Western Digital is a joke

By cabron
in Hardware Hangout

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Grand Master

MR_Candyman

Posted
Posted
Hard drives are fragile devices, they all fail eventually regardless of the company that made them. True there are bad batches sometimes like the recent Seagate drives, but I've found overall that one company is as good as any other as far as reliability. I've got hard drives from various companies that are nearing 20 years old and still work fine, and I've had brand new drives die in a week. It's just a roll of the dice.

For what it's worth I've never had a WD drive fail. Out of the three I have lost one was a Maxtor and the other two were Seagates.

I completely agree with you. And for the record, I've had 2 WD drives and 1 Samsung drive fail me in 20 years. I'm still running most of my old drives

Mentor

Badtz-Maru

Posted
Posted

I've only had WD, and they have never failed on me. Stop whining and wait until they don't do anything more before you complain. Clearly they're open to fixing the situation. That doesn't sound like a joke to me. You should be glad the support is still there and hasn't ditched you yet. Sounds like a quality company to me.

Grand Master

Digitalx

Posted
Posted

i've got a hitachi 80GB drive which is still running perfect it's 5 years old :p they make really solid drives that can quite easily run past their recommended time. WD I use for my main drives and I've yet to experience any botch ups what so ever with the drives i would say it's purely an unfortunate hick up generally the drives are good quality for their price and obviously the replacement was either a human error or really rough shipping.

Veteran

C++

Posted
Posted

WD is probably the most reliable brand of hard drive I've seen, and I used to see about 10 machines a day when I worked in computer service... I saw a lot of older Seagates and newer Maxtors fail, but neither old nor new Western Digitals. One of the older machines I gave my parents has an 11 year old WD drive and an 8 year old one, and both work like a treat.

Rising Star

Ez8

Posted
Posted

I have the best luck w/ hdd *knocks on wood*

I owned Segate, Quantum, Hitachi, Toshiba, Western Digital, and Maxtor. Never had any of those drives failed.

Right now I have a 1TB internal WD as my main drive performance is great so far and I've had it for 2 and a half months.

Grand Master

Raa

Posted
Posted

Since I bought my first hard drive (a Quantum) which died within minutes of using it, I switched to Western Digital.

For over 15 years, i've had rock solid reliability, performance and operation.

I know only trust, use and sell WD drives where I can.

My friends that get Seagates are left in the dust. :p

Grand Master

Denis W. Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

I echo what some of these guys are saying. There's a bad batch of drives for all companies. Maybe except for Maxtor before they were bought by Seagate..

Anyways, I replaced a WD2500KS drive when the SMART data given by the drive was erratic. The replacement lasted for half a year - about a few days after it was retired from being my main desktop's OS and personal data hard drive, it was placed in my HTPC... and after hitting the circuit tripper on the surge protector bar, it died. By then the drive was already out of warranty.

They did give me an option to send it in to see what could've been done, as by then it was less than a month since the warranty expired. I didn't end up going that route; instead I replaced that drive with a WD3200AAKS. But at least they were nice enough to offer service shortly after the warranty period.

Otherwise, I still have a 4.5 year old WD2000JB drive that hasn't screwed up yet.

So you got a faulty drive in return that doesnt mean they suck it was just an unfortunate incident.

I have nothing but praise for Western Digital, ive only ever had 2 hard drives fail and both times ive set up an advanced RMA whereby they hold the funds on a debit/credit card and send you out the new drive first and you just pop the faulty one into the same box and send it back.

Yeah, their advanced RMA service is good. Make sure you use a reputable shipper when sending your drive back; Canada Post left me in the cold for three weeks about the status of my package to WD's offices.

Community Regular

doublea2

Posted
Posted

The only drives I ever order is WD, I have never had a problem with them, never had a drive failure in over 11 years with them.

I have had 2 of my 3 maxtor drives fail me in my experience, started making horrible sounds one say, and just quit. Same with hitatchi and the other brands, Most compters that come into our office (local computer repair.) Come in with segate/maxtor drives, I have only seen one computer with a WD drive falure, and the woman dropped her laptop down the stairs.

WD also is one of few companies whom is trying to be green!

I am sorry to hear your bad luck with them and hope your next drive is perfect.

Grand Master

RAID 0

Posted
Posted

WD is the only hard drive I'll buy, for me or others. Out of the 2 dozen (or more) drives I've bought from them, only ONE.. that's right, ONE has given me issues and that was after 6 years of service. It still works, but gives SMART errors.

Grand Master

HawkMan

Posted
Posted
I echo what some of these guys are saying. There's a bad batch of drives for all companies. Maybe except for Maxtor before they were bought by Seagate..

Yeah. Maxtor only had bad batches. I've yet to see a single MAxtor disk that didn't fail within one year, most fail within the first 3 months and had to be replaced.

They where the worst disaster in the history of HDD's

Experienced

Arkos Reed

Posted
Posted
I have nothing but praise for Western Digital, **** happens.

I second that. I once had a Raptor die on me, quite the old one you see.. WD360GD in the 4th year of warranty, of course that model wasn't manufactured anymore, guess what they did? They sent me back a WD1500ADFD ! (Raptor 150Gb)

Grand Master

RAID 0

Posted
Posted
Yeah. Maxtor only had bad batches. I've yet to see a single MAxtor disk that didn't fail within one year, most fail within the first 3 months and had to be replaced.

They where the worst disaster in the history of HDD's

I think you're thinking of the Hitachi DeathStar, I mean DESK... star.

Grand Master

MR_Candyman

Posted
Posted
Yeah. Maxtor only had bad batches. I've yet to see a single MAxtor disk that didn't fail within one year, most fail within the first 3 months and had to be replaced.

They where the worst disaster in the history of HDD's

You must be on crack. Maxtor drives had the same reliability as WD and Seagate. Hell, I still have 2 maxtor drives in my server. On'e about 10 years old, one's about 6.

Rising Star

voidpharoh

Posted
Posted
If they did it intentionally then I would agree, but is that likely? I am sure it is not their policy to replace faulty drives with faulty drives. It would waste their time and money. If they didn't care about customers they wouldn't replace either the first or second drive.

I also had a thought .. what if it was damaged in transit? Not their fault at all..

There is the possibility that it was damaged in transit, there is also the possibility the drive was a faulty refurbished unit. From what I understand it's fairly common for HDD manufacturers to send out refurbished drives out to customers for warranty replacement. I know that I've had a WD representative tell me on the phone that I would be recieving a refurbished drive for my last RMA (so far I've only had to RMA two WD drives). My refurbished unit is working great, but that doesn't mean that all refurbished units sent out for replacement will though (then again that applies to new replacement drives as well).

Community Regular

doublea2

Posted
Posted

I like what tony said!

It's simple for me the over 15 drives I have owned personally, not a single wd has ever failed.

The few maxtor/segates I have had die in less than 2 years.

I guess if they are "just as reliable" I have bad luck like everyone else posting here :p

Mentor

JodyWatts

Posted
Posted

I have an external WD that has been running for around 9 years. Very reliable.

BUT, I have had 2 MyBooks (500gb and 750gb) die in less than one year EACH. WD quality had gone in the toilet as of late. I will NEVER buy another mybook (or any external HDD with a WD drive) ... and will be VERY leery of even buying a WD HDD in general.

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