Western Digital Lawsuit For Shipping Slower SMR HDDs Including WD Red NAS

Hattis Law PLLC has filed a lawsuit alleging that Western Digital Corp. secretly switched many of its HDDs, including its WD Red NAS HDDs, to inferior SMR technology, deceiving and harming consumers.

News emerged in early April that Western Digital secretly downgraded its Red NAS HDD drives from the standard CMR technology to the much slower SMR technology without disclosing this to its customers. Customers are complaining that this switch has resulted in drastically slower write performance and storage failures, especially when used in RAID configurations such as in NAS devices. This secret downgrade, apparently done to cut costs, is particularly harmful and deceptive because Western Digital advertises and promises that WD Red HDDs are meant for NAS and RAID use. But it is widely accepted that the SMR technology is wholly inappropriate for RAID and NAS device usage and can cause poor sustained write performance and failures on RAID rebuilds. In addition, Western Digital also switched some Blue and Black drives to the slower SMR technology.

Western Digital initially denied the secret switch, but after public pressure had no choice but to finally admit what they had done.

Affected HDD drive models are:

• 3.5-inch WD Red 2, 3, 4, and 6TB

  SKUs: WD20EFAX, WD30EFAX, WD40EFAX, WD60EFAX

• 3.5-inch WD Blue 2 and 6TB

  SKUs: WD20EZAZ, WD60EZAZ

• 2.5-inch WD Blue 1 and 2TB

  SKUs: WD10SPZX, WD20SPZX

• 2.5-inch WD Black 1TB

  SKU: WD10SPSX

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