Western Digital Drive Faillures

[Scott Davis]

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

 

[Rod Speed]

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.

 

[CSS]

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..

 

[Mark M]

I've changed over to Samsung P80 drives myself.

You too, eh?

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

 

[Rod Speed]

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.

 

[Papa]

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.

..

 

[Edwin Fine]

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]

Western Digital drives are CRAP!!! I have a Western Digital Caviar WD400JB
"Special Edition." THREE MONTHS OLD and the bearing noise has become
intolerable. Was quiet when it was new. But after the first month it
started to get loud. Finally couldn't take it any more and get a Seagate
Barracuda 7200.7 - ST340014A. The difference is like night and day. With
the Seagate I don't even know I have a hard drive in my system. The only
sounds that come from my case are the fans. With the WD, it was a constant
high-pitched whine. Drove me nuts! I'll probably keep the WD as a backup
drive for my data. But otherwise it will stay on a shelf in the closet.
Or maybe I'll install it in a system that doesn't sit on my desk. But if
anybody is looking for a quiet drive, DO NOT BUY A WESTERN DIGITAL. WD
DRIVES ARE NOISY!

 

[Wayne Youngman]

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

 

[Cheah TE]

| 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 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.

 

[Mark M]

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


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

I believed that was broadly true here in the UK too until I found one
or two suppliers were selling them at a decent discount to the major
brands.

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.


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

To make sense of what I wrote replace "this" with "thing".

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

Initially it was a hard slog finding retailers who sold Samsung. I
had to contact Samsung themselves to get a few leads.

 

[Pavel]

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.


: 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
:
:
:

 

[Pavel]

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.

: 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
:
:
:

 

[NSX]

Bought 16 WD drives last month, 2 were DOA, 1 failed 2 days later and I
just had a call today another is making loud clicking and "grinding"
noises.

Very small sample, I'll admit but 25% failure rate isnt funny to the
client or my reputation. Don't know if the drives are simply part of a
"bad batch" or if WD QA problems have returned.

Will be switching back to Maxtors for the time being.

 

[yomama]

Bought 16 WD drives last month, 2 were DOA, 1 failed 2 days later and I
just had a call today another is making loud clicking and "grinding"
noises.

Very small sample, I'll admit but 25% failure rate isnt funny to the
client or my reputation. Don't know if the drives are simply part of a
"bad batch" or if WD QA problems have returned.

Will be switching back to Maxtors for the time being.

I just retired a Maxtor 5400 100G a few minutes ago. Was getting
flakey in one spot and chkdsk /r wouldn't run all the way through.
Was able to run killdisk from dos floppy to zero all the data though.
(great freeware)

It also had problems booting up sometimes. Would find itself on
second try usually. This was the only one of four Maxtor's I've had
that went bad. Also the latest ;(

Anyway, I was wondering which Western Digital models you bought.

I'm currently running the 200G/8M and 250G/8M ide models.

So far (3mo/1mo) so good. (Fry's)

PS that 10k rpm, 37Gig, SATA drive with the 5 year warranty looks like
the system disk of choice these days.
umm.. this one:

Western Digital WD360GD "Raptor" 36 GB SATA 10K RPM Western Digital's
Enterprise Serial ATA hard drive, WD Raptor, delivers enterprise-class
performance and reliability at a price that is a third lower than SCSI
hard drives. 10,000 RPM rotational disk speed. 5.2 ms average data
seek time. 1.2 million hour MTBF at 100% duty cycle. Rugged,
enterprise-class mechanical platform with high-end bearings and
actuator. 5-year warranty.
Price: $135.95

 

[Terry King]

I bought a WD1200JD SATA drive from scan and the first one made more
noise than a vacum cleaner ! The second one I partitioned into three
drives, the third (E being my games drive and with XP I would get
alot of scandisks occuring on startup complaining there were problems
on E even though it shutdown okay. Yesterday my drive seemed to
completely seize up, get's as far a XP just about to enter the login
screen then freeze. Trying to do get to repair console takes about 30
minutes then didn't allow a prompt to type anything. Finally a fresh
install took another 30 minutes to display the partitions and it
showed that the third partition was 'unknown' format ! Trying to
delete the partition it reported that it could not communicate with
the drive ! I'm not yet 100% convinced it's the drive that's got the
problem but at the moment it's the most likely candidate. I'm already
ordered a Seagate Barracuda which from reviews I've read seem to be
alot more reliable.

I've waited as long as I want for manufactures to iron out the bugs in
Sata so it's pretty annoying to have these kinds of problems !

Terry