Caution: Western Digital Hard Drive.

[SFang]

Bought two Western Digital, 7200RPM 80GB and 120GB, absolutely HATE it.

The 80GB one, have cracking sound since the very beginning. Each time, I open a window or a browser, it has the cracking sound like hell. Called WD support, said that it was the harddrive arm touching the inner side of the hard drive enclosure, blah, blah, totally BS. Cracking hard drive never last long. Fortunately, it is still within 30 days of my purchase from BestBuy. Returned and exchanged one. Unfortunately, this one doesn't even work at all. I couldn't detect it from my BIOS at all. Returned to Bestbuy for testing, the manager managed to make it work, but only in slave mode. Neither master nor Cable select works. Have to exchange it again. This time I asked the sales to NOT demagnitize the security tab in the hard drive box. Now it seems okay, for now.

The 120 GB one, started to have bad sectors in the first seven days I purchased it from BB. Windows XP reported hardware failure, scandisk reported error at the booting session. DOS boot, Reformat it, start bad sector recording at the beginning of the formating. Just returned and exchanged another one from BB, still formating it.

Overall, I have been very unsatisfied with the Western Digital harddrive.

Comparingly, I bought three Maxtor 7200 RPM 40GB last year, two Diamond max 60, one D740x. Quiet and fast, never give me trouble, love it.

 

[Legendary]

I think you're just having isolated incidents, or maybe just a bad batch (if WD even works that way) I've bought more WD drives in the past 6 months than I can count with my fingers and they all work perfectly and blazingly fast.

 

[crab]

Absoloutely a case of bad luck...

 

[SgtZulu]

yup sounds like operator error to me

 

[SFang]

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.

 

[HalfCrazy]

I got a Western Digital 80gb 7,200rpm hard drive. But it was made in the first part of Aug 2001 in Malaysia. The hdd is working without any problems at all.

 

[microAmp]

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



Yeah, will agree. Had been using a 20 Gig WD and just got the 120JB w/o any problems. Plus another friend I built a computer for hasn't any problems for a year now.

Rotten bad luck!

 

[billyjak]

The saga continues.
My WD 1200JB rocks
Could very well be a bad batch. or motherboard bios instabilities, did you look for a bios update

 

[hopeless879]

Bad Luck

I've had 2 WD 30gb 7200, running in raid for about a year now. No problems.
.

 

[JellyBaby]

Morale of the story: never buy hard drives from Beast Buy.

 

[CraigRT]

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

 

[cholley]

i have had more trouble with WD drives than all other brands combined

 

[TheCollective]

I have 3. A 20, 30, and now a 120 that ALL run flawlessly. I have used WD HDD's in my systems for years without problems. Sounds like bad luck.

 

[chrisfrog]

every person has troubles with every different kind of hd, most are just isolated incidents like someone said earlier....

except for ibm of course

 

[steelthorn]

I have three computers all running WD hard drives and none have failed me yet. My oldest on a 20 gig has been working for
two years now. I love WD!

 

[dbwillis]

Ive had several WD drives and not had any problems.
20gb/7200rpm, ran fine for a year, sold
30gb, 5400rpm, runs fine still
80gb/7200rpm, ran fine for ayear, sold
120gb/7200/2mb, (2) running fine (3 weeks)
120gb/7200/8mb, (1) dont know how it runs, just got delivered today!

 

[circut16]

You got another WD fan!

 

[Workin']

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.

I think you've just had bad luck or something. I've used many, many dozens of WD drives over the past decade, and only one has failed. As a matter of fact, I've used piles of WD, Maxtor, Seagate, Quantum, Fujitsu, and Samsung drives over the years, and coincidentally, I've had only one drive of each brand ever fail. That's weird. And never had one DOA from any manufacturer.

 

[Dreadogg]

like I said in a earlier post its time for another HD company to take a fall I am putting my money on WD! I have already sold my stock what about you?

 

[Dundain]

I'd say bad luck there man. Ive never had a problem with any Western Digital drives outside of an 8Gb drive that was DOA; out of the 20+ Ive used in systems in the past 3 years...thats not bad at all. Much better than the IBM kill ratio...let alone Maxtor.

 

[jandaman]

I have the WD 60 gig 7200 RPM drive too and it started to make loud noises and would freeze my PC. Sounded like the heads crashing. Needless to say, I RMA'd it and WD was nice enough to send a replacement first ( need to give CC though) so that I can transfer whatever files that were still there to my new drive. Currently using the replacement drive and no unusual sounds yet.

 

[GrumpyMan]

Sometimes those knuckle heads at the store drop them when they are pulling them out of the boxes to put out on display. I've had WD drives for years and I have not had one go bad yet. I must be lucky or something.

 

[Wolfsraider]

<< Sometimes those knuckle heads at the store drop them when they are pulling them out of the boxes to put out on display >>



lol so true so true

 

[JohnnyPC]

If I had five hard drives all from different mfg together in a pile and was told that I could keep only one...I'd pick the WD....

 

[Whitedog]

It's true, you just have had a bad stroke of luck.

Of all the hard drive problems that people have posted, the least have been about WD hard drives.

Though they aren't the top performing drives, they certainly have earned a fair reputation for stable drives among the AT Forum populous.


In My Own Opinion... ALL IDE HARD DRIVES SUCK ONION SACKS! hehe

I've finally finished populating both my computers with SCSI drives and have rid myself of IDE Crap drives forever. I'll never use another.

I have an 18 and 36 gig Ultra160 in this one and 2 - 18's in my server. I can finally say goodbye to hard drive problems. I don't think I've ever went more than 8 months without some kind of quirky thing happen with an IDE drive.

Sure I have less drive space and have payed a bit more for my storage, but now that I am a developer by profession, computer data is worth WAY too much $$$$ to store it on unreliable IDE crud.

my .02

Oh, and BTW, HD Tach scores for the fastest IDE drives are like 12ms access time.

Everyone of my SCSI drives score <9ms. My fastest drive drive; the 36gig 10krpm scores 7.5ms Access time! Nevermind what those Drive Manufacturers tell you... that your IDE drive access time is 9ms. It's not. That's a Load. Run HD Tach on it and see for yourself.
I can't even Tell you how much faster this machine is with the Ultra160 SCSI drives in it. It Is!

Go SCSI - Hell with IDE