I have owned 11 of the WD greens.
4 of them were 1TB, all are still alive and kicking after 1-2 years.
7 of them were 2TB, 6 of the 7 have failed within a year. 4 of them were new purchases, 3 of them were replacements for failures. 4th failure I just gave up and never sent it back in. They were purchased from varied retailers as well. Some retail, some OEM.
Going from memory here, but i think the EARS versions died the fastest. Wanting to say 4 of the 2TB's were EARS drives. (2 new, 2 replacements) The EARS drives showed a gradually increasing reallocated sector count before finally throwing in the towel. The others just bombed with no warning, one day they just started making a lot of noise and Windows threw error messages.
All of the PC's these were in were well set up and fan cooled, fed by reliable PSU's hooked up to a UPS and they were not all in the same PC.. some have seen totally new street addresses. Hard to pin all those failures on some common factor.
Not trying to crap on the deal, more of a heads up for buyers. Back these up if you purchase. Even if they were new and not refurbs. Having to re-rip my entire CD collection made me want to have a rage stroke.
Damn. Tempting but all you guys talking about a high failure rate makes me wonder why I should bother.
Buy them then sell them on ebay with 10 months on the warranty. I do this with many of the hdds I use personally, I sell them with about 10 to 12 months on the warranty. Cuts down failure rate a lot. I grabbed this and will sell it in about a year. So I am leasing it or renting it. I will most likely get 40 to 50 clear next year when I sell it. Of course it is more work to do.
sounds like a dick move...I guess as long as the buyers know what they are gambling on....still seems a little shady
When I buy stuff on ebay I try my damndest to avoid people like that ..who are just trying to unload almost out of warranty stuff so that someone else can take the fall
I have one of these on the way. It will be my first 2TB drive because up until now all of the failures rates I heard about have made me stay away. I was fine buying Sumsung 1TB F3's for $50-$55 w/shipping. It seems like every drive larger than 1TB has issues with high failure rates. With the prices of the F3 1TB going to $199 after the flood I stopped buy drives and started to make space on the drives I have. That is getting harder to do,so I thought I would give one of these a try. If it dies early, I will go back to the Samsung F3's until they are gone. I was/am passed that Samsung sold their hard drive line.
And they're Green drives. They'll die within a year.
How do you know this? My wd20ears has been rolling for over a year and it's still fine, never once had a single hiccup.
Deal is dead again.
The failure rate is real. Anecdotal evidence is fine, but I can supply a real data point: I work for a major SAN vendor, and these failed our qualification tests. Badly. We really hoped to use them, but they were some of the least reliable drives we have ever had in our lab.
And those were new, enterprise-binned drives. The consumer-binned drives will be even worse.
As a previous poster said -- this isn't threadcrapping, just fair warning. There are plenty of good reasons to buy an unreliable drive at such a great price, as long as you know what you're getting yourself into.
Ok, please provide a published report with the "real data". All you've provided so far is hearsay and no different that our real world experience. You tested enterprise-binned drives, which is NOT the same as the consumer drives. You're mearly using data that doesn't support the results of the actual product to draw a conclusion = opinion, not real data.
The failure rate is real. Anecdotal evidence is fine, but I can supply a real data point: I work for a major SAN vendor, and these failed our qualification tests. Badly. We really hoped to use them, but they were some of the least reliable drives we have ever had in our lab.
And those were new, enterprise-binned drives. The consumer-binned drives will be even worse.
As a previous poster said -- this isn't threadcrapping, just fair warning. There are plenty of good reasons to buy an unreliable drive at such a great price, as long as you know what you're getting yourself into.
I ordered one a couple of days ago. It arrived DOA. Now going through the RMA process...going to stay away from these drives in the future.
Mine is waiting for me at work. I'll update you guys on Monday.
Is this pre or post flood failure rate? Which drives? I've used 100 or so RE4's in different arrays over the past couple of years and have not had a failure yet. Some people I know consider them the most reliable drives they've used.
I can't even find them in stock since the flood, and I sure hope their quality control has gone to crap since then.
sounds like a dick move...I guess as long as the buyers know what they are gambling on....still seems a little shady
When I buy stuff on ebay I try my damndest to avoid people like that ..who are just trying to unload almost out of warranty stuff so that someone else can take the fall
Mine is alive. Passed WD short test. Running full scan right now. Drive is from 2010 and
has about 1.5 yrs left of warranty.
Drive was in an antistatic bag put into a bubble envelope. That was on the bottom of a big
box with air bags on top. Drive was free to move around the box. Even if it passes I going to RMA it.
Can't trust it after all the reviews and the crappy shipping.
OK, the drive I got (wonderful packing, CDW, idiots.. packed in padded envelope in large box with air pockets that did nothing to secure the drive from impact) is a WD20EADS.
Mine is alive. Passed WD short test. Running full scan right now. Drive is from 2010 and
has about 1.5 yrs left of warranty.
Drive was in an antistatic bag put into a bubble envelope. That was on the bottom of a big
box with air bags on top. Drive was free to move around the box. Even if it passes I going to RMA it.
Can't trust it after all the reviews and the crappy shipping.
ROFL - mine too - padded ~8"x10" envelope in the BOTTOM of a cardboard box with air bags above it. OTOH, CrystalDiskInfo shows 18 power ons, 121 hours and no reallocated sectors... WD20EARS here.
Richard
Yeah, downloaded that app, everything looks great as far as the SMART info goes, no errors or reallocated sectors, few hours... this is a drive straight from the factory, no idea why it's "B-Stock". It's also very quiet.