> The company says that, in the future, it will also introduce a new model number when making any hardware changes to its products that impact performance.<p>So they'll keep selling products called "Western Digital SN550" running at half the speed, but you'll now be able to tell them apart by seeing the model number update from "WDBA3V0010BNC-WRSN" to e.g. "WDBA3V0011BNC-WRSN"?<p>This is very scummy.
> For greater transparency going forward, if we make a change to an existing internal SSD, we commit to introducing a new model number whenever any related published specifications are impacted.<p>I’ll believe that when it happens. IMO it’s fraud and after the SMR debacle everyone at Western Digital should know it’s not ok, but they still tried to sneak it by everyone.
Nothing new folks. 23 years ago I bought a RIVA TNT video card (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIVA_TNT" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIVA_TNT</a>) where early models (and, conveniently, the ones sent to reviewers) were clocked at 110Mhz. They silently clocked them down to 90Mhz after a month or so before I got mine.<p>“The TNT shipped later than originally planned, ran quite hot, and was clocked lower than Nvidia had planned at 90 MHz instead of 110 MHz. Originally planned specifications should have placed the card ahead of Voodoo2 in theoretical performance for Direct3D applications, but at 90 MHz it did not quite match the Voodoo2”<p>I’ve been a bitter man ever since…
Not surprised they'd hide it considering the WD Red CMR debacle where they didn't notify customers that they changed from CMR to SMR.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22875094" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22875094</a>
I saw this come across on ExtremeTech a few days ago. I believe they broke the story. It was Western Digital AND Crucial that were caught doing it.<p>That means you should buy Intel or Samsung products, neither of whom have been caught doing this. I was going to get a WD SN850, thinking how nice it was that an American company beat out Samsung finally on performance. The first time since Intel reigned some years ago.<p>But not now. I'm going with a Samsung 990 Pro when those drop later this year. Intel abandoned the high performance consumer space, but my Intel X25-M 160GB that I bought in January 2010 is still in-use to this day, and it was punished in my personal machine for 7 years straight. I would have no qualms buying anything they put out for laptops or any system that isn't my i9-11900K.<p>It's a real shame. American companies just don't can't think past the next quarter. I recently read that Ford has been putting plastic oil pans on trucks, and I know a guy that has a brand new one- it cracked. I've been doing my research and was determined to buy domestic but found enough stuff like that, that I'm going with Toyota from here on out, and I've never owned one before.<p>Crucial/Micron was one of the better quality manufacturers, it's a shame to see them lumped in with this scandal. Looking forward to an Intel Arc GPU next year paired with my Samsung 990 Pro 2TB SSD which will sit alongside my existing 960 1TB Pro.<p>I'm also looking for some more external storage, and was determined to with Sandisk-WD. I am waiting for Thunderbolt 4 drives or USB 4.0 as my system supports both, but the Seagate FireCuda USB 3.2 Gen2x2 is what I'd reach for if I needed one right away. I'll be skipping Sandisk.<p>If you hate America, run a company like most of them operate. No quicker way to hollow out what's left of our economy. Maybe we can just sell each other loans and insurance.
The owners of these drives should get in contact with WD and demand they replace it with a top-of-the-line drive if they want you to keep quiet. This whole drive speed brouhahahas been sketchy from the start, but their sheepish admission of guilt here is just enterprise-grade lip service.
Samsung now too, wonder if this is chip shortage related:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28329386" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28329386</a>
Since no one is discussing it, here are the technical details of the change:<p>>once the 12 GB SLC cache is exhausted, and their [write] performance [decreases] from 610 MBps (the original speed) [to] 390Mps.<p>I am not saying what they did was ethical, but many consumers do not regularly write files of 12G and will not notice the change<p>Here is a better article describing the situation:<p><a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wd-blue-sn550-ssd-performance-cut-in-half-slc-runs-out" rel="nofollow">https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wd-blue-sn550-ssd-performa...</a>
I literally just bought an SN550 last week.<p>Any suggestions for recourse? Unlikely to be able to return it, since "technically" it's used.