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What's your list of banned brands? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 4 months ago by SethranKada@lemmy.ca to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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What brands do you avoid at all cost? I don't keep up with the news all that much, and many of the reasons to avoid something don't make it there anyway. So I'm asking here to make a big list of things to avoid. It could be anything from bad security practices to really frustrating packaging. Working as a cashier myself, I definitely know there are plenty of brands I avoid purely on the basis that their product is a pain to stock.

On the flip side, what's the alternative? If you avoid Pepsi, for example, what do you turn to instead?

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[–] dan@upvote.au 34 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

This might be an unpopular opinion but I avoid Western Digital hard drives after their two recent issues:

In 2020, they silently started selling SMR (shingled magnetic recording) drives as NAS drives, without labeling them as such, even though they're not appropriate for use in a NAS. They can get very slow and cause issues during RAID rebuilds. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wd-fesses-up-some-red-hdds-use-slow-smr-tech
In 2023, they started flagging drives with a warning just because they had been powered on for three years (26,280 hours), even if all the SMART data was fine. The "fix" was updating systems like Synology to totally ignore WD's alerting (WDDA) and only use SMART. I think the warnings are still present, but NAS software just ignores them now. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/clearly-predatory-western-digital-sparks-panic-anger-for-age-shaming-hdds/

Both were intentional changes to try and increase profits.

I'm using Seagate Exos drives, which are the same price or even cheaper than WD Red Pro drives, when on sale.

[–] SethranKada@lemmy.ca 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Huh, I didn't know about that. I only bought mine because they were the only ones the store offered, but I guess I'll try to find another brand when it comes time to replace them. I've been meaning to get a new NAS sometime anyway, so that's a good excuse as any to do so.

[–] dan@upvote.au 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Their drives are good quality and work well. I just don't want to give them any money after they intentionally misled customers :)

I'm in the USA and bought two brand new Seagate Exos "X20" 20TB drives for around $250 each last year. One from Newegg and one from ServerPartDeals. Normal price is over $350, but I'm sure they'll be on sale again at some point.

[–] theedqueen@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

When I first started using external drives I always used WD. I had two fail on me. Switched to sea gate and the one drive I got is still kicking. Will never use WD again.