more, or less time to quite an attempt at recovering a bad sector, while the CMR drive would probably drop a bad read and send out a SMART error that the data integrity is not guaranteed.

[@wyterabitt2149]

Unless you are using the affected NAS scenarios, the chances of you noticing anything other than having to pay more by avoiding smr is tiny. It does have a small performance hit, but outside of the NAS scenarios there are not many situations you should be using conventional hard drives if performance matters.

[@_Aarius_]

@@wyterabitt2149 thats true, but i didn't say its be the biggest consideration - just that it would BE considered. If the price difference between smr and cmr dives of the same capacity was small, i'd probably pay more for cmr for that bit of performance and suitability for a nas if i decide to repurpose later. if it was a big price difference for my main bulk media storage? id probs go smr

[@InventiveMagic]

How do you get WD to swap out your drives with a CMR? I can already tell you if I call them I will get some dude in a foreign country that has no clue what I am talking about.

[@sto2779]

facts

[@glytchd]

Yes, i know the experience. Back in the day, I'd handle RMAs and things for my Datacenter. i'd get a call center here in the states. It made the process so much smoother. Even when they didn't know what you were talking about, they would usually connect me to the right department.

[@Asa-yg2hh]

I legitimately enjoy watching Linus advertise the store in the most inconvenient times, it makes my day

[@blackout2able]

no

[@namename-zu8uk]

@RITA - F U С К М Е !!!!! OPEN MY CANAL !!! ok

[@akshaypendyala]

@@namename-zu8uk dude you ok? 😂

[@vikumwijekoon3166]

Im pretty sure someone in their management thought oh my, this technology is cheap, lets just use it and undercut our opposition and MAKE MORE MONEY.

[@nishantrajani7372]

Isn't that like every management ever? They never listen to their staff and then blame everyone for their mistakes

[@32gigs96]

Joe Al pretty sure upper management isn’t Indian buddy

[@SMBBM92]

Just found out the 4TB Seagate drives I use to work on client wedding photo albums are SMR. I will be getting in touch with Seagate me thinks...

[@SodalisUK]

Could still be suitable for this. CMR cache is 70GB-100GB. It is ZFS resilvering or continuous random writes > say 50GB that screws performance.

[@heedmywarning2792]

I'm so glad I use older computer equipment. Now, what cassette did I leave that program on?

[@juliusfucik4011]

Just type it from the paper backup. It's quicker!

[@IO9802]

Whoever keeps upgrading your intro, you need to give them a promotion.

[@darxustech2883]

When I recently bought a couple more WD Red drives to add to my array, I noticed there were newer cheaper models, and thought I was overly paranoid buying the older models still available, justifying it on aesthetics. I'm so glad that saved me from SMR.

[@Javaboymk03]

What a good thing to see when i just got notified that my WD Blue has just been shipped

[@smurfendrek4791]

Wd blues aren't affected afaik and you probably wouldn't notice for your use cases anyways

[@TheFourthWinchester]

@@smurfendrek4791 Wrong. WD Blue has plenty of SMR drives.

[@sKanteii]

@@smurfendrek4791 WD20EZAZ is affected

[@jmr]

When this news started it's rounds I was very glad I bought the larger drives(luck) that were not affected. I would have been pretty ticked off and I completely understand those that want to sue. It's unfortunate however they won't really get appropriate compensation from a class action suit. Usually it's only the lawyers that win in class actions.

[@mcf3778]

thats not what erin brocovitch said

[@NotAMinifig]

iirc the class action lawsuit actually doesn't seek damages, but a permanent injunction against selling smr drives labeled for nas use. (and costs&fees)

[@LMacNeill]

Exactly. The lawyers will get their million$, and the people who got screwed will get a coupon worth $20 off their next WD drive purchase (limitations apply, expires in 2 weeks).

[@LizardVideoDude]

@@LMacNeill And usually, the company that screwed over their customers won't even admit any wrongdoing.

[@hooptastic_hippie8522]

@@LMacNeill lmao

[@Sylencer1982]

Hanlon's Razor: Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.

[@contytub]

Well malice draws from stupidity most of the time ....

[@beri4138]

I've heard of Occam's razor, there's a Hanlon's razor too now? What's the deal with philosophy and razors??

[@HarryVoyager]

Yep. Dilbert for years...

[@carlosbonmarist]

Gaming Turkey there are actually several lmao

[@alalalala57]

@@beri4138 It started with Occam's Razor but the term razor has been adopted as a way of shaving off logical conclusions for other reasons as well.

[@irithylloldman6526]

2:38 I love the fact that someone's job at Linus Media Group was to write this text. Amazing company

[@kylebennett1928]

I can’t believe as this came out 3 of my WD Red 3tb drives just failed in my Qnap TS-451+ NAS

[@bland9876]

3 without replacement usually means by by data :( that sucks man

[@xenolemon7261]

Shut your mouth bro I have WD at my house in my PC and Xbox

[@soarcheetah]

@@xenolemon7261 Lol the typical "I don't have a problem therefore no one does" attitude

[@heroslippy6666]

@@xenolemon7261 haha PC and Xbox, wow such high performance devices. (poe's law) Slow down over there dude, wouldn't want your toaster to lose all it's data when you drop it into a bathtub.

[@yensteel]

Ouch... Do you have any backups?

[@aomanchutube]

After interviewing an engineer from WD, yeah that company is stuck with young blood without the huge experience of the elder engineers retiring or being retired. It's literally an HR problem where too many engineers were removed at one time and so you end up with lots of engineers hired at the same time and so many engineers retiring at the same time. I was taken back by the interview, expecting so much more from a senior engineer.

[@NightKev]

"It was just a communications breakdown" doesn't hold as much weight when *all three* of the big storage companies did the same thing. As well, considering the other circumstances going on around this... no, this is obviously not "whoopsie we made a mistake much sorry from us". Do not make excuses for huge multinational/multibillion dollar corporations.

[@Kriae]

8:32

[@Anton-cv2ti]

I don't think the breakdown was selling unlabelled SMR drives. There's tonnes of technology in the drives that isn't disclosed, and it isn't a big deal. The problem was that they sold this technology in NAS-drives.

[@miscbits6399]

Theres an awful lot of Stockholm Syndrome going on. That or a hell of a lot of postings vehemently supporting HDD companies from accounts which have never posted before You might think its astroturfing. I cant possibly comment on what you might think

[@encycl07pedia-]

Whoever thought of "shingles" in a drive should be shot.

[@zarmaanful]

@@encycl07pedia- Point Blank in the chest with a shotgun

[@realazee]

Over 2 months ago I emailed WD support to inquire whether my drive was SMR or CMR/PMR, and they declined to answer

[@alexandergr9856]

Money back

[@bennycop]

So, it's SMR :)

[@realazee]

benny blanco yeah I ended up looking up the model number on forums, and it was indeed SMR

[@reoencarcelado5904]

I just thought of this ("just" as-in "2 seconds ago"): [The acronym] "SMR" should stand for "Shitty-Method Recording".

[@ArchibaldCharles]

Drive manufacturers have been misleading customers for ever. I still talk to people that think a 2TB drive should be able to store 2TB of data.

[@Metatr0n]

That's not misleading. A 2 TB (Tera Byte) Drive can store 2 TB of data. The only thing is that it's not 2 TiB (Tebi Byte) of capacity. 2 TB refers to 2.000.000.000.000 Bytes That's 1.82 TiB of capacity and is exactly what all of my 2 TB drives show me. (All of them have even several hundred thousands of bytes more than 2.000.000.000.000, so the manufacturers gave me even more capacity than advertised) It's not the responsibility of the hard drive manufacturers to educate you in SI-units and their decimal and binary variations. If you ever referred to RAM capacity as e.g. 16 GB (Giga Bytes) instead of 16 GiB (Gibi Bytes), then it's basically you who misleads yourself. (And basically every Tech-KZbinr on this planet, since I never heard any of them say the correct Kibi, Mebi, Gibi or Tebi Byte variation) See the box "Multiples of Bytes" on the right side for reference: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte

[@whygoogle5051]

Metatr0n They did this for so long that it became a status quo as it’s been their standard practice beginning in the late 90s to measure drives “metrically”, even organizing together manufacturers to rewrite measuring metrics for computer storage. No one is going to say MebiBytes as it’s bullshit. Everyone classically understood that it was based in binary not decimal and as such meant that in the context of computing, it would be 1024 kilobytes, not 1000. I hate that they got away with this shite and that people growing up afterwards might just accept it as such despite only being a measurement pushed factitiously by storage manufacturers.

[@Music-bf3vn]

​@@Metatr0n I couldn't disagree more. while technically correct (and believe me, i've known about it all along), the reality is no OS measures in TB, it's measured in TiB. as a software engineer, i would tell you there's very good reason for that and it's called binary. there is absolutely no valid reason HD manufacturers can not represent their drives in the same units the OS uses if not to inflate their value

[@Metatr0n]

@@Music-bf3vn Just so you know, I'm in the IT business for 15 years now, I once or twice stumbled upon words like "binary". Your argument "Any OS measures in TiB" doesn't hold, since as hard drive manufacturers, they can't give a shit what OS developers do or how they represent data as. On top of that, Windows for example shows and always has shown the capacity in TiB but labels it as TB, so what should a hard drive manufacturer do about that? I don't know where you're from, maybe it's an US problem that in IT the correct binary SI-units aren't taught, I can tell you that in Germany for over 30 years, even before ISO, IEEE and IEC managed to get to a common denominator, the binary version was taught in universities. For some people it might look like a technicality but in fact, the difference between the decimal and the binary version is just as significant as the difference between grams and ounces. Historically speaking, the first ever commercially offered HDD was the IBM 350 with 50 physical platters each loaded with 50,000 sectors, each loaded with 100 characters. This capacity was advertised as "5 million characters". Then, since 1974 (not in the 90's!!!) HDD manufacturers used the decimal system to represent capacities, first time 1,000,000 (10^6) Bytes advertised as "1 Mega Byte". With floppies it even went wilder, since IBM defined the standard as 512-byte sectors while 2 sectors were labeled as "1K". Single Sided (SS) floppies with 720 sectors were advertised as "360KB" and Double Sided (DS) with 1,440 sectors as "720KB". High Density (HD) floppies were labelled as "1.44MB" which actually was a mixture of both, decimal and binary, since they had 2,880 sectors with 512 Byte each, thus had a size of "1440K" or rather 1,440 x 1,000 = 1.44 MB. Of course the correct size would have been 1,440 x 1,024 = 1,474,560 Byte = 1.47 MB or 1.41 MiB. (Which Windows has always shown as "1.41 MB"...) Thus they introduced 1024 x 1000 = 1,024,000 as a new definition of "Mega Byte". The Compact Disk for example was always advertised as "700MB" while the capacity itself is binary but the unit is decimal, since the capacity really was 700 MiB. The USB Flash Drive, like the HDD is and was always labeled in decimal. A 64 GB USB Stick is always 64,000,000,000 Byte. As you can see, historically speaking there was always a huge mess when it comes to properly distinguishing between the decimal and binary versions and right after people complain that they feel misguided by HDD manufacturers, I can't really understand the criticism towards the binary Byte, since if it was properly taught 20 years ago, there wouldn't be a whole generation struggling with understanding this mess. HDD manufacturers do everything right, they don't falsely label Tera Bytes as Tebi Bytes to inflate the advertised capacity, nor do they create their own crazy mixed up system to sell less capacity than advertised. Again, it's not the job of the HDD manufacturers to educate 16 year old's whose IT knowledge is based on 7 Linus Tech Tips videos. That's exactly why I always criticize people who claim "Even 7 year old's can build computers". Yes, they can copy your hand movements while holding a screw driver, but they don't understand what the f*** they're doing there and this constant capacity-discussions alone prove me in that point.

[@taillwh]

@@Music-bf3vn While in general I agree with the thrust of the argument that TB vs TiB is needlessly confusing, the statement that "no OS measures in TB" is simply false and shouldn't be part of the argument. Everything made by the Apple operates in base-10 (1000 bytes per KB) rather than base-2 (1024 bytes per KB). Feel free to look it up support.apple.com/en-us/HT201402

[@yuanloongtay9954]

fun fact: justine is 2 years older than linus

[@thegoodchannel9688]

You are joking right? How old is she?

[@daoquang900]

actually if I remember correctly, 3 years older. Linus was born in 86 and Justine was born in 83

[@thegoodchannel9688]

@@daoquang900 wow she looks 20

[@js0988]

You'd think shed be 2000 years older, that's how much I age every time I try to do anything on an cRapple device!

[@theroebuck123456789]

Justine has been looking like she's in her late 30's since 2009

[@VaskoG384]

"Why are Drive Manufacturers in TROUBLE?" I bought a 1 TB drive, and when I checked it, it said it has 931 gigabytes! They removed 69 (nice) gigabytes from my drive!

[@glibberglobber9358]

That is just the extra space needed to have the filesystems data table.

[@Max24871]

Nope, it does not have 931 gigabytes. It has 1000 gigabytes, which is the same as 931 gibibytes.

[@VaskoG384]

@@glibberglobber9358 It was a joke, but I appreciate the explanation very much.

[@DontreadPimpBoy]

@@Max24871 $0.99 = $1.00 ?

[@Muscleduck]

Nah you bought a 1000000000000 bytes drive, so base 10. But your pc counts in 1024. KiB, MiB, Gib,...

[@digvidguy]

I'm so glad you're around LInus, telling us the stuff we need to know to navigate the minefield of computing safely!

[@Janjohann1]

Linus: Normally we don't delve into companies getting sued on this channel. Me: crys in WAN

[@bingo5694]

imagine a world where drive manufacturers actually had to show the actual drive space on a unit.

[@owensparks5013]

That was my assumption as to what the topic of this video was going to be.

[@khaimtje]

Something like this xd www.hddzone.com/blog/images/WD8088AADS.jpg

[@Bourinos02]

Holy shit, did these drives really existed?

[@benni922]

this is windows fault they use the wrong Unit of measurement

[@okaravan]

Imagine a world where people actually know the difference between binary and decimal SI units. Oh wait, you can't!

[@DollarDude]

8:23 Thanks for helping me confirm that my WD Red Pros are CMR drives!

[@chickenpopcorn9081]

Linus when he goes to his kids school on the day where you talk about your job: I talk and build PC's do some cable management shop LTTstore.com good quality cable ties... Also I swear to god all the dislikes is everyone that works at Western Digital and their alts.

[@IAmSuchSkillMan]

But before I tell you my job let’s Segway into our sponsor

[@justsomeguywithasmugface645]

*tweezers

[@miscbits6399]

Mostly it's because he's a combination of Jeremy Clarkson and Tim (the tool man) Taylor Every so often he does something serious though - like this one.

[@G0lden07]

Glass wire: monitors apps on your PC to see if they are behaving badly. Task manager: Am I a joke to you?

[@signalworks]

I don’t think you know what it is, it’s much more network focused than task manager, and has far better visualization options. Before people whoosh me, yes I get that this is a joke but it isn’t funny or original

[@zarmaanful]

@@signalworks + Task manager hides/shadows windows related tasks. I was surprised when windows setup was downloading updates yet task manager said 0% network usage from installer and no other program was listed that used network but my network card/switch activity LED was blinking like hell.

[@paolovincedelgado559]

When your comment section are just smart boomers

[@hauntedshadowslegacy2826]

@@paolovincedelgado559 What an oxymoron you have there... Impressive.

[@zwz.zdenek]

I'm honestly surprised how well WD still does despite its numerous scandals and the SSD competition. Thanks for the heads-up!

[@tigershark2328]

"A number of months ago" = Nearly 2 years ago Damn does time fly

[@r3strt]

Linus: dunks on Hard drives SSD manufacturers: *Epic gamer moment*

[@nodalanalysis7704]

And showed 8tb m.2 ssd few days before

[@pravda9646]

I cannot fucking believe this got 75 likes in 20 minutes when there's literally no setup punchline or even joke ...man, what has youtube becomd

[@Park_Place]

@@pravda9646 A source of idiots and geniuses depending on who or what you watch

[@r3strt]

@@pravda9646 It's 2020 youtube, what do you expect, funny jokes?

[@r3strt]

@@ReclusiveHTID Fair enough

[@jamesharris8951]

Having lost TBs of data, I still have yet to buy another WD drive.

[@JackOusley]

After seeing this video I’ve been slowly replacing my WD Red SMR drives in my raid with non-SMR seagate drives and boom, my plex server doesn’t have hiccups every 30-60 minutes anymore. I’ve been scratching my head for a couple years over this. I figured I was safe buying NAS drives from WD, nope.

[@TatsuZZmage]

I'm betting a MBA in WD thought he could make WD a bit more money

[@addydiesel6627]

Quick and dirty money works for software but not for hardware. Ergo compare Microsoft and WD

[@kingneutron1]

Yep, this is the kind of crap that happens when Manglement gets involved and starts making bad decisions

[@addydiesel6627]

@@kingneutron1 Manglement 😂 love it!

[@Stephen.Bingham]

It is becoming increasingly difficult to source WD CMR drives - I ordered the 4TB “red” CMR model from Amazon (uk) and they sent me the SMR version.... TWICE! Gave up and sourced it elsewhere, but I now have two SMR drives to return to Amazon.

[@thebowdestroyer]

Roses are red Linus' beard is quite nice When I hear that segway I double tap right

[@Hello-qg4yk]

*segue

[@dennydravis8758]

This format is excellent... I'd actually love a long term news cast from Riley or James if they have the time.

[@joonglegamer9898]

Throw in Steven Rourke from Gamers Nexus, and you have an unbeatable newscrew.

[@nonamehere1626]

LMG needs a deep dive tech channel for Linux and servers, they have many talented people there who could do such things, like Anthony. Kind of like Level1Techs

[@JackSQL]

@@joonglegamer9898 what would you do with the old screw? Ayooo

[@joonglegamer9898]

@@JackSQL Find the nut!

[@Twister915]

Thanks for posting this. I just bought 3x 8tb seagate drives, about a month ago, and was using it on my linux desktop in RAID5. When I watched this, I was in the middle of a multi-day reshape of the array, and was trying to debug performance. I had no idea! I was able to return all 3 and bought 3x Exos 14TB drives.

[@thomasuniat2939]

Looks like Yvonne finally got tired of Linus' crap.

[@ricko13]

Why?

[@thomasuniat2939]

@@ricko13 One of Linus's eyes looks red.

[@denizakpanar1610]

Other sponsors for LTT: *exists* Glasswire: I’m about to end this man’s whole career

[@mhavock]

good video! Also, it might be a good idea for ZFS or such file systems to CHECK for SMR drives before RAIDing them and then warn the user. eg It can have a list of the models etc. The NAS software could also warn you based on the list. I also did not realize this until after I purchased some RED drives...

[@mikinyaa]

Sigh....I got two WD reds failed in one year and wonder whether they are really for NAS use😩

[@radimbastan]

Totally rooting for the LTT ASMR episode! Linus using raspy voice: "hard drive... ryzen processor... graphics card... AND NOW COMES A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR!"

[@NemoConsequentae]

I'm still hoping to see him ride a self balancing 2 wheeled device across the room while saying, "and now a Segway to our sponsor..."

[@peterwan816]

exactly, I was once looking for hard drives and figuring out what that drive is is really annoying since they are hiding it hard, real hard. sometimes it is not even clearly stated on the Datasheet...

[@Starfals]

This episode is kind of like a Tech Quickie and i dig it :P

[@DerpFigure]

I just wanted him to say “smh”

[@nicholasnarcowich9163]

Windows Vista, Windows me... R&D, Sales, production... there was just some missed items, we all make mistakes. Drives are being replaced as requested. Good video; time to heal :-) Love your show.

[@TheLegendInYou]

I can feel the stock value of WD free falling.

[@dogboy0912]

Stocks on sale

[@Metatr0n]

You should have felt that in April. In Germany the website computerbase.de reported on this issue on 15th April 2020. Don't know why it took LMG so long to make a video about this... www.computerbase.de/2020-04/wd-red-festplatten-smr-ohne-kennzeichnung/

[@Dazdigo]

I am still surprised we have two different definitions on what a terabyte's size is. Hard drive manufacturers should be sued over that as well.

[@jcl410]

I watched the HGST presentation from 2015. He wasn't talking about DMSMR being bad for ZFS. He stated that HGST determined that DMSMR wasn't going to work and did not offer any DMSMR drives at all! Their focus was on Host Managed SMR drives.

[@andrewmontague9682]

Sounds like Hanlon's Razor to me: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

[@Ben.N]

They knew, no question. WD is not stupid, they just thought they could get away with it.

[@andrewmontague9682]

@@Ben.N Cynical but certainly not unlikely. It wouldn't be the first time a tech company has acted like an asshole for money.

[@________dQw4w9WgXcQ]

@@Ben.N especially considering tech venders usually throw as much specs into the title and description as possible the idea of a new added technology not being the main selling point (whether it actually is good or not is irrelevant, tis new) is unbelievable. Edit: through -> throw

[@Ben.N]

Additionally, SMR is defenitely an interesting new technology, but it is not a replacement for CMR. It allows higher capacities at a lower cost, at least some of these savings should be passed down to the consumer. Who even though these should be marketed as NAS drives, that is the one factor that makes me think it could be utter incompetence.

[@captainsceptic3559]

Patrick: 1-minute explanation Translation: WD are too incompetent to have intended this.

[@robertlinke2666]

it's not incompetence, it is just that they are too big, and there departments and subsidiaries have effectively become stand alone silos. it is not uncommon in such massive organisations that departments and subsidiaries are competing against each other. it might even bne that WD black and WD red are competing against each other while all being WD.

[@HercadosP]

They're competent enough to develop the technology, not competent enough to see the bigger picture

[@captainsceptic3559]

Being big is not an excuse. its an explanation, albeit one that should fall on deaf ears. They should just FITFO.

[@bobk100]

Great video, I heard about SMR from a warning posted on Newegg while I was trying to find a 1 TB storage disc drive for my laptop. Guess what, nobody is making them unless you want SMR. That breakdown of WD drives in your video is on WD.com and the Red 2.5 @ 1 TB model # WD10JFCX doesn't exist yet as far as being able to purchase it. I saw an internal memo posted online from WD mentioning a new Red Plus drive using CMR @ 1 TB so I'm crossing my fingers.

[@thomaslautenberger6447]

Everyone: *thinks editors have all the power at LTT* Patrick: *Has all the power at LTT*

[@Collo_ke]

AND TODAY`S VIDEO IS BROUGHT BY: LINUS;

[@Faabiyen]

Tech Norris

[@FlameSoulis]

This scared the crap out of me. I wasn't aware and my NAS I built a year ago used WD Reds. Immediately checked the model number and lucked out with having CMR versions.

[@notthere83]

11:50 Haha that table slam reaction... I love it when they keep stuff like that in.

[@darrianweathington1923]

We need a Linus tech ASMR (LTASMR) now, so he can whisper sweet tech reviews in my ears as I sleep

[@anindyaroy6710]

I had no idea/info about this. But wondered what is that magic that with same HDD size storage is increasing day by day. Thanks for surfacing this fact. Really critical.

[@RunfisherRS]

Introducing WD Brown featuring SMR technology (Shitty Magnetic Recording)

[@asphere8]

I ordered WD Red drives for a NAS about two months before this whole thing blew up in the news. Thankfully, they all turned out to be CMR drives. I've always had faith in WD's products being good quality but I won't be buying from them again for a while.

[@NoNameNoShame22]

I too dodged a bullet accidentally. I was about to buy WD40EFAX but then saw the article and bought EFRX.

[@wingsofwar]

This happened to me 2 years ago when I was building a new freenas cluster using a row of repurposed wdreds but because it didn't have any labels on the drives themselves for drive type I just thought the drives were bad... Lost about 8 days in productivity and production, I ended up with Seagate. I didnt dig any deeper in this issue but I'm glad this video came out to give me an overview of what happened a long time ago.

[@Danny-wv8ec]

Was that mic setup only for like 5 whispered words? Dedication👍

[@BluecoreG]

Transfer a file. Goes into the cache. So if you turn off your computer before the cache is dumped, rest in peace your data

[@flummi6966]

Nah,its just easy read/write CMR parts on the platter that are used as bigger (several Gbs) cache, no DRAM ( Yes,some but thats the usual thing).

[@LangleyNA]

It seems I dodged the bullet here. I purchased a *WD10EZEX 1TB Western Digital Blue 3.5"* drive two years ago, but after the publicism, Western Digital reports this specific drive to use CMR. But it's important I've become aware of this, as I only want CMR drives and the *WD20EZAZ 2TB Western Digital Blue 3.5"* drives I was intending to purchase for my next build are reported to be SMR/CMR. So I won't be purchasing those now, and will look to a reported CMR drive instead.

[@LuxLikeGaming]

Good thing I havent bought a Harddrive in a looooong time! ...because I'm still using my 8 year old one even if it makes strange noises sometimes...

[@alexrambolton]

Might want to back up your data from that drive. If it is important I mean.

[@J0k3r399]

its like other electronics, just shake it a bit while its on, that will make it go away. (this is a joke)

[@tagagawangulan]

better back it up with wds smr drives.

[@N1RKW]

Back in the 90's when I started building computers, WD started calling their drives "Caviar" drives. This led us to start calling them "Cadaver" drives, because they almost always arrived DOA. Glad to see WD is every bit as predictable as they always have been, and are just as dedicated to screwing over their customers.

[@lonniebeal6032]

Fortunately, I only bought 2 drives that are SMR, just learned about these formats a week ago. And many manufacturers are not labeling their drives....

[@g1sbi]

Me: Oh man I can't wait to plug in my brand new WD NAS drive! Linus: I'm about to end this man's whole career

[@tanaymanjunath4540]

Linus : 91/2... Me: That a crap ton of hours!!! Linus Days!!! Me: Wait What the Fu..

[@spitfire7772]

*Frolic/Curb your Enthusiasm plays in the background*

[@Forget8About8It]

It pays out to know about SMR even as a desktop user. For two days I was wondering, why offline cloning of a 2TB seagate barracuda drive with a SATA DiscStation took me 24 H instead of expected 4 H (roghly claculated with the drives speed of 150MB/s). Even looking at the speed droping constantly below 1MB/s for long periods of time hurts, when copying lots of data to the drive.

[@loldude8051]

"ether higher capacity or faster hard drive" how about both but with a twist, low capacity and slow

[@Imevul]

Haven't bought a WD drive in over 10 years. They lost me as a customer after all my WD drives failed in just a year or two, while my other drives still work to this day.

[@ArcaneSurreal]

Have to agree with alexandsimba - the failure rate for Seagate drives is around 2% at the time of writing. For every 50 Hard Drives sold, one will fail. Want to take that risk? I've been using WD's for just as long as you haven't bought them, and not a single one has dropped a beat. I also have 2 Seagates (IDE and even SATA1) from the same period which no longer function. I still have WD's faith - and bear in mind it wasn't just WD who did this little stunt with the SMR labelling either.

[@eideticex]

It's been the opposite for me. I have WDs from recent years back to the late 90s, all of them still work even if the older ones have loud barrings. Every last Seagate I have around that still powers up and takes a formatting is labelled "NFG". They are prone to failing with a few months of use, usually entire swatches of nodes go corrupt, well beyond what badblocks or the like can compensate for.

[@fredfinks]

As others have chimed in youre are the outlier. WD / HGST drives are the best.

[@AfridonDeaddark]

I had 5 WD, oldest is 1tb from 2012, newest is 2018 4tb - working without any problems; two Hitachi from 2004 - one sata 80gb and pata 250 gb - work perfect. Only Seagate 500gb hdd from 2007 make me firmware problem - common for a lot users of their barracuda 7200 rpm. Seagate was so rude even I told him HDD isn't detected in BIOS, they continued to reply "If you see it in BIOS is not our problem" DGaS for customers, so I never be their client again, no matter they look hardware good.

[@sysghost]

This hit me too as an end-user building my own NAS at home. I asked the store explicitly that I did not want any SMR drives. They listened and made sure the drives I got had no SMR whatsoever... or... so we thought. (I'm not blaming the store, because they got as fooled as I was). After setting everything up and starting to use my NAS, I noticed horrible slowdowns. Took me quite a while to figure it out, but after much troubleshooting on various IRC channels and chats with experienced Linux-users it was concluded the drives where indeed SMR despite not being marketed as such, After a lot of silence from the manufacturer, they did respond pretty much with: "There's nothing wrong including a feature and not advertising it.".

[@gt362gamer]

Did they give you CMR/PMR (or whatever non SMR HDDs are called) substitutes or something?

[@sysghost]

@@gt362gamer once I showed the store the discussion thread concluding this, they accepted a refund. This was a learning experience for the store too. They even gave me a discount on the drives I bought after.

[@gt362gamer]

@@sysghost Such nice pals.

[@firestormsentry80]

"Storage, it's complicated," has to be one of the most underratted comments in the technology industry (12:20). Computers alone are complicated.

[@captainsceptic3559]

WD a titan of the storage industry, and master of bait and switch.

[@krasoos7501]

Recently i wanted to buy an hdd for my pc and after hours of research i figured this out however worst part is you cant find cmr that easy everything has changed to smr and not even for nas but it really effects you if you want to transfer large files to your hdd even games (that are now 100gb or sth) will be slowed down by a lot when you are moving them and since im not in us i had no way of changing my smr to a cmr as linus is saying so the only thing i could do was to buy a wd black series that are so much more expensive and i didnt even need that speed luckily the 6tb went on sale on blackfriday but that was just pure luck they must offer us a cmr version as well not just change them all to smr

[@WhooptyDoo]

3:31 Gees you got me scared there for a sec, had to put the video on pause to make sure I don't need to run to a bomb shelter.