Caution: Western Digital Hard Drive.

[JellyBaby]

LOL IDE hard drives aren't that bad. They're generally far more reliable than in years past even with the "lessening" of quality.

SCSI drives are more reliable but I refuse to pay the Adaptec controller tax. They're also pricey, have reduced capacity as you mentioned and are louder.

IDE drive failures here are probably all due to highly overclocked PCI busses.

 

[Whitedog]

Jelly, My scsi drives are virtually silent. You can't even hear them. The only drawback I've suffered is the extra cost. And for the many times I have lost data due to data corruption crashes, (another stroke of bad luck on my part, but none the less, it's happened too many times) the cost doesn't hurt one bit.

Sanity is priceless

 

[jimmygates]

"Why would you buy a drive from Best Buy? Let's see, 80GB WD, $199.99+tax at BB vs. $134 shipped from Newegg.com. 120GB WD, $299.99+tax at BB vs. $186 shipped from Newegg. You must be rich to be able to waste your money like that."

Workin, while I agree I wouldn't buy harddrives at Best Buy at normal prices, sometimes there are some deals at that are just too good to pass up.

They had the Western Digital 120GB harddrive for $299.99 - $100 MAIL IN REBATE = $199.95. Add AMEX PM and you got this drive for $75. Newegg can't touch that deal



-Jimbo

 

[SFang]

Well, thanks for the reply, guys. Sorry for my bad attitude at the begining of the thread. But, it is really not a pleasant experience to return 3 hard drives in 3 weeks and been looked at suspiciously by the BestBuy employees...

From the posts, I can see WD do make good hard drives. I guess it must be my bad luck. Fortunately, the current two drives works fine, I will see how long they last.

To answer billyjak's question, I did update my motherboard BIOS. If there is any problem, it must be the overclocking. I have two computers, this one with WD HDs has P4 1.6A@2.4G 1.725V, FSB 150, Asus P4B266 motherboard BIOS 1005. Personally, I do not think the high FSB killed the harddrives.

To answer Workin's question, I bought the 80GB hard drive from BB since at the beginning of March, it has a $75 rebate, and you can pricematch it from Bestbuy or through Amex Blue to CircuitCity for 149.99, so total is 199-50(PM)-75(Rebate) = 74, or if you do it double side, you get it with only $24. Similarly, for the 120GB, it had a rebate at the end of March for $100, you can get it for 299-120(PM)-100(Rebate) = 79. I learned it from the Hot Deal forum, if you want the details, do a search with key word "western digital" there.

I guess sometimes if you get a too good deal, it has to have something to compensate. In my case, three returns, hopefully no more.

 

[Trip2way]

<< Bad luck... but it's not like WD has the best track record.. I won't buy them just yet until they are more proven... Maxtor has been the best for me overall...

HD's are one of the most important decisions in a PC, and only the best will get chosen... because of that, the only drives I trust fully are Seagate, Maxtor, Quantum, Fujitsu.. WD and IBM are not quite on par if you ask me >>



Got to say this...

I have had several WD drives over the years and have had only one problem and it was user error.

1st WD drive I ever purchased was a 20meg (thats right-20megabyte) that replaced the 10meg drive that shipped with my IBM 8088.
Believe it or not I can plug that box in (damn heavy too) and it will boot! Thats like 14 years old.

I also have several other WD drives that still work.

WD- founded in 1970
Maxtor - founded in 1982
Seagate - founded 1979
Quantum - founded 1980
Fujitsu - founded in 1935?? (Huh, Now they make HDs?)

 

[Workin']

Hehe, re my earlier post about why would you buy from BB, I figured (or was hoping) there must have been some kind of hot deal thing in the past. So it was kind of a smart ass comment but also hoping to bring some education to the masses about pricing strategies. Thanks for pointing out the kind of deals that are ocassionally available and I hope I didn't hurt your feelings!

 

[SocrPlyr]

i got a pair of bad ones (400BBs) from newegg once... it wouldn't keep me from using them again tho... cuz in reality they were probably thrown around in the mail or something or maybe even a bad batch (stuff happens...)... however the next time i built a computer i went w/ the seagate ones and if for no other reason than noise i am gonna stick w/ them... i couldn't here the thing the whole time...

Josh

 

[HepDude]

<< Maybe just because of my bad luck. But, for the information, these hard drive I bought are all made around the end of Feburary, 2002, specifically Feburary 28-29, in Malaysia. Hopefully only this batch are affected. >>


I had my first HD failure in over 10 years.

The HD was a WD made around the end of February in Malaysia (WD 1000JB). So, the bad batch theory sounds pretty good...

Gateway Accessory Store has been really great about it, though - they applied the new, lower WD pricing on the replacement, reapplied the $50 coupon, let me choose the 1200JB instead, and included free 2nd Day Fedex. They also sent me a free postpaid label to return the dead drive, and will refund the original amount when it is received.

 

[Pauli]

I just love it when I see "I will never, ever, buy BRAND X again!" posts here because of one or two technical glitches or defective items. In my mind, its how the manufacturer treats you after you have reported a faulty item. In this area it seems all of the major hard drive manufacturers excel, offering replacement drives (sometimes larger than the defective one).
In any case, I am a hard disk whore, having HDs of all brands - I buy any disk that has the best deal going on when I am in the market for one. I currently have a Seagate 80GB, WD 80GB, Maxtor 60GB, Maxtor 30GB, Maxtor 20GB, Samsung 2.5GB, WD 2.5GB, and Seagate 2.1GB. I've had only one disk within the past 5-6 years fail on me - it was a 6GB Western Digital that I dropped onto a tile floor (I didn't buy any IBM 75GXPs, thank goodness). I am amazed at the quality and performance of IDE hard drives these days. My first hard disk was a Seagate ST225 20MB model that cost me US$300. Let's see, that's $15 per MB. My most recent purchase is the 80GB Seagate for US$89. That's about 1/10th of a cent per MB. That means that hard drives cost just 1/15000th of what they costed 18 years ago. That's what I call progress!

 

[Jeff7]

This time I asked the sales to NOT demagnitize the security tab in the hard drive box. Now it seems okay, for now.

Holy crap, they do that? I know that the security pad things where I work at K-mart would nuke anything - I've seen a bit of the guts of those. Big coils of wires, and they put out a very powerful electromagnetic blast - they'd probably nuke just about any form of magnetic media. I wonder if Best Buy uses a different kind of deactivator?

 

[Apatewnas]

Well, I've been seeing bad sectors on WD HDD's eversince the days of the 250MB models so... buying some other HDD is a good move...

 

[Chaotic42]

I just ordered the 80GB 7200rpm one with 8MB cache (cool), so I hope it's just bad luck. I did have a WD 3.1GB drive, back when that was awesome (like 128K of cache or something) and it was amazing. That thing lasted me through my "hey I wonder if it's hot swappable" phase, 2 power surges, a drop into soapy water by a friend, and countless instances of being dropped. It was truly a rock solid drive.

 

[Chaotic42]

<< I just love it when I see "I will never, ever, buy BRAND X again!" posts here because of one or two technical glitches or defective items. >>


Slightly OT:
Then you'd love this. Look at Uthanatos's post.

The guy complains about them not living up to their promises. Turns out he wanted 10 items for $0 a pop.

 

[Adul]

My WD 30 Gb drive died on me. I think it was jealous of my 60 Gb maxtor I put in, so it commited suicide.

 

[sniperruff]

"Cracking hard drive never last long."
really? my 4.3 gig WD loads with this cracking noise and it lasted for 4 years.... =D

 

[Insidious]

I have two WD30's and two WD40's......... all from BB........ One was bad out of the box, exchanged it and all 4 have been fine for quite some time now.

I think the security strip de-magnetizing thing is a definite possibility for the problem. Next vote goes to the dumbazz that dropped them off his forklift

Anyway, for mid-price HDs, I like them.

 

[Agent004]

<< Bad luck... but it's not like WD has the best track record.. I won't buy them just yet until they are more proven... Maxtor has been the best for me overall...

HD's are one of the most important decisions in a PC, and only the best will get chosen... because of that, the only drives I trust fully are Seagate, Maxtor, Quantum, Fujitsu.. WD and IBM are not quite on par if you ask me >>



Can't trust seagate nor maxtor (quantum is part of it now, so no no too ), I like Fujitsu and WD

So don't trust anyone's opinion on which hd to get, best to found them out youeself. If you have nice experience on a particular line of hard drive, stick with it since there is no reason to switch.

Unless you are looking for performance, or price (budget) , then other people's opinion are accountable.

 

[whazzzzzup]

i have 4 wd hd's now! 40, 60, 80 and my new 120 8mb buffer ...all run perfect! only encountered one bad one...a 60gb...exchanged it and now working great....

 

[Passions]

Sounds like user error to me.

 

[microAmp]

<< Absoloutely a case of bad luck... >>

 

[kgraeme]

<< Hehe, re my earlier post about why would you buy from BB, I figured (or was hoping) there must have been some kind of hot deal thing in the past. So it was kind of a smart ass comment but also hoping to bring some education to the masses about pricing strategies. Thanks for pointing out the kind of deals that are ocassionally available and I hope I didn't hurt your feelings! >>



There's also the significant advantage that he didn't have to pay shipping and restocking fees sending it back to Newegg. I buy retail just for this. I do wait for good deals though.



<< Can't trust seagate nor maxtor (quantum is part of it now, so no no too ), I like Fujitsu and WD >>



Fujitsu is out of the ide drive business, so it looks like you're down to WD.

 

[sglurker]

i got my WD 80gig for about 4 months, and the past 2-3 weeks its been making that scratching noise, and now its making a crackling noise.. hopefully it wont die on me till a few more years..

but my question is, do you guys rma it after the hd dies or do you do it b4 it dies (like once u start hearing strange noises)

and if the hd dies, can they still transfer your data over to the newer drive?

 

[HalfCrazy]

I own a Western Digital 80gig hdd and it's been in service since 10/2001. Been using it without any problems at all and I owned many Western Digital hard drives in the past. I only owned 2 Maxtor hard drives and the rest of them was Western Digital. Don't get my wrong there is nothing wrong with Maxtor hard drives. It's just when I go and buy my hdd's I just like to have one jumper on them.