500 GB WD My Book external H/D suddenly not wanting to fire up

Centre Parting wrote:
PeeCee wrote:
"Centre Parting" wrote in message
...

class action suite bought by
the US gov.t against IBM for HDD failures.


I take it there is some sort of heat related failure? do you have a
url? Most of the searches I did found financial securities and other
business actions.


I would rather believe the evidence of my own experience than some
bull**** 'study'


Fair enough, one can only live life as one has experienced it.

On that basis however 'my' experience tells me having a fan blowing
on a Hard drive does not extend it's life.
In fact just the opposite.
(Unfortunately my sample has only two failed drives out of 14
installed. This covers 7 PC's from 2002 to 2009. )

In case #1 the single drive in the case had a fan directed at the
underneath from new, it died at about 24 Months.

Manufacturing defect ?
That heat causes HDD failures does not somehow exclude other factors
from doing so too - as you are inferring.

The Google study presumably polled a lot of PC users about HDD
failures.
Unfortunately, there is a component of the population that refuses to
accept things they cannot understand - a typically left-brain-dominant
characteristic that derives from an ability

EDIT : - inability

to see the bigger picture.
Techies are predominantly left-brain thinkers and as such, frequently
express frustration when unable to understand WHY something happens.

This is frequently manifest as an autistic-like, stubborn refusal to
accept what they see before them - indeed, it can even be manifest as
a need to prove the opposite of what they see before them, so irksome
do they find their failure to understand.
But then, left-brainers are not big on understanding because they
lack the vision and imagination required to see the wood for the
trees.
Of the laptops I have to repair, I'd say 80-90% are down to failed
HDD's. My desktop repairs have nothing like this failure rate.

Draw your own conclusions.


Case #2 has 3 drives in it, two had a front mounted fan blowin air
over them (again from new), the third was buried in a 3.5" cage under
the floppy drive.
On this machine it was a drive in the fan air stream that died, again
at about 24 months.
Cases 3 to 7 didn't have any drive failures and none of those had a
fan blowing over the hard drives.

Paul.

muzician21 wrote:

I've got this WD 500 gb Firewire external My Book drive I've been
using to store mostly video files for a big video project. It doesn't
have an on/off switch, it powers up when power is first applied, goes
dormant after a period of inactivity and restarts when you try to
access it. It's worked flawlessly until today.

Normally the blue light in front dances up and down during boot up as
well as whenever there's data transfer but now I notice the light
flashes briefly when power is first applied, the drive makes some
noise like it's starting to spool up but then shuts down. The couple
of h/d's I've had die in the past gave me some warning, made weird
clicking noises for a while before crapping out. This one was working
perfectly normally until now. I wouldn't think overheating would be an
issue with this drive, the case is extensively vented unlike most
external drives I've seen. It doesn't get used that much.

Anyone have experience with these drives? Any chance there's a power
supply inside the case that's causing the problem and can be swapped
with another from an identical drive?

The power supply is external, but there are voltage regulators inside
the drive enclosure to convert the +12V from the power supply to +3.3V
and +5V used by the chips in the drive and the interface circuitry.

Aaaaargggghhhhh!!!!!! to lose the hundreds of gigs of files. Any
chance WD would do such a repair? I don't want another drive, I need
THIS drive to work.

Data recovery is NOT included with the warranty, but you're supposed
to have an extra HD for backup anyway because computers can wipe out
tons of data in a hurry. Also a 1TB drive costs just $100, which is a
lot, lot less than the cheapest data recovery service.

On Mon, 06 Apr 2009 07:38:28 +0100, Centre Parting wrote:

class action suite

Made me think of a set of bedroom furniture built including straps and
chains and various appurtenances to facilitate lots of hot, dirty sex.

:-)

--
The month of March in this year of 2009 sees the centenary of the laying
of the keel of the most famous (or infamous) ocean liner of all time, RMS
Titanic, at Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Titanic

Centre Parting wrote:
PeeCee wrote:
"Centre Parting" wrote in message
...

class action suite bought by
the US gov.t against IBM for HDD failures.


I take it there is some sort of heat related failure? do you have a
url? Most of the searches I did found financial securities and other
business actions.


I would rather believe the evidence of my own experience than some
bull**** 'study'


Fair enough, one can only live life as one has experienced it.

On that basis however 'my' experience tells me having a fan blowing
on a Hard drive does not extend it's life.
In fact just the opposite.
(Unfortunately my sample has only two failed drives out of 14
installed. This covers 7 PC's from 2002 to 2009. )

In case #1 the single drive in the case had a fan directed at the
underneath from new, it died at about 24 Months.

Manufacturing defect ?
That heat causes HDD failures does not somehow exclude other factors
from doing so too - as you are inferring.

The Google study presumably polled a lot of PC users about HDD failures.

Nope, they analysed the failures of THEIR OWN hard drives.

Unfortunately, there is a component of the population that refuses to
accept things they cannot understand - a typically left-brain-dominant
characteristic that derives from an ability to see the bigger picture.
Techies are predominantly left-brain thinkers and as such, frequently
express frustration when unable to understand WHY something happens.

This is frequently manifest as an autistic-like, stubborn refusal to
accept what they see before them - indeed, it can even be manifest as
a need to prove the opposite of what they see before them, so irksome
do they find their failure to understand.
But then, left-brainers are not big on understanding because they
lack the vision and imagination required to see the wood for the
trees.
Of the laptops I have to repair, I'd say 80-90% are down to failed
HDD's. My desktop repairs have nothing like this failure rate.

Draw your own conclusions.


Case #2 has 3 drives in it, two had a front mounted fan blowin air
over them (again from new), the third was buried in a 3.5" cage under
the floppy drive.
On this machine it was a drive in the fan air stream that died, again
at about 24 months.
Cases 3 to 7 didn't have any drive failures and none of those had a
fan blowing over the hard drives.

Paul.

"Rod Speed" wrote in
:

thanatoid wrote:

SNIP

HD's fail, especially external ones (3x the price for the
$10 Chinese box and a $2 Chinese power adapter with the
same drive inside that you could have put inside you
machine).

DVD's (or expensive tape drives used by corporations) are
the only way to backup safely.

Wrong, as always.

MOST interesting comment from someone with a 13-year old's
nickname (if it's your /real name/, my deepest sympathies) who
(to my recollection) has never posted ANY advice, and who uses
OE for newsgroups.

I am often wrong, and have no problem with admitting it when I
am corrected by someone who knows what they're talking about.

But NO ONE is ALWAYS wrong or ALWAYS right - including you.

Now go **** yourself.

Rod Speed wrote:
Centre Parting wrote:
PeeCee wrote:
"Centre Parting" wrote in message
...

class action suite bought by
the US gov.t against IBM for HDD failures.


I take it there is some sort of heat related failure? do you have a
url? Most of the searches I did found financial securities and other
business actions.


I would rather believe the evidence of my own experience than some
bull**** 'study'


Fair enough, one can only live life as one has experienced it.

On that basis however 'my' experience tells me having a fan blowing
on a Hard drive does not extend it's life.
In fact just the opposite.
(Unfortunately my sample has only two failed drives out of 14
installed. This covers 7 PC's from 2002 to 2009. )

In case #1 the single drive in the case had a fan directed at the
underneath from new, it died at about 24 Months.

Manufacturing defect ?
That heat causes HDD failures does not somehow exclude other factors
from doing so too - as you are inferring.

The Google study presumably polled a lot of PC users about HDD
failures.

Nope, they analysed the failures of THEIR OWN hard drives.

So they polled their own IT staff.


Unfortunately, there is a component of the population that refuses to
accept things they cannot understand - a typically
left-brain-dominant characteristic that derives from an ability to
see the bigger picture. Techies are predominantly left-brain
thinkers and as such, frequently express frustration when unable to
understand WHY something happens. This is frequently manifest as an
autistic-like, stubborn refusal to
accept what they see before them - indeed, it can even be manifest as
a need to prove the opposite of what they see before them, so irksome
do they find their failure to understand.
But then, left-brainers are not big on understanding because they
lack the vision and imagination required to see the wood for the
trees.
Of the laptops I have to repair, I'd say 80-90% are down to failed
HDD's. My desktop repairs have nothing like this failure rate.

Draw your own conclusions.


Case #2 has 3 drives in it, two had a front mounted fan blowin air
over them (again from new), the third was buried in a 3.5" cage
under the floppy drive.
On this machine it was a drive in the fan air stream that died,
again at about 24 months.
Cases 3 to 7 didn't have any drive failures and none of those had a
fan blowing over the hard drives.

Paul.

On Mon, 6 Apr 2009 11:24:53 +0100, "Centre Parting"
put finger to keyboard and composed:

The Google study presumably polled a lot of PC users about HDD failures.

The Google study concentrated on Google's own huge installed base of
hard drives spanning several manufacturers, models, and generations.

Nobody was polled.

Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population:
http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

"Centre Parting" wrote in message
...
snip

The Google study presumably polled a lot of PC users about HDD failures.

snip

Sorry you 'presumed' wrong.
Your presumption shows you haven't bothered to read the paper.

Again I will quote from the paper:
quote
The data in this study are collected from a large number
of disk drives, deployed in several types of systems
across all of Google's services. More than one hundred
thousand disk drives were used for all the results presented
here.
/quote

Note the words "across all of Google's services"

Paul.

Centre Parting wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:
Centre Parting wrote:
PeeCee wrote:
"Centre Parting" wrote in message
...

class action suite bought by
the US gov.t against IBM for HDD failures.


I take it there is some sort of heat related failure? do you have a
url? Most of the searches I did found financial securities and
other business actions.


I would rather believe the evidence of my own experience than some
bull**** 'study'


Fair enough, one can only live life as one has experienced it.

On that basis however 'my' experience tells me having a fan blowing
on a Hard drive does not extend it's life.
In fact just the opposite.
(Unfortunately my sample has only two failed drives out of 14
installed. This covers 7 PC's from 2002 to 2009. )

In case #1 the single drive in the case had a fan directed at the
underneath from new, it died at about 24 Months.

Manufacturing defect ?
That heat causes HDD failures does not somehow exclude other factors
from doing so too - as you are inferring.

The Google study presumably polled a lot of PC users about HDD
failures.

Nope, they analysed the failures of THEIR OWN hard drives.

So they polled their own IT staff.

They didnt poll anyone, ****wit.

Unfortunately, there is a component of the population that refuses
to accept things they cannot understand - a typically
left-brain-dominant characteristic that derives from an ability to
see the bigger picture. Techies are predominantly left-brain
thinkers and as such, frequently express frustration when unable to
understand WHY something happens. This is frequently manifest as an
autistic-like, stubborn refusal to
accept what they see before them - indeed, it can even be manifest
as a need to prove the opposite of what they see before them, so
irksome do they find their failure to understand.
But then, left-brainers are not big on understanding because they
lack the vision and imagination required to see the wood for the
trees.
Of the laptops I have to repair, I'd say 80-90% are down to failed
HDD's. My desktop repairs have nothing like this failure rate.

Draw your own conclusions.


Case #2 has 3 drives in it, two had a front mounted fan blowin air
over them (again from new), the third was buried in a 3.5" cage
under the floppy drive.
On this machine it was a drive in the fan air stream that died,
again at about 24 months.
Cases 3 to 7 didn't have any drive failures and none of those had a
fan blowing over the hard drives.

Paul.

thanatoid wrote
Rod Speed wrote
thanatoid wrote

HD's fail, especially external ones (3x the price for the
$10 Chinese box and a $2 Chinese power adapter with the
same drive inside that you could have put inside you machine).

DVD's (or expensive tape drives used by corporations)
are the only way to backup safely.

Wrong, as always.

MOST interesting comment from someone with a 13-year old's nickname

Its my real name, unlike yours, ****wit child.

who (to my recollection) has never posted ANY advice,

Thats what the whacky weed can do to your ear to ear dog ****, child.

and who uses OE for newsgroups.

Leaves that steaming turd you use for dead, child.

I am often wrong,

Always, actually.

and have no problem with admitting it when I am corrected
by someone who knows what they're talking about.

But NO ONE is ALWAYS wrong

Wrong, as always. You are, ALWAYS.

Now go **** yourself.

I leave that sort of thing to ****wit children like you, child.