Beware Western Digital 80gb Disk

[astral]

Two years ago I bought a Western Digital 80Gb disk

After about one year it failed with a nasty klonking sound.

I give the shop their due, they replaced it quite quickly.

After another year the replacement has the same nasty sound and is unreadable.

I am off the shop in a few minutes, when they open at 11am.

[Dancali]

Well, that's not encouraging, my backup is a WD 80 gb caviar. So far so good, but I've only had it for a few months. What model do you have?

[Richard-BKK]

People,

Serious, Western Digital is one of the most sold hard drive brand names in Thailand and around the world.

Because one hard drive from one customer has problems, we start a discussion about this?

If this customer has 2x times the same problem with his computer, I would advice that he let somebody check his power supply. As that is probably the main course of the problem.

Replacing the result of the problem doesn’t fix the source of problem, and probably he is back at his computer shop in a few months.

As hard drive get more advanced they also have less tolerance of power fluctuations.

With kind regards,

Richard

[Butterfly]

Two years ago I bought a Western Digital 80Gb disk

After about one year it failed with a nasty klonking sound.

I give the shop their due, they replaced it quite quickly.

After another year the replacement has the same nasty sound and is unreadable.

I am off the shop in a few minutes, when they open at 11am.

I had the same problem. WD sucks. never buy them. Get the more expensive Fujitsu and IBM drives

[Richard-BKK]

Dear Butterfly,

You are pretty up-to-date it is almost 2 years ago that IBM made his last hard drive, and this hard drive's had only the name IBM and where made by Hitachi.

IBM sold 2 years ago the whole hard drive division to Hitachi.

And I can agree that Western Digital is not the most reliable hard drive vendor for low-end drives. Drives from WD are less tolerant on temperature, power fluctuations and slave – master settings. The positive aspect of this drives is that they are relative cheap to performance.

Drives from Seagate are most reliable, produce less heat and have a high tolerance on there power consumption. But there low-end drives are surely not the fastest drives around.

Hitachi is a good alternative, but good dives come at a higher price. But even Hitachi is not perfect they still bridge there SATA interface from ATA. So expect no native SATA speeds or Command Queuing from a Hitachi drive. With most computers out there today no problem…..

Back to the original post, I still advice that ASTRAL checks his power supply….

[Butterfly]

Dear Butterfly,

You are pretty up-to-date it is almost 2 years ago that IBM made his last hard drive, and this hard drive's had only the name IBM and where made by Hitachi.

IBM sold 2 years ago the whole hard drive division to Hitachi.

I am very well aware of that, and what has your comment to do with my comment about IBM drives being better than WD ? a financial buyout is NOT a technical requirement for selecting a drive.

do you know at least what a hard drive is ?

[Firefoxx]

I really don't think that a couple of unlucky coincidences merits a denouncement of a brand. I've had experiences with several different harddisks from pretty much all the manufacturers. All I can say is that there is no brand that stands out in terms of reliability (or unreliability). I've seen drives fail from all major manufacturers, and I've also seen drives that have lasted and lasted.

There was an exception, of course, with IBM's infamous Deskstar (nicknamed DeathStar by unhappy customers) series of drives. It turned out that the concerns were real, since internal documents revealed that IBM was knowingly selling bad HDDs.

When I worked at a distributor for Quantum HDDs, we processed several boxes of defective HDDs each day. No doubt that other distributors for other manufacturers have the same experience. Harddisks will fail, and there's no absolute guarantee of when they will fail. They aren't meant for storing sensitive/crucial data, so BACKUP!

One thing that I see very often is lack of adequate cooling. Most current harddisks run at 7200RPM, which generates a lot of heat. Most cases are inadequate in that they have no direct cooling of the harddisks. Couple that with the hot and humid Thai climate and you have a recipe for disaster. Try touching your harddisk after a few hours of work. If it's more than warm to the touch, then you're not cooling it enough, which will lead to premature failure. Another likely cause is Thailand's unstable power grid. Having a UPS will help to prevent HDD failures.

Some other news on the HDD front: A few years ago, 3 years warranty was common for HDDs. Then all the manufacturers suddenly switched to 1 year. It wasn't greeted with smiles by consumers, so they reverted back to 3 years. Now, just recently, some have started giving 5 year warranties as standard.

I base my HDD purchases on warranty, price, upgrade policies, and the location of service centers. Which usually means that I buy Maxtors.

[monty]

Have been using Maxtor drives in all my rigs the last couple of years and haven't had any failure yet.

Some of them are run very hard, used for playing mpeg2 dvd movies (music in fact) for more then 13 hours/day. The drives are doing this now for a bit over a year non stop 7 days a week without any hick up! I try to look out if they start to make more noise (dead give-away for a HD getting near a fatal problem) and do keep back-ups. Just don't want to start ripping 300 DVD's all over again

[falong]

Two years ago I bought a Western Digital 80Gb disk

After about one year it failed with a nasty klonking sound.

I give the shop their due, they replaced it quite quickly.

After another year the replacement has the same nasty sound and is unreadable.

I am off the shop in a few minutes, when they open at 11am.

Anyone remember the Quantum bigfoots that were sold here several years ago?

Failure rate was extremely high. Bad batch from the Thai factory.

[waldwolf]

Have been running a WD 10gig drive for 5 years. No problems.

About 1 year ago moved 10gig unit to backup and replaced it with an 80gig (WD800JBRTL). No problems thus far and the 80gig units 7200rpm speed/8Mb cache make a very noticeable decrease in startup/load times.

Recent quality figures I've seen place IBM in first place with Western Digital, Maxtor and Seagate close seconds. Samsung and Quantum finished last.

It's interesting to note many of the newer HDD's only carry a 1 year warranty vs. 3 years for models purchased just a couple of years ago. (The OEM's now try to sell you additional warranty coverage at about 20$US per year.)

I suspect the higher speeds of 7200rpm for EIDE and 10,000rpm for Serial ATA, combined with the competition to reduce costs, may reduce overall reliability.

so . . . . . backup, backup, backup.

[kabal1234]

I've had 2 WD drives go on me in the last year and a bit. I agree that it's no reason to denounce the brand, but I certainly wont buy another one in the near future.

Woldwolf is correct that the IDE 7200rpm speed reduces reliability, unfortunately I need that speed to capture video etc. I now have 2 X 120 GB drives, the second is just used to back up the first disk.

[Firefoxx]

Most half-decent IDE harddisks today are 7200RPM (with 10000RPMs at a premium), so it's pretty much the norm to have one. SCSI server HDDs start with 10krpm and go up to 15krpm, and they're very robust. Just keep it in a stable environment (adequate cooling, steady power) and chances are that it won't fail.

If you want reliability, simply buy two and use RAID 1 mirroring (many decent mainboards and add-on cards support this). Harddisks are cheap compared to critical data. Actually, these days harddisks are cheap, period. 160GB can be had for less than 5000 baht, and is more than most people would ever use.

As I mentioned before, 3 year warranties have been back for quite some time, and 5 year warranties are now being seen. I just bought a seagate 40GB IDE with a standard 5 year warranty.

For people who want lots of cheap online removable storage, simply buy any size IDE harddisk and put it in a USB or Firewire enclosure (about 1000 baht). Great for storing your porn or MP3 collection, and infinitely expandable.

[h90]

when I thouched my harddrives they had something arround 50-55 degree celcius.

I bought them harddisk cooler (2 small fans) costs approx. 200 THB and I hope this increase their live, but can not be wrong anyway

[RDN]

Drives from Seagate are most reliable, produce less heat and have a high tolerance on there power consumption.

Phew! Excellent news - I've recently bought an 80 Gb Seagate drive and attached it via my USB port. It sits in an IOGear external hard drive box, but I've removed one side of the box to aid cooling. Maybe I'll buy a little USB fan that I've seen in Bic C....

I also use a Unitec UPS to smooth out the power. It usually clicks in and out a couple of times per night - usually when it starts to rain.

[meadish_sweetball]

They aren't meant for storing sensitive/crucial data, so BACKUP!

While I realize that what you are saying is true, IMO hard drives SHOULD be meant for storing sensitive/crucial data... that is what the vast majority of computer users use them for - so they should be adapted to suit their customer base.

[jhj2000]

Heat is proberly the cause of the failure. Make sure the cables inside the computer are not hindering the airflow. Put the drive in a slot where there is plenty of space around the drive.