WD hard drives

Raul Hormel wrote in
message . ..

i bought a WD 80GB (2MB, 7200) at Fry's 3 weeks ago for $88 with $30 rebate.

it failed on wednesday.

i have had many problems in the past with WD.

clearly, it is worth it to spend more money for a different
brand. my maxtors have been working flawlessly.

Plenty have found the exact opposite with those two brands.

Technically what you have is called 'a pathetically inadequate sample'

i have even had good luck with deathstars, ironically.

Ditto.

seagates perform slowly but i have had no failures.
what is it about WD?

Nothing.

oh well, at least i had a copy of the data backed up onto
my other computer (with Maxtor 6Y080P0, a great drive)

Plenty have found the exact opposite with those two brands.

Rod Speed wrote:
Raul Hormel wrote in
message . ..

i bought a WD 80GB (2MB, 7200) at Fry's 3 weeks ago for $88 with $30
rebate.

it failed on wednesday.

i have had many problems in the past with WD.

clearly, it is worth it to spend more money for a different
brand. my maxtors have been working flawlessly.

Plenty have found the exact opposite with those two brands.

Technically what you have is called 'a pathetically inadequate sample'

what is a good sample then?

I have seen hundreds of them fail. they have been the least reliable brand
in my tech travels. not to say i haven't seen lots of failures with other
brands too, but WD had been the worst. when does evidence traverse from the
antedoctal to the objective?

it's not like i don't have a backup, but the hassle factor makes it
annoying.

i had sworn 3 years ago to never buy another WD drive. i thought maybe
things had changed. guess not.

at any rate, i won't be getting rid of my DLT 7000 drive anytime soon
(offline) and making copies of important data to other machines (nearline).
i use RAID 1 on my work desktop too. I take my backup tapes from home to
work as offsite storage. Can't be losing my MP3 collection, ya know ;-)

laters,
raul

Raul Hormel wrote in
message . ..
Rod Speed wrote
Raul Hormel wrote

i bought a WD 80GB (2MB, 7200) at Fry's
3 weeks ago for $88 with $30 rebate.

it failed on wednesday.

i have had many problems in the past with WD.

clearly, it is worth it to spend more money for a different
brand. my maxtors have been working flawlessly.

Plenty have found the exact opposite with those two brands.

Technically what you have is called 'a pathetically inadequate sample'

what is a good sample then?

A hell of a lot more than that, particularly an operation flogging
both manufacturer's drives in high volume like with Frys and the
return rate they see with both manufacturer's drives.

Even thats not a very good sample either, particularly with
drives that fail in the warranty period, but not in a couple
of weeks, so the purchaser of the drive chooses to use the
manufacturer's RMA system instead of returning it to Frys etc.

I have seen hundreds of them fail.

Easy to claim now.

they have been the least reliable brand in my tech travels.
not to say i haven't seen lots of failures with other brands
too, but WD had been the worst. when does evidence
traverse from the antedoctal to the objective?

When you have an adequate statistical sample.

it's not like i don't have a backup, but
the hassle factor makes it annoying.

Sure, hard drive failure is always a damned nuisance, even if you
are fully backed up, except with RAID5 etc, when its just a nuisance.

i had sworn 3 years ago to never buy another WD drive.
i thought maybe things had changed. guess not.

Plenty say precisely the same thing about Maxtors too.

You can see them saying that using
groups.google in this newgroup alone.

at any rate, i won't be getting rid of my DLT 7000 drive anytime soon
(offline) and making copies of important data to other machines (nearline).
i use RAID 1 on my work desktop too. I take my backup tapes from home
to work as offsite storage. Can't be losing my MP3 collection, ya know ;-)

Sure, but thats something that should be done even
with drives known to have a low failure rate. Its never
zero. And the house can burn down or get looted too.

i bought a WD 80GB (2MB, 7200) at Fry's 3 weeks ago for $88 with $30 rebate.

it failed on wednesday.

i have had many problems in the past with WD.

clearly, it is worth it to spend more money for a different brand. my
maxtors have been working flawlessly. i have even had good luck with
deathstars, ironically. seagates perform slowly but i have had no failures.

The same thing is true with automobiles. People base their future shopping on
their own past experience. I personally will never buy another dang Chrysler
vehicle, since the one I had the air-conditioner failed in the first 2 weeks,
disintegrated into pieces that were sent throughout the system, and the whole
A/C was re-placed. I had nothing but A/C problems after that for the life of
the vehicle. At the same time, other folks will say they have never had a
Chrysler problem, but won't ever buy a Ford or GM. It probably has to do with
"lots" too. Some lots of Maxtor may be better than others; some lots of WD,
etc.

I've been lucky that in the last 10 years that I've been computing, I have had
only one hard drive fail, and it was a Seagate 40 MB (yes megabyte!) hard drive
in 1991, when HD technology was not very advanced. And I"m still not sure it
failed, I think the repair shop I took it to told me that, then tried to keep
my hard drive. I put up a fuss and demanded they hand over the "bad drive."

I would bet that in the long run the failure rate between WD and Maxtor may not
be much different; some of it may even depend on how people use their machines.
In any case, the WD at least has the advantage of the 3-year warranty.

RD

With your experience of failed WD hard drives in the past, why did you buy
yet another one?

My experience with WD drives is just the opposite. I've never had a single
problem with any of my WD drives in over 12 years of use.

I think the 3 year warranty is for the special edition hard drives only,
those with an 8MB cache.

"RD" wrote in message
...
..
In any case, the WD at least has the advantage of the 3-year warranty.

RD

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In article ,
Raul Hormel wrote:
i bought a WD 80GB (2MB, 7200) at Fry's 3 weeks ago for $88 with $30 rebate.

it failed on wednesday.

Sounds like "infant mortality"...get it swapped out.

oh well, at least i had a copy of the data backed up onto my other computer
(with Maxtor 6Y080P0, a great drive)

"Maxtor" and "great drive" don't ever belong in the same sentence...all the
drives I've run across have been junk that crapped out in a few months. The
5.1GB Western Digital that replaced a string of three 5.1GB Maxtors (each of
which failed after 1-3 months) is still running.

_/_ Scott Alfter
/ v \
(IIGS( http://alfter.us Top-posting!
\_^_/ pkill -9 /bin/laden What is the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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