Western Digital Pledges Transparency, Will Replace QLC SN550 for Unhappy Buyers

western-digital-pledges-transparency,-will-replace-qlc-sn550-for-unhappy-buyers

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Earlier this 7 days, news broke that Western Electronic was delivery WD Blue SN550 drives with QLC NAND rather of the TLC NAND the drives had introduced with. This had a important unfavorable affect on the drive’s general performance when the SLC cache was fatigued.

At this time, a range of firms are recognized to be participating in this style of actions, however not all of them have switched from TLC to QLD NAND. Adata, Important, WD, and Samsung have all just lately built considerable push modifications without the need of notifying prospects. ExtremeTech and other tech sites have challenged companies to stop this conduct, and Western Electronic has taken some major action to redress the problem.

A Western Electronic spokesperson who contacted ExtremeTech on Thursday informed us the adhering to:

[I]n June 2021, we replaced the NAND in the WD Blue SN550 NVMe SSD and up to date the firmware. At the time, we current the product facts sheet. For better transparency going ahead, if we make a improve to an present interior SSD, we commit to introducing a new model variety anytime any similar published specifications are impacted. We value our consumers and are dedicated to furnishing the very best feasible solutions for their info storage requires.

When we inquired if the enterprise would supply redress to shoppers who experienced ordered the WD Blue SN550 but had not acquired the functionality they paid out for, the spokesperson advised us:

For any WD Blue SN550 NVMe SSD with the new configuration that is less than guarantee but does not meet efficiency requirements, clients can get to out to our Buyer Support staff for assistance with substitution.

The SN550 will come with a 5-12 months guarantee, so this must practically protect any travel.

While we would like to see the at this time ambiguous SN550 alternative break up into two different SKUs, this alter in situation gives customers who might not have gotten the travel they paid out for a way to remedy the difficulty.

The present-day SN550 maintains its original overall performance even though the SLC cache is full — it only drops if the cache empties. Whether that’s a trouble is up to the conclude-person. The primary version of the travel carried out a lot more consistently and is appreciably quicker, but if you have currently place the push into company, it might be a significant headache to take away it.

Our direction on no matter whether you must look for a replacement is this: QLC NAND is meant for reasonably mild workloads where reads are more essential than writes. If you bought one of these drives as amazing storage for photos or video and you really do not usually accomplish 150GB file copies, it need to be good. If you bought it for mild workloads, it must be wonderful. If you’ve been perfectly satisfied with your SN550 to date, you really don’t see your needs modifying, and swapping it out for RMA would be a headache, you may not need to have to be concerned about it.

If you bought an SN550 that didn’t meet up with your performance anticipations, we propose contacting WD. Remember to permit us know how it goes. Thank you to Expreview for surfacing this tale. We’ll be maintaining an eye on this, but we’re happy to see WD relocating to instantly deal with the challenge.

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