WEBVTT

00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:05.200
on may 29 2020 haddis law filed a class

00:00:03.200 --> 00:00:10.559
action lawsuit against western digital accusing the company of secretly selling

00:00:07.600 --> 00:00:15.679
hard drives built with smr technology and no the problem wasn't that

00:00:13.599 --> 00:00:19.840
these hard drives were whispering neck tingling sweet nothings into their users

00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:24.960
ears it's that smr not only makes the drive

00:00:22.240 --> 00:00:29.679
slower but in some cases completely unusable for their marketed purpose

00:00:27.519 --> 00:00:32.559
here's the thing even though judge judy is

00:00:30.560 --> 00:00:37.280
everything i aspire to be normally we don't delve into companies getting sued

00:00:35.360 --> 00:00:42.000
on this channel but for this lawsuit i'm making

00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:46.800
exception for two reasons one because patrick from serve the home asked me to

00:00:43.680 --> 00:00:48.960
and he's just a super nice guy and two

00:00:46.800 --> 00:00:53.840
because the reasons that this whole thing is happening and what it means for

00:00:51.120 --> 00:00:58.640
the industry and for you are super interesting and super techy

00:00:56.879 --> 00:01:02.800
and today's video was brought to you by glasswire keep track of the weird stuff

00:01:00.719 --> 00:01:06.479
that's connecting to your pc even when you aren't using it with glasswire you

00:01:05.040 --> 00:01:13.840
can see if a strange device joins your wi-fi and block it instantly get 25 off

00:01:09.200 --> 00:01:13.840
today using codelinus at the link below

00:01:20.479 --> 00:01:26.479
smr stands for shingled magnetic recording and it's a relatively new

00:01:24.479 --> 00:01:32.000
technology in the world of hard drives having just entered the market in 2014.

00:01:29.600 --> 00:01:37.840
now as you may know inside a hard drive are magnetic actuator arms that read and

00:01:34.720 --> 00:01:40.640
write data to a set of spinning platters

00:01:37.840 --> 00:01:46.799
now in perpendicular magnetic recording or pmr which is also known as

00:01:43.280 --> 00:01:49.200
conventional magnetic recording or cmr

00:01:46.799 --> 00:01:54.880
those platters have single tracks laid out side by side this makes each track

00:01:52.560 --> 00:01:59.920
easy to access by the read and right arms but capacity is limited to how many

00:01:57.920 --> 00:02:05.439
tracks you can squeeze next to each other on a single platter in shingled

00:02:02.479 --> 00:02:12.400
magnetic recording or smr platters are made up of chunks of overlapping tracks

00:02:09.360 --> 00:02:14.959
kind of like the shingles on a roof this

00:02:12.400 --> 00:02:21.360
technique allows more tracks to fit onto a single platter increasing capacity

00:02:17.760 --> 00:02:24.480
but it comes at a cost you see each time

00:02:21.360 --> 00:02:27.120
a new track is written it overlaps part

00:02:24.480 --> 00:02:31.760
of a previously written track which must then also be rewritten

00:02:29.440 --> 00:02:36.319
i mean it sounds kind of insane doesn't it i mean imagine a word processor where

00:02:34.560 --> 00:02:40.720
every time you wanted to change a word in a paragraph you had to go back and

00:02:38.720 --> 00:02:44.879
rewrite the rest of the paragraph along with your changes terrible

00:02:42.879 --> 00:02:49.760
i i mean that experience not ltteststore.com ltdstore.com is great

00:02:47.760 --> 00:02:55.519
great products but anyway for hard drives this approach is actually very

00:02:52.560 --> 00:03:00.480
sane you see ssds kind of have the whole speed thing on lock these days so most

00:02:58.720 --> 00:03:05.120
hard drive innovation over the last few years has been pretty focused on

00:03:02.480 --> 00:03:11.760
capacity and shingle magnetic recording allows drive manufacturers to exchange a

00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:14.560
bit of performance for as much as 25 to

00:03:11.760 --> 00:03:20.239
50 percent higher capacity per platter that means either greater capacities or

00:03:17.920 --> 00:03:23.519
fewer platters for a given capacity lowering the total cost

00:03:22.480 --> 00:03:28.000
so then that's problem number one really hard

00:03:25.840 --> 00:03:31.840
drive manufacturers selling a cheaper product without labeling it as such

00:03:30.640 --> 00:03:37.200
but why are people so upset

00:03:34.640 --> 00:03:42.000
well you see it's not just that smr drives have slower performance it's that

00:03:39.680 --> 00:03:47.680
to work properly they need special firmware or software that can navigate

00:03:44.720 --> 00:03:53.599
through all of these overlapping tracks so there are three different varieties

00:03:50.080 --> 00:03:54.720
of smr in host managed smr the host

00:03:53.599 --> 00:03:59.599
computer must give special commands to the drive

00:03:58.080 --> 00:04:04.480
if the drive doesn't receive these commands it simply will not work these

00:04:02.400 --> 00:04:09.920
kinds of drives are most commonly used in cloud servers owned by you know

00:04:06.720 --> 00:04:12.080
amazon or google where vast quantities

00:04:09.920 --> 00:04:18.079
of drives must be controlled the second type host aware smr allows the drive to

00:04:15.599 --> 00:04:23.520
respond to these special commands or to regular commands so you don't

00:04:20.639 --> 00:04:29.680
necessarily need special software to use that second type but it certainly helps

00:04:27.199 --> 00:04:34.400
the third type of smr is where things get messy

00:04:31.199 --> 00:04:36.720
in device managed smr the drive doesn't

00:04:34.400 --> 00:04:41.440
require special commands and in fact it shows up in your pc as a completely

00:04:39.520 --> 00:04:46.320
normal drive most of the time this isn't catastrophic

00:04:43.680 --> 00:04:52.240
in fact this type of smr drive usually has a cmr cache which can be written

00:04:49.520 --> 00:04:56.240
more quickly for a short period masking that slower write performance this

00:04:54.240 --> 00:05:02.800
approach is actually very similar to how many slower qlc ssds use a high speed

00:04:59.759 --> 00:05:05.120
slc cache as we discussed in this video

00:05:02.800 --> 00:05:08.880
right here so the idea is that when you write some data to the drive it goes

00:05:07.039 --> 00:05:12.960
into the higher speed cache and your file transfer is complete your data is

00:05:10.880 --> 00:05:17.520
safe but then 20 minutes 30 minutes later you might

00:05:15.199 --> 00:05:22.639
actually still hear the drive thrashing away as it dumps the data out of the

00:05:19.600 --> 00:05:24.560
cache onto the slower shingled portion

00:05:22.639 --> 00:05:28.880
for most home users honestly that's probably fine and they

00:05:27.039 --> 00:05:32.080
might even be happy with the trade-off for more capacity on the cheap

00:05:31.280 --> 00:05:37.759
but using a device-managed smr drive when

00:05:34.800 --> 00:05:43.840
you don't know that it's an smr drive can be catastrophic as our good buddy

00:05:40.400 --> 00:05:48.080
patrick found out he and his team tested

00:05:43.840 --> 00:05:50.880
cmr drives from hgst and seagate against

00:05:48.080 --> 00:05:55.440
two drives from wd's red lineup which is marketed specifically for network

00:05:53.199 --> 00:06:00.960
attached storage systems only one small problem without clear markings one of

00:05:58.320 --> 00:06:06.240
them was built with cmr and the other was built with smr as expected they

00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:12.160
found that the smr drive was slower in almost every typical storage benchmark

00:06:08.880 --> 00:06:15.360
which was bad then it got worse the

00:06:12.160 --> 00:06:17.520
kicker was the freenas raid z rebuild

00:06:15.360 --> 00:06:22.319
now raid is designed to protect your data through redundant copies in the

00:06:19.440 --> 00:06:27.120
event of a physical drive failure so the test involves wiping one of the drives

00:06:24.720 --> 00:06:31.280
in a raid array intentionally and then tasking the system with rebuilding all

00:06:29.360 --> 00:06:37.039
the data that was supposed to be on it the cmr drives all took over 16 hours

00:06:34.560 --> 00:06:40.560
which is already a long time to be worried that your data is in this

00:06:38.639 --> 00:06:44.639
vulnerable state where if another drive dies it could all be lost

00:06:42.479 --> 00:06:49.440
but it is normal for this process to take a while as for the smr drive it

00:06:47.360 --> 00:06:52.400
took nine and a half days

00:06:51.440 --> 00:06:57.520
what now patrick and co naturally thought

00:06:55.520 --> 00:07:03.120
something must be wrong with their test setup so they ran the test again

00:07:00.560 --> 00:07:09.440
and got a similar result ours technica also ran some tests finding that in a

00:07:05.440 --> 00:07:12.400
random write latency test the wd red smr

00:07:09.440 --> 00:07:19.280
drive could take as long as 1.3 seconds to save a meg of data compared to 0.1

00:07:15.599 --> 00:07:21.199
seconds on the seagate cmr drive now we

00:07:19.280 --> 00:07:25.919
need to mention that servtohome's test server ran on freenas a popular open

00:07:24.080 --> 00:07:30.000
source operating system for network attached storage and while smr drives

00:07:28.240 --> 00:07:33.599
have clearly been operating without disastrous consequences on other types

00:07:32.400 --> 00:07:38.319
of servers freenas uses the zfs file system which

00:07:36.639 --> 00:07:44.880
can also be found in a ton of other software from ubuntu and proxmox to nas

00:07:41.440 --> 00:07:47.520
systems from qnap and apparently zfs

00:07:44.880 --> 00:07:51.599
according to patrick's tests does not play nicely with shingle magnetic

00:07:49.680 --> 00:07:56.240
recording now there's some indication that smr might cause problems for other

00:07:53.919 --> 00:08:01.759
file systems too since synology has listed wd's smr drives as incompatible

00:07:59.520 --> 00:08:05.120
with a huge swath of their nas systems but we don't have the specifics on those

00:08:03.759 --> 00:08:10.720
ones anyway all of this would have been fine

00:08:08.240 --> 00:08:16.000
if customers were educated properly so they didn't accidentally end up with smr

00:08:13.039 --> 00:08:21.759
drives except as we said before wd didn't label their smr drives the only

00:08:19.440 --> 00:08:25.840
indication that a given drive was smr or cmr was a single letter in the model

00:08:24.160 --> 00:08:29.759
number and because these drives are device managed the end user wouldn't

00:08:27.840 --> 00:08:33.760
even realize what they had purchased when they plugged it into their system

00:08:31.440 --> 00:08:38.320
now to be fair to wd seagate and toshiba also sold unlabeled

00:08:36.880 --> 00:08:43.279
smr drives but just not in their nas product lines

00:08:40.959 --> 00:08:47.200
so it was far more unlikely that those drives would lead to the type of

00:08:44.959 --> 00:08:50.080
unusable performance seen in patrick's tests

00:08:48.240 --> 00:08:53.920
and the good news is that all three vendors have now committed to labeling

00:08:52.080 --> 00:08:58.160
the recording technology used in their products and to wd's credit they seem to

00:08:56.480 --> 00:09:02.560
be responding well to customers requesting cmr replacements for their

00:09:00.240 --> 00:09:07.279
smr drives meaning that the only lingering question after all this is

00:09:05.440 --> 00:09:13.120
why how exactly did western digital a titan

00:09:10.480 --> 00:09:18.640
of the storage industry for 50 years miss the fact that smr drives are

00:09:15.519 --> 00:09:21.440
completely inappropriate for zfs a

00:09:18.640 --> 00:09:26.320
perfectly common file system for nasa's and then market these drives for nas use

00:09:24.800 --> 00:09:33.120
a question that is made all the more confusing by this video from 2015

00:09:29.680 --> 00:09:36.560
showing an engineer from hgst a company

00:09:33.120 --> 00:09:39.839
owned by western digital explaining how

00:09:36.560 --> 00:09:42.880
dmsmr has tremendous compatibility

00:09:39.839 --> 00:09:44.399
problems with cfs and talking about how

00:09:42.880 --> 00:09:49.120
much work it would take to make them play nicely together wd clearly should

00:09:46.720 --> 00:09:53.760
have listened to manfred instead of evilly throwing their customers under

00:09:51.360 --> 00:09:58.320
the bus unless maybe something else happened here i don't think that this is

00:09:56.080 --> 00:10:02.560
some kind of evil masterminded plot to hurt nast users by western digital by

00:10:00.480 --> 00:10:05.839
any means i think that what's more likely is that this is just a

00:10:03.760 --> 00:10:09.279
communication breakdown and process breakdown between the different

00:10:07.040 --> 00:10:12.560
functional silos within western digital there's probably an element of this

00:10:10.560 --> 00:10:16.079
which is that each person has their own personal and departmental goals aligned

00:10:14.560 --> 00:10:20.720
to their function but not necessarily across their entire company and what

00:10:18.160 --> 00:10:26.640
that means is that those discussions don't happen to say hey should we even

00:10:23.760 --> 00:10:30.720
institute dmsmr into the space if we do what are the tests that we need

00:10:28.640 --> 00:10:34.240
to run to make sure that it works on all of our partner systems personally i like

00:10:32.720 --> 00:10:38.160
to think that best of people maybe to my detriment but haven't done management

00:10:35.839 --> 00:10:42.880
consulting in this space for years prior to doing sth i can totally see how this

00:10:40.480 --> 00:10:46.720
happens yeah okay i actually made a similar argument

00:10:44.959 --> 00:10:51.200
during the principled technologies benchmark scandal that Intel went

00:10:48.480 --> 00:10:55.120
through a number of months ago and i think patrick is probably right here as

00:10:53.519 --> 00:10:59.839
well it's just still extremely embarrassing for them

00:10:57.279 --> 00:11:05.440
and the class action lawsuit is absolutely in our opinion both

00:11:02.320 --> 00:11:07.680
good and necessary because normal people

00:11:05.440 --> 00:11:12.320
who bought wd red smr drives may have faced a loss of time data and even

00:11:10.240 --> 00:11:19.279
livelihood that they wouldn't have if the product was properly labeled and

00:11:15.360 --> 00:11:21.120
honestly they deserve some compensation

00:11:19.279 --> 00:11:24.720
speaking of compensation massive shout out to drop.com for being

00:11:23.440 --> 00:11:31.200
our sponsor thanks guys the mass drop in sennheiser pc37x gaming

00:11:28.880 --> 00:11:36.560
headset features angled drivers and an open back design with drivers that come

00:11:33.279 --> 00:11:39.200
from the same family as the hd598 and hd

00:11:36.560 --> 00:11:43.519
600 series headphones they offer great stereo imaging and locational accuracy

00:11:41.600 --> 00:11:46.320
they sound fantastic they're super comfortable they come with a noise

00:11:44.959 --> 00:11:49.920
cancelling microphone and they've sold over 45 000 of these things so if there

00:11:48.399 --> 00:11:54.320
was a big problem with them like if they were completely unusable for the

00:11:51.600 --> 00:11:57.440
advertised purpose you probably would have heard about it

00:11:55.519 --> 00:12:00.560
by now they include a two-year warranty from the manufacturer and you can check

00:11:59.200 --> 00:12:04.000
them out at the link in the video description if you guys enjoyed this

00:12:02.240 --> 00:12:08.399
video and you like these kinds of deeper dives into storage technology maybe

00:12:06.480 --> 00:12:11.440
check out uh oh what was that cool when we did about like tiered storage a while

00:12:10.160 --> 00:12:15.279
back can't remember hopefully you can find it

00:12:13.600 --> 00:12:19.120
oh oh maybe just server storage why don't we do uh rolling out nuwanik all

00:12:17.360 --> 00:12:23.600
the issues with that boy what a disaster that was huh storage it's complicated