Western Digital Drive Faillures

Hi all,

I am a custom system builder specializing in custom systems for games for
extended family and our friends. (used to have own business but couldn't
make money - do it for fun now).

I have exclusively used Western Digital Special Edition Drives for their
performance and 3 year warranty.

However, I have experienced numerous drive failures of late. Some are with
the power up of brand new hard drives and require RMA. Western Digital
never gives me a problem and readily RMA's the drives both old and "brand
New".

Note: that the new SE drives from western digital are lighter and appear to
be the same type of drive as their economy series with 1 year warranty and
only 2 MB cache. They feel cheap and I just had a brand new drive sound the
click of death upon first power up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyone had similar problems??? Please advise and let the world know what
must be happening to others out there.

Sincerely,
Scott Davis

"Scott Davis" wrote in message ...
Hi all,

I am a custom system builder specializing in custom systems for games for
extended family and our friends. (used to have own business but couldn't
make money - do it for fun now).

I have exclusively used Western Digital Special Edition Drives for their
performance and 3 year warranty.

However, I have experienced numerous drive failures of late. Some are with
the power up of brand new hard drives and require RMA. Western Digital
never gives me a problem and readily RMA's the drives both old and "brand
New".

Note: that the new SE drives from western digital are lighter and appear
to be the same type of drive as their economy series with 1 year warranty
and only 2 MB cache. They feel cheap and I just had a brand new drive
sound the click of death upon first power up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyone had similar problems??? Please advise and let the
world know what must be happening to others out there.

I've changed over to Samsung P80 drives myself.

Full 3 year warranty on ALL their drives, fluid bearing, internal SMART
temperature sensors, no stupid jumpering scheme, loverly and quiet.

The main downside with Samsungs is that they
are harder to find someone flogging them.

I've had a 120 meg (2 meg cache) and a 200 meg (8 meg cache "special
edition") in the past year, and both developed a high-pitched whine after a
few days of initial operation. The replacement 120 is OK, and I just got an
RMA for the 200.

However, the replacements only have a 1 year warranty, so you're not getting
much of the three-year warranty when they fail early like mine have.

I keep saying my next drive will be a Seagate Barracuda or a Samsung, but
when you can pick up a 200 gig WD for less than $120 (after rebate), my
wallet says otherwise..


"Scott Davis" wrote in message
...
Hi all,

I am a custom system builder specializing in custom systems for games for
extended family and our friends. (used to have own business but couldn't
make money - do it for fun now).

I have exclusively used Western Digital Special Edition Drives for their
performance and 3 year warranty.

However, I have experienced numerous drive failures of late. Some are
with
the power up of brand new hard drives and require RMA. Western Digital
never gives me a problem and readily RMA's the drives both old and "brand
New".

Note: that the new SE drives from western digital are lighter and appear
to
be the same type of drive as their economy series with 1 year warranty and
only 2 MB cache. They feel cheap and I just had a brand new drive sound
the
click of death upon first power up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyone had similar problems??? Please advise and let the world know what
must be happening to others out there.

Sincerely,
Scott Davis

"Mark M" wrote in message ...
"Rod Speed" wrote:

"Scott Davis" wrote in message
...
Hi all,

I am a custom system builder specializing in custom systems for
games for extended family and our friends. (used to have own
business but couldn't make money - do it for fun now).

I have exclusively used Western Digital Special Edition Drives
for their performance and 3 year warranty.

However, I have experienced numerous drive failures of late.
Some are with the power up of brand new hard drives and require
RMA. Western Digital never gives me a problem and readily
RMA's the drives both old and "brand New".

Note: that the new SE drives from western digital are lighter
and appear to be the same type of drive as their economy series
with 1 year warranty and only 2 MB cache. They feel cheap and
I just had a brand new drive sound the click of death upon
first power up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyone had similar problems??? Please advise and let the world
know what must be happening to others out there.

I've changed over to Samsung P80 drives myself.

You too, eh? :-)

Yeah, not just me either, I have sucked other suckers into them too |-)

I like my P80 so much I was thinking of
getting another as I found a cheap supplier.

Yeah, there isnt anything in it price wise in this country.

Still nowhere near as many flogging them as with the
other brands but thats just a minor irritation with decent
web search systems. I dont often buy stuff in person.

Wierd this is that at a lot of places here in the UK the
Samsungs can cost very nearly as much as the major brands.

Maybe you left a word out that or something.
Maybe you meant twice as much or something.

There isnt anything in it price wise here,
tho you do have to look harder for them.

Full 3 year warranty on ALL their drives, fluid bearing,
internal SMART temperature sensors, no stupid jumpering scheme,
loverly and quiet.

The main downside with Samsungs is that they
are harder to find someone flogging them.

Well, I only have one 8MB cache WD drive, so my experience is not very
helpful statistically, but I like it and have not encountered any problems
after 6 months of solid use.

I didn't see any look of cheapness in mine, appears about the same as
previous WD drives I own or have used in systems I have built for others.

..
"Scott Davis" wrote in message
...
Hi all,

I am a custom system builder specializing in custom systems for games for
extended family and our friends. (used to have own business but couldn't
make money - do it for fun now).

I have exclusively used Western Digital Special Edition Drives for their
performance and 3 year warranty.

However, I have experienced numerous drive failures of late. Some are
with
the power up of brand new hard drives and require RMA. Western Digital
never gives me a problem and readily RMA's the drives both old and "brand
New".

Note: that the new SE drives from western digital are lighter and appear
to
be the same type of drive as their economy series with 1 year warranty and
only 2 MB cache. They feel cheap and I just had a brand new drive sound
the
click of death upon first power up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyone had similar problems??? Please advise and let the world know what
must be happening to others out there.

Sincerely,
Scott Davis

"Scott Davis" wrote in message ...
Hi all,

I am a custom system builder specializing in custom systems for games for
extended family and our friends. (used to have own business but couldn't
make money - do it for fun now).

I have exclusively used Western Digital Special Edition Drives for their
performance and 3 year warranty.

However, I have experienced numerous drive failures of late. Some are with
the power up of brand new hard drives and require RMA. Western Digital
never gives me a problem and readily RMA's the drives both old and "brand
New".

Note: that the new SE drives from western digital are lighter and appear to
be the same type of drive as their economy series with 1 year warranty and
only 2 MB cache. They feel cheap and I just had a brand new drive sound the
click of death upon first power up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyone had similar problems??? Please advise and let the world know what
must be happening to others out there.

Sincerely,
Scott Davis

Scott,

I have had a massive failure rate on WD1200JB and WD1600JB drives. I
think I have had four or five failures in the past year or two - on
the same system! I thought it was my system, and upped the number of
case fans to the maximum case, left the covers off, replaced my
motherboard and power supply (got a 430W one), to try to make sure the
drives were not overheating. My system runs on an APC 1600W UPS, so I
am pretty sure it's not power problems.

My system currently has a WD1600JB as the boot drive (which has just
failed), 2 WD2500JD (SATA - working fine in a mirrored RAID
configuration), and 2 WD1200JB in a striped RAID configuration. The
interesting thing is that the drive that has failed has ALWAYS been
the boot drive on which Wndows is istalled. None of the other drives
have failed, which makes me think that it is a drive problem (as
opposed to a system problem) because the C: drive always gets the
lion's share of the I/O on a system. BTW, the drives are ALL retail
box - no OEM.

As for the WD RMA, yes, they are good about it, but I always got a
refurbished drive with the remainder of the previous drive's warranty
on it. I don't care for refurbished drives because they obviously had
a problem to start with, and I am not convinced that the drive as as
good as new (or better, as a WD tech tried to tell me).

So I agree with you that I am seeing lots of failures, but only of
drives that get used a great deal. Doesn't way much for quality, does
it? I mean, why buy a drive just to sit there and look pretty?

"Seagate Rocks" wrote
snip
Western Digital drives are CRAP!!!


Hi,

I am surprised to see that people are having problems with their WD SE
drives. I always used IBM disks but when I decided to build a new system I
opted to install SATA disks, and as IBM don't make these type of disks I
chose Western-Digital Disks set-up as SATA RAID-0.

Two months later and all is working well. Will post back any negative
experiences if they happen, but so far it's all good!
--
Wayne ][

Barton (AQXEA) XP2500+ @ 2.2GHz (10x220) - 1.75vCore
CoolerMaster Aero 7 Lite - 3,200rpm
ABIT NF7-S (v2.0 - BIOS#14)
512MB Dual TwiSTER PC3500 @ DDR440 1:1 (8,3,3,2.0 - 2.8v)
Sapphire Atlantis 9800 - 3.3ns Samsung
240GB (2x120GB) WD-SE SATA RAID-0 (16k Stripe)
Antec SX630II Mini-Tower Case Inc 300w PSU
WinXP-PRO-SP1
Cat 3.7 - DX9.0b

| Anyone had similar problems???
1 of my 80wire cable's plugs have *loose contacts : 2 controllers ( of kt
133a, 266a ) have been damaged by ( I believe ) tiny sparks jumping
between the *, though 2 Seagate hdd`s ICs survived !
1st generation 80wire cables' plugs lack straps for pulling, users must pull
cables & so cause *.

| Please advise and let the world know what must be happening
If your cable has no *, I suspect your PSU's +5v rail's spikes killed your
hdd`s ICs ; I find my hdd`s safer fr voltage spikes ( killed 1 Quantum hdd's
IC ) with added damping ( capacitors, inductors ) to +12 & +5v rails, &
stabler esp if [i] PCI bus is overclocked [ii] a sftwre cooler ( ACPI /
Vcool / Rain etc. ) is used, then both rails will fluctuate ( visible if
graphed by CPUcool freeware, or read by volt meters ).
My present +12 & +5v rails have 16000 & 26520 µF added. 2 inductors
( fr dead PSUs, 3cm Ø size ) I assembled will be used if hdd`s motors /
ICs still look unstable.

Funny you should write this. I just bought a WD 120G with 3 year
warranty.

I attempted to fdisk the drive. I created several logical drives.
When prompted to reboot, I did so.
I formatted the first [active] partition and DOS reported about 30Megs
in bad sectors. I attempted to format the remaining logical drives,
but FDISK would not allow me to do so. An error message appeared and
indicated all my logical drives were in an unsupported format. When I
did FDISK to see the status of the drive. Drive D was listed as
MS-RAMdrive with the values I had set, but I was not able to format
this or any other drive.

I have never experienced this behaviour before. I am returning the
drive.


"Scott Davis" wrote in message
...
: Hi all,
:
: I am a custom system builder specializing in custom systems for
games for
: extended family and our friends. (used to have own business but
couldn't
: make money - do it for fun now).
:
: I have exclusively used Western Digital Special Edition Drives for
their
: performance and 3 year warranty.
:
: However, I have experienced numerous drive failures of late. Some
are with
: the power up of brand new hard drives and require RMA. Western
Digital
: never gives me a problem and readily RMA's the drives both old and
"brand
: New".
:
: Note: that the new SE drives from western digital are lighter and
appear to
: be the same type of drive as their economy series with 1 year
warranty and
: only 2 MB cache. They feel cheap and I just had a brand new drive
sound the
: click of death upon first power up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:
: Anyone had similar problems??? Please advise and let the world know
what
: must be happening to others out there.
:
: Sincerely,
: Scott Davis
:
:
:


---
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Funny you should write this. I just bought a WD 120G with 3 year
warranty.

I attempted to fdisk the drive. I created several logical drives.
When prompted to reboot, I did so.
I formatted the first [active] partition and DOS reported about 30Megs
in bad sectors. I attempted to format the remaining logical drives,
but FDISK would not allow me to do so. An error message appeared and
indicated all my logical drives were in an unsupported format. When I
did FDISK to see the status of the drive. Drive D was listed as
MS-RAMdrive with the values I had set, but I was not able to format
this or any other drive.

I have never experienced this behaviour before. I am returning the
drive.

"Scott Davis" wrote in message
...
: Hi all,
:
: I am a custom system builder specializing in custom systems for
games for
: extended family and our friends. (used to have own business but
couldn't
: make money - do it for fun now).
:
: I have exclusively used Western Digital Special Edition Drives for
their
: performance and 3 year warranty.
:
: However, I have experienced numerous drive failures of late. Some
are with
: the power up of brand new hard drives and require RMA. Western
Digital
: never gives me a problem and readily RMA's the drives both old and
"brand
: New".
:
: Note: that the new SE drives from western digital are lighter and
appear to
: be the same type of drive as their economy series with 1 year
warranty and
: only 2 MB cache. They feel cheap and I just had a brand new drive
sound the
: click of death upon first power up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:
: Anyone had similar problems??? Please advise and let the world know
what
: must be happening to others out there.
:
: Sincerely,
: Scott Davis
:
:
:


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.538 / Virus Database: 333 - Release Date: 11/10/2003