Hard drive manufacturer Western Digital has once again received criticism for something that some believe the company is doing to deceive its customers. This time, it concerns customers using Western Digital’s hard drives in NAS storage solutions from Synology, who are advised to replace these drives after three years of use.
The Western Digital Device Analytics (WDDA) software automatically starts issuing warnings about the hard drives after they have been in use for three years. The purpose of the software is to analyze the behavior of the hard drives and alert users if it detects any potential issues indicating that the hard drive may be failing. However, the hard drives that have surpassed the three-year mark receive warnings even if no other faults have been detected. Some users are highly critical of this practice, as they believe Western Digital is causing unnecessary concern among its customers and potentially scaring them into replacing perfectly functional hard drives solely because they are older than three years.
YouTuber SpaceRex, for example, states in the video clip you can see below:
“It is clearly predatory tactics by Western Digital trying to sell more hard drives.”
Western Digital has previously faced criticism for including slow SMR drives in NAS solutions, misleading practices with SSD drives, and, as recently as last month, selling SSD drives that can independently erase the data stored on them.
