Are WD at it again ?

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rb99

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#289308 27-Aug-2021 11:56

As above, WD may be sneaking in lower spec models without updating model numbers (or they were) -

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/silent-changes-to-western-digitals-budget-ssd-may-lower-speeds-by-up-to-50/

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

rb99

michaelmurfy

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#2767520 27-Aug-2021 12:30

Have a look at this video:

I've personally got 2x SSD's (the same ones in the video) that are totally different drives (one being about 30% slower from benchmarks) despite both being the same capacity and coming from the same place at the same time. With the component shortages currently I suspect that companies will be swapping out components more.

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rb99

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#2767532 27-Aug-2021 12:51

Interesting, just goes to show (again) what companies can get away with. You'd think their reputation would be important to them, but apparently not.

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

rb99

xpd

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#2767547 27-Aug-2021 13:18

rb99:

Interesting, just goes to show (again) what companies can get away with. You'd think their reputation would be important to them, but apparently not.

When you're one of a few, you can afford to be a b****** to your customers pretty much.

XPD / Gavin

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rb99

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#2768177 28-Aug-2021 20:12

Followed by -

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/samsung-seemingly-caught-swapping-components-in-its-970-evo-plus-ssds/

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

rb99

MaxineN

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#2768183 28-Aug-2021 20:25

rb99:

Followed by -

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/samsung-seemingly-caught-swapping-components-in-its-970-evo-plus-ssds/

Damn you Samsung!

Ugh at this point you can only really trust Sabrent and Toshiba/Kioxia to NOT swap components.

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rb99

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#2768187 28-Aug-2021 20:35

Didn't I see something about WD buying Kioxia...

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

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#2768188 28-Aug-2021 20:36

rb99:

Didn't I see something about WD buying Kioxia...

https://www.reuters.com/technology/western-digital-advanced-talks-merge-with-japans-kioxia-holdings-wsj-2021-08-25/

Unfortunately yes.

I hope this doesn't go through.

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Mark

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#2768198 28-Aug-2021 20:59

Looks like it might be a trend : https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326377-samsung-is-the-latest-ssd-manufacturer-cheating-its-customers

gzt

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#2768260 29-Aug-2021 08:53

Samsung. Well that is annoying. EVO was a no brain purchase for a long time now.

Seems recent. Is it a covid supply chain problem thing?

No notification to consumer customers is an unpleasant pill to swallow. They could have made this more obvious to customers.

Mehrts

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#2768328 29-Aug-2021 12:39

Samsung might be in the clear.

According to this thread apparently they're using the 980 controller on the later model 970 Evo Plus drives, and that's responsible for the changes noticed.

Unless huge writes over 100GB+ are carried out in one hit on the 1TB drives, then the speeds won't drop, and I think that not too many people will be writing that amount of data in one sitting. Write speeds below the cache exhaustion are actually faster with the new controller.

The links also contained in that thread are worth reading up on for some more background info.

I think they could have changed the model name/number to reflect these later changes, but I don't think they're actively trying to deceive anyone, unlike WD it seems.

gzt

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#2768392 29-Aug-2021 15:24

^Good to know regarding Samsung. Excellent re-news.

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Varkk

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#2769396 31-Aug-2021 15:56

apparently this sort of thing is happening across a range of industries. Supply line issues meaning they can't get the normal components they would use. So they find a substitute. Sometime that just means using a different brand of capacitor. But often it means swapping out for an inferior component and re-engineering around it. In theory this should mean giving it a different model/name but in reality they aren't.

1101

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#2769645 1-Sep-2021 09:56

Varkk:

apparently this sort of thing is happening across a range of industries. ...

Its been happening for a long time.
Some Monitors may get many very good online reveiws, but over time the actual panel used might be lower & lower quality. I had that happen
with the first LCD monitor I bought , a friend even commented how bad it looked ( he had the earlier production run with the good panels)