After three years, Western Digital hard drives give a warning that they need to be replaced much earlier than other brands. The manufacturer is not popular with it.

“The drive has accumulated a large number of operating hours over its lifetime. Consider replacing the drive soon.” Many Western Digital hard drive owners see this notice in Synology DiskStation Manager. After repeated questions on their customer forums, Synology clarifies that the explanation for the notification should be sought from the hard drive manufacturer, not from them.

Western Digital supplies its hard drives device analysis This should proactively warn users when their drive is about to be replaced. So this algorithm is also responsible for the warning message in the Synology software. In itself it is useful that you, the user, know when your hard drive is worn out, were it not for the fact that this seems to be the case after only three years of active hours with Western Digital products.

Short life, isn’t it?

As a result, Western Digital’s hard drives appear to die much faster than competitive hard drives, which take five or even seven years to replace. Still, users find that they see few signs of deterioration on their hard drives.

Western Digital is therefore accused of having deliberately sent the warning in order to persuade consumers to buy a new disc more quickly. Referred to as a YouTuber SpaceRex shared a video two weeks ago calling for people not to buy any more hard drives from the brand.

The bucket is full

For Western Digital, it’s a new incident that doesn’t exactly endear the manufacturer to the general public. SanDisk subsidiary hard drives suddenly stopped working, resulting in data loss, and Western Digital only released a limited firmware update. Then, of course, there was the cyber attack that shut down cloud services for a week. Even then, the company failed to hide in silence. The bucket is gradually filling for many.

According to a Synology spokesman, it’s also possible to silence Western Digital’s analytics without much risk. The company told Ars Technica that the speed at which files are read and written is a much clearer indicator of the health of your hard drive.