The reality is that there is no final resolution and the case will be known in depth on July 21 of this year, but we do know what it will cost WD in court costs and attorneys’ fees. But in addition, we also have estimates of the compensation that the company will give to each affected user and… It doesn’t really seem like a fair solution.
WD is the only defendant, at the moment
Although everything comes to light with the SMR and Western Digital case, the reality is that both Seagate and Toshiba were involved in the same way, as happened in cars with Volkswagen, Renault and other companies that played the same game in the DieselGate .
Last year the alarm was raised over the fact that WD was using SMR technology in its WD Red HDDs without specifying it as such. There would be no problem as such and less in capacity if it were not because with SMR technology performance is lost in certain scenarios, so they were only really hard drives for storage and not for mass reading and writing tasks.
This was aggravated in RAID systems, where performance dropped more percentage points, so after said class action lawsuit and almost a year of litigation, the estimates so close to the date for the final resolution is that users could receive a payment of between 4 to 7 dollars for each HDD purchased. This appears to be due to an agreement specifying a maximum proportional adjustment of 85% for retail purchases.
Western Digital is required to disclose what technology its HDDs use
Although this is not a novelty as such since the company has already anticipated it, it is legally obliged on this occasion to visibly specify the technology used in its hard drives, its packaging and its website for the next 4 years.
But also and again anticipating the resolution of the next day 21, the company has clearly specified a range for its HDD SMR for NAS: WD RED. On the other hand, the RED PLUS and RED PRO range are CMR and here comes the controversy again, since there is a second lawsuit for the change from CMR to SMR as such, that is, for deceiving users by claiming a technology and not being reciprocated later.
This lawsuit, curiously, has been dismissed by the competent court, but the plaintiffs apparently have until June 22 to present a new amended version. Apparently, this lawsuit will not come to fruition as it is considered part of the main lawsuit that will be resolved, so it is possible that it will remain in borage water and that the amount of the original is even higher than what the rumors appear.
