Hacker Read

pedrocr · 2020-04-15 11:37:22+00:00

They're the same company but not (yet?) the same drives.

dotancohen | karma 9525 | avg karma 1.72 · | 2022-05-25 01:36:38

That's a completely different market, to which are marketed different drives.

withinboredom | karma 7494 | avg karma 1.75 · | 2020-03-26 18:38:33+00:00

In reality, it is probably exactly that. These are the drives that didn't make the cut to be sold independently.

ksec | karma 41816 | avg karma 3.09 · | 2021-01-26 17:49:13+00:00

I dont think that is the case, as in they are not mixed up in production and sold with different Brand.

They try to get rid of the HGST brand but failed. And had to go back to HGST branding specifically for HDD coming from the acquired HGST Factory.

i.e AFAIK HGST is still HGST.

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boring_twenties | karma 2309 | avg karma 1.5 · | 2020-08-18 12:33:12

Western Digital bought HGST and those drives have some different branding now, I forget exact which.

aes256 | karma 1241 | avg karma 2.89 · | 2012-10-09 08:12:04

They may have different branding or model numbers, but in terms of technical specifications they are no different to internal drives.

bitJericho | karma 1832 | avg karma 1.65 · | 2012-10-09 13:22:24+00:00

I'd be shocked if they were not the same drives you buy from a supplier.

nwh | karma 5848 | avg karma 3.22 · | 2013-10-18 11:24:00

Could be a completely different company and model of storage.

linker3000 | karma 2656 | avg karma 3.52 · | 2014-09-23 16:50:17

It's now called "HGST (a Western Digital company)" and the two product lines (WD and HGST HDDs) are totally separate in both parts and manufacturing.

/HGST employee

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freeone3000 | karma 6828 | avg karma 2.71 · | 2021-01-26 11:59:40

It's still a separate factory making separate drives. This line even uses a different storage controller. But this is also true for luxury ranges, in general, so you may be asking for too fine of a distinction. (Their usual luxury range is the WD Red, however.)

whitepoplar | karma 4791 | avg karma 5.15 · | 2018-11-06 13:29:58

The hardware isn't identical. Hetzner is known for having more drive failures than is typical as a result of replacing failing drives with "refurbished" ones.

ghshephard | karma 24055 | avg karma 4.4 · | 2014-08-12 12:41:07

My read was they they aren't switching over everything - they are testing new drives, to figure out what reliability looks like.

Once the cost curve costs over, they will then know which vendors drives to go all in on.

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TheCondor | karma 1356 | avg karma 1.83 · | 2015-05-09 09:59:16

Most enterprise drives come off the exact same production line too.. Some have a different external interface but the important parts are all nearly the same, they might test them differently

thaumaturgy | karma 26165 | avg karma 5.99 · | 2015-05-22 19:24:41+00:00

This comes across as a pet peeve. If the drives are branded, marketed, and sold as HGST, then they are HGST drives. Even if Yev is wrong, it's possible that WD or Toshiba are maintaining HGST drives to different specifications or QA standards.

And I don't think Yev's wrong, I'm pretty sure I remember reading/hearing the same, and http://www.zdnet.com/article/western-digitals-hgst-cuts-500-... also suggests that WD is maintaining HGST as a separate entity.

Calling HGST drives Western Digital or Toshiba would be more confusing, not less.

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cornishpixels | karma 94 | avg karma 2.24 · | 2020-03-26 20:04:53+00:00

You should read the rest of the thread. It's likely a completely different drive.

mark-r | karma 5759 | avg karma 1.62 · | 2019-01-22 20:00:57+00:00

If there's one thing I've learned from seeing these reports over the years, it's that the specific drive model matters more than the brand.

pilsetnieks | karma 3990 | avg karma 3.53 · | 2016-03-04 10:26:31+00:00

This is a completely different category of product than their low end consumer Evo drives, though.

Dylan16807 | karma 31639 | avg karma 1.39 · | 2023-02-15 04:53:18

They got two new ones.

But it would be very weird if different drives in the same batch had different capacities. That's a lot of wasted effort.

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jms | karma 125 | avg karma 2.31 · | 2023-08-22 23:40:36

Not extremely unlikely if they were identical drives from the same manufacturing batch. It's good practise to use diverse manufacturers or at least batches when adding disks to a raid array for just this reason.

MegaDeKay | karma 2272 | avg karma 4.06 · | 2022-06-03 21:52:22

The article actually states that the drives are not new.