It was recently discovered that Western Digital had changed the NAND flash memory in its WD Blue SN550 SSDs without telling customers. Testing showed that write speeds could decrease significantly. The drive has been noted as being one of the company’s better budget SSD offerings.
WD Blue SN550 Revisions
| SSD | Flash Memory | Firmware |
|---|---|---|
| WD Blue SN550 (New Revision) | 002031 1T00 | 233010WD |
| WD Blue SN550 (Previous Revision) | 60523 1T00 | 211070WD |
| WD Green SN350 | 060947 1T00 | 231800WD |
Western Digital has issued a statement confirming the changes and that it will offer replacements to affected users. No reason for the change was given, but it could be due to the ongoing semiconductor shortage. This is not the first time the company has made changes to its products resulting in potential performance loss. Going forward, WD will introduce a new model number when changes are made. The WD Blue SN550 datasheet has also been updated.
For any WD Blue SN550 NVMe SSD with the new configuration that is under warranty but does not meet performance requirements, customers can reach out to our Customer Service team for assistance with replacement.
Source: Bleeping Computer, Tom’s Hardware, Expreview, ExtremeTech