Im not sure I see this a big deal. I guess for people that don’t know to check drive health, it may be alarming to have a warning staring you down.
In the grand scheme of things this isn’t a big deal. If you’re not using some kind of RAID parity system I guess I wouldn’t mind the notification. I think it is probably overkill, though. Just seems like they want everyone that’s had a hard drive for three years to buy a new one. The fact that some drives that are still under warranty show the warning is sketchy.
The main problem is that overusing a warning system will make people ignore it so it will not be as effective once something actually bad happens.
deleted by creator
Pretty scummy overall, but average user probably doesn’t understand the drives could fail at any moment and that the older the drives age the more likely it will fail.
Regardless though, it would better serve to warn users to have a backup of their data than just a blanket age-shaming.
I keep seeing this pop up, isn’t it just a warning in WD’s own software that does this?
It’s a bit of a shitty move age-shaming if you’re using their software…But if that’s all it is, it’s not the end of the world.
And hey, might even mean some cheap drives on the second hand market from corpos remembering their drives are getting on in years.
I think my drives are older 🙊 Didn’t WD use to be one of the better brands?
The headline is ridiculously inflammatory. But simply put, yes, dumb move on WD’s part.
I see the biggest problem being you can’t expand or repair an array with a drive having that warning condition. You would have to disable WDDA to clear the error first.
If you have a Western digital drive with a 5-year warranty, I kind of like the idea of requesting an RMA for your drives when this warning pops up. I mean if they can’t even be used for their intended purpose in your array, I guess they are “bad” lol
