- Nov 2, 2000
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Okay, so I'm on my third Western Digital 1200JB drive (120 GB, 7200 RPM, 8 MB cache, etc.) and not because I enjoy buying them. It's because the first two I had flat-out died. The first one, actually a 1200JB sold white-label under the brand MDT, died within a week of installation - and it didn't simply die, it was clicking, scraping, and grinding like nothing I'd ever heard come out of a hard drive before. Sounded like a quieter version of putting a quarter in the garbage disposal. So I RMA'd it and got an identical replacement, only the replacement wouldn't even format successfully the first time. First one dead in a week, second one DOA. So I thought, alright screw the rebranded white-label drive, they must be rebadging their crappy drives on purpose... I'll go buy a Western Digital branded drive. I eventually did so, about six months after the incident with the MDT drives, trotted down to the local PC Club and picked up a WD-labeled 1200JB. It's been running pretty well in my machine since about March or April of this year, so not even six months yet.
However, it is now really starting to worry me. It has been performing much slower lately, Windows is taking much longer to boot (with no change in the number of programs loading at boot) - in fact just now it took upwards of 2 to 3 full minutes to show me the logon screen from a cold boot. I ran the full system check at PCPitstop.com yesterday and it reported the uncached write speed as 0.4 MB/s, when it should be something like 4.5 MB/s (cached speed seemed fine though, comparable to my second HDD, a 3+ year old 20GB Maxtor that has never had a problem). Also, in the Windows event log I have this nice little message saying "The driver has detected that device \Device\Harddisk1\DR1 has predicted that it will fail. Immediately back up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent." Oh yay. Another dying 1200JB. WTF?!?!?
I'm getting the feeling that I need to replace this drive NOW or risk losing a bunch of data. Has anyone else had or heard of similar horror stories with this drive? Any suggestions on a decent replacement? I don't want to waste money on another short-lived drive.
However, it is now really starting to worry me. It has been performing much slower lately, Windows is taking much longer to boot (with no change in the number of programs loading at boot) - in fact just now it took upwards of 2 to 3 full minutes to show me the logon screen from a cold boot. I ran the full system check at PCPitstop.com yesterday and it reported the uncached write speed as 0.4 MB/s, when it should be something like 4.5 MB/s (cached speed seemed fine though, comparable to my second HDD, a 3+ year old 20GB Maxtor that has never had a problem). Also, in the Windows event log I have this nice little message saying "The driver has detected that device \Device\Harddisk1\DR1 has predicted that it will fail. Immediately back up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent." Oh yay. Another dying 1200JB. WTF?!?!?
I'm getting the feeling that I need to replace this drive NOW or risk losing a bunch of data. Has anyone else had or heard of similar horror stories with this drive? Any suggestions on a decent replacement? I don't want to waste money on another short-lived drive.