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Author Topic: 3 western digital drives failed  (Read 18579 times)

awofinden

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3 western digital drives failed
« on: January 14, 2008, 06:00:25 pm »

I have just had 3 western digital 500 gb hard drives fail on me over the last couple of weeks, one of which was a replacement that they sent me when I called to complain. Beware. I just replaced them with maxtor one touch 4 and a lacie drive (both 500gb), so far so good.
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picnic

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3 western digital drives failed
« Reply #1 on: January 14, 2008, 06:04:27 pm »

Quote
I have just had 3 western digital 500 gb hard drives fail on me over the last couple of weeks, one of which was a replacement that they sent me when I called to complain. Beware. I just replaced them with maxtor one touch 4 and a lacie drive (both 500gb), so far so good.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=167162\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I had read about this on dpreview/storage.  I was about to buy a 1T external for backup of my 7 other externals.  There are several cases of the MyBook failing.  I bought a Seagate 1T with 5 yr. warranty and my computer guys ordered an enclosure for it.


Diane
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jjj

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3 western digital drives failed
« Reply #2 on: January 14, 2008, 07:15:59 pm »

I have 4 of them!!    And 2 Buffalos and 6 LaCies. And a HP WHS for backing up.  Really need to get some 1TBs as all those 500Gs seem so small these days and fill up so fast.
When did you buy these drives? I'm hoping it's a recent batch as a replacement also failed - mine are 6 + 12 months old.
« Last Edit: January 14, 2008, 07:16:13 pm by jjj »
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walter.sk

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3 western digital drives failed
« Reply #3 on: January 14, 2008, 08:28:50 pm »

Quote
I have 4 of them!!    And 2 Buffalos and 6 LaCies. And a HP WHS for backing up.  Really need to get some 1TBs as all those 500Gs seem so small these days and fill up so fast.
When did you buy these drives? I'm hoping it's a recent batch as a replacement also failed - mine are 6 + 12 months old.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=167184\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I've had problems with external drives from Western Digital and Maxtor.  The failures turned out to be in the interface circuitry.  I bought 3 new external enclosures and transferred the hard drives from their enclosures and they have been running now for some time with no problems.

They were all firewire/USB2 drives, and failed months apart of each other.  I think their interface boards are particularly susceptible to small voltage drops in the power lines.

If your external drive goes bad, don't panic. first try an external case and transfer the drive.  If that doesn't work you're only out some $40 or so which will be a drop in the bucket compared with a file-rescue company if you haven't backed up the data.
« Last Edit: January 14, 2008, 08:29:50 pm by walter.sk »
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larryg

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3 western digital drives failed
« Reply #4 on: January 14, 2008, 09:41:56 pm »

Actually I just purchased three of the 500 gb  drives  (my book)  
i have had significant problems with Maxtor and Lacie 500 GB  it wasn't the drive itself but the interface as above.  I just switched to anothre enclosure purchased at Staples for $39  it worked fine and has continued to work.

What a head ache
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awofinden

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3 western digital drives failed
« Reply #5 on: January 15, 2008, 06:55:47 am »

Quote
Actually I just purchased three of the 500 gb  drives  (my book) 
i have had significant problems with Maxtor and Lacie 500 GB  it wasn't the drive itself but the interface as above.  I just switched to anothre enclosure purchased at Staples for $39  it worked fine and has continued to work.

What a head ache
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=167206\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I just replaced my mybook drives with maxtor and lacie drives, so far so good but it seems there all a bit dodgy, what a pain. Why cant someone make a drives that actually works reliably, imagine how much you could charge for it.
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amsp

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3 western digital drives failed
« Reply #6 on: January 15, 2008, 12:25:34 pm »

I just bought 2 x iomega Ultramax 1TB. So far I'm very satisfied. Both the mybooks and the Maxtor OneTouch has a bad rep. it seems.
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plugsnpixels

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3 western digital drives failed
« Reply #7 on: January 15, 2008, 03:14:38 pm »

I've used EZQuest, Maxtor and now MyBook (320) for imaging labs and handling data, and none have failed. I know someone with a LaCie that failed, and couldn't even be reformatted.

Out of the three I like the MyBook best--it's small, quiet and doesn't need drivers (like the Maxtor). I've read good things about OWC (Other World Computing) drives on a mactec forum, but haven't tried these myself. I think I would get one of those when I'm next in the market.

At any rate, always keep a duplicate backup of your external data (I keep a set on the office Mac's internal drive and a set on a second internal drive at home), besides archiving to DVD regularly.
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allan67

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3 western digital drives failed
« Reply #8 on: January 16, 2008, 04:13:37 am »

Quote
I've used EZQuest, Maxtor and now MyBook (320) for imaging labs and handling data, and none have failed.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=167388\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Another vote for MyBook drives. I have 2 of these (both 500Gb) running via e-SATA ports on PROMISE TX4302 card. The first is about a year old and the second is about 4 months. Both are doing just fine without any problems.
Another good thing about them is that they are fully power managed by the system. They go to sleep, wake up, etc. as the normal internal drives.
They are even recognized at start-up time, so you can boot from them if needed.

Allan
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sniper

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3 western digital drives failed
« Reply #9 on: January 19, 2008, 06:22:10 am »

I suspect the huge demand for external drives has caused production problems, maybe they are having to source components from new suppliers? or worse still having the drives made elsewhere?  
A rather worrying problem  though.  Wayne
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BernardLanguillier

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3 western digital drives failed
« Reply #10 on: January 19, 2008, 10:21:14 am »

It is probably better to be conservative and to use Raid 6 instead with a slightly older design like the Hitachi 1TB...

Cheers,
Bernard

spidermike

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3 western digital drives failed
« Reply #11 on: August 02, 2008, 06:05:28 am »

I was speaking with our Company's head of IT on this and apparently he won't touch 500GB drives because of reliability issues. So until there is reliable evidence otherwise he sticks with 250GB or 320GB.
He made no comment on the 1TB drives.
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ericisaac

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3 western digital drives failed
« Reply #12 on: August 02, 2008, 10:40:13 am »

I've had horrible luck with the Western Digital MyBook Drives. Unfortunately my problems were drive related, not enclosure. I wrote an article on my experience and what came of it here: http://realworldworkflow.com/blog/?p=171
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Ray

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3 western digital drives failed
« Reply #13 on: August 02, 2008, 10:35:46 pm »

It's certainly a bit of a worry. I recently contemplated buying a 2TB MyBook, but had second thoughts and decided that the risk of losing 2 TBs of data in one hit was too great. Instead, I bought a couple of 320GB WD passport pocket drives at A$179 each.

I don't know how reliable these pocket  drives are. I've been using a LaCie 100GB and WD 250GB pocket drive for the past year or two with no problems.

I've experienced just one external hard drive failure so far, a 500GB LaCie Big Disk. I suspect it was due to overheating. That aluminium heat sink case used to get unbelievably hot to the touch.

Because of this ever present risk of losing heaps of data through hard drive failure, I always burn my RAW images to DVD, even though it's a slow and tedious process. One might still lose a lot of processed images through hard drive failure and the time and work that the processing entailed, but the RAW file is the most important data.
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peteh

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3 western digital drives failed
« Reply #14 on: August 03, 2008, 03:02:07 am »

Quote
It's certainly a bit of a worry. I recently contemplated buying a 2TB MyBook, but had second thoughts and decided that the risk of losing 2 TBs of data in one hit was too great. Instead, I bought a couple of 320GB WD passport pocket drives at A$179 each.

I don't know how reliable these pocket  drives are. I've been using a LaCie 100GB and WD 250GB pocket drive for the past year or two with no problems.

I've experienced just one external hard drive failure so far, a 500GB LaCie Big Disk. I suspect it was due to overheating. That aluminium heat sink case used to get unbelievably hot to the touch.

Because of this ever present risk of losing heaps of data through hard drive failure, I always burn my RAW images to DVD, even though it's a slow and tedious process. One might still lose a lot of processed images through hard drive failure and the time and work that the processing entailed, but the RAW file is the most important data.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=212673\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
So far None of 8 Seagate internal and external drives have failed for 7 years now.Some are newer.Maxtor is owned by Seagate now.I've had small ,like 80 GB Western Digital Passport drives work very well too.My books seem to fail , quite often from reading about them.
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Dansk

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3 western digital drives failed
« Reply #15 on: August 03, 2008, 01:55:00 pm »

WD blows I've had two crap out recently. What a pita
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jecxz

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3 western digital drives failed
« Reply #16 on: August 03, 2008, 02:05:20 pm »

Quote
I have just had 3 western digital 500 gb hard drives fail on me over the last couple of weeks, one of which was a replacement that they sent me when I called to complain. Beware. I just replaced them with maxtor one touch 4 and a lacie drive (both 500gb), so far so good.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Visit this site:

[a href=\"http://support.wdc.com/warranty/index_end.asp?lang=en]http://support.wdc.com/warranty/index_end.asp?lang=en[/url]

Click Warranty Check. Input your hard drive serial #. If in warranty, they will ship you a new drive, take a credit card # (not charge you) and wait until you ship the defective one back. If they don't get yours back in the specified time, they charge your card.

If this has already been said, sorry for the repeat. Good luck and be well.

Kind regards,
Derek Jecxz
« Last Edit: August 03, 2008, 02:06:47 pm by jecxz »
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budjames

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3 western digital drives failed
« Reply #17 on: August 03, 2008, 02:13:51 pm »

Knock on wood, I'm having no problems with the 4 x 1TB Seagate Barracuda drives in my MacPro, the 4 x 1TB Seagate Barracuda drives in my ReadyNAS NV+, or the 4 x 750GB Seagate drives that I installed myself into OWC triple interface external enclosures. The 4 x 750 drives were originally in my MacPro, but I upgraded to 1TB drives.

In the past, I've had problems with various Lacie Big Disk and Bigger Disk externals as well as one recent Iomega UltraMax 1.5 TB external. All of these drives experienced internal circuit issues. I removed the drives and installed them in new external enclosures and the drives worked fine.

I have an OWC Mercury portable 320GB and WD 250GB portable for use with my MacBookPro and I have had no issues with these.

A friend of mine owns 2 Apple retail stores. His tech guys recommend Seagate drives.

Cheers.
Bud James
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