Western Digital 3200JD

[7amood]

I heard alot about Western Digital's preformance

however, lots of reviews from users put me in a critical position

Some said that the WD won't last for more than 3 months.
Some said that the new big capacity HDs are not safe as a primary backup to keep your big and important files in.
Some said: "Get Segate or Hitachi"

I already ordered WD3200JD after reading Tomshardware's review.
Should I start using it normally?

I'm lost
any advice??

 

[selpaw]

Western Digital drives are quite good actually.

We have been selling them at work for well over 18months now with a very low return rate (say, 200 sold, about 3 gone back for RA).

I use WD and Seagate at home.

320GB of data is a lot to lose if it was to fail... but if the data is very important then you should be burning dvd media, external hard drives, flash drives etc (a few different mediums).

Most of my drives at home are around3 years old, WD and seagate. I have had replaced under warranty 1 WD and 1 Seagate (about 2 months after purchase date, about 3 or 4 years ago).

 

[7amood]

Nice of you Selpaw to share your experience with me. 8)

I am actually getting a DVD+/-RW:
"LG GSA-4167BK 16X Dual Layer DVD±RW Drive"
@ price $45.99 8)

Could you please tell me why did you return your WD and Segate HDs under warrenty, what was their capacity and what was the problem?

If you please could recommend the most trusted HD manufacturers in your opinion, I'll be satisfyed, since HDs seems to be your job.

Anymore experience with high capacity HDs?
I'll be happy to hear em' :roll:

If you have some knowledge in Intel Motherboards...
please share your opinion with me :arrow:
Click

 

[selpaw]

Well...

Bad sectors were developing on the WD, with the seagate Windows was reporting some weird errors and a S.M.A.R.T test said to return the drive for replacement.... Capacity for the WD was 40GB and the Seagate 80gb. This was about 3 o 4 years ago.

Best HDD brand? Hard to say really, as you will find people will base it on their own experience. So for me, Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi, Samsung.


I hope that helps.

Luke

 

[mpjesse]

People who claim that one hard drive manufacturer is better than the other (in terms of reliability) are full of crap. They're all the same these days.

The only distinguishing factor is warranty length and ease of returning drives.

-mpjesse

 

[7amood]

Selpaw:

Thanx a bunch

Mpjesse:

If you would kindly read the part when I asked selpaw about that again:

If you please could recommend the most trusted HD manufacturers in your opinion

I wasn't talking about which is best or what is better
I was trying to get him to share his experience with me since I'm not enough experienced.

 

[sturm]

I have used nothing but western digital drives for like 12 years now. I have a 1.2 gig drive from 93/94 that is still kicking around, 4.3 gig, numerous 30 and 40 gig drives. I am currently running 2x250 sata in raid 0 with a pata 200 gig as main drive. Going on almost a year with no problems.

But in mpjesse defense, :roll: most harddrives are pretty much the same when it comes to dependablility. What differes drives is their noise, heat, warrenty, and customer support.

Now to respond to:

People who claim that one hard drive manufacturer is better than the other (in terms of reliability) are full of crap.

If you had used brand A hard drive and had nothing but problems and switched to brand B and had good luck with them. You would say that brand A was crap, even though other people may have had just the opposite experience, A better than B.
Saying we are full of 'crap' because we like and promote one brand over another is one sure way to get on peoples nerves.

 

[7amood]

I have used nothing but western digital drives for like 12 years now. I have a 1.2 gig drive from 93/94 that is still kicking around, 4.3 gig, numerous 30 and 40 gig drives. I am currently running 2x250 sata in raid 0 with a pata 200 gig as main drive. Going on almost a year with no problems.

Thanx sturm... I'm a little bit relaxed.
now it's all up to the shipping company to take a good care of the shipment.
I'll just hope that the weather will be fine, I don't want the heat to melt the drive

 

[reader850]

My only bad experience was Maxtor about 5 years ago, so I don't buy Maxtor, even though one bad drive back then isn't indicative of their quality today. I buy only WD since then. Sturm is right, it is my personal experience that guides me, plus the reviews I read about how cool and quiet WDs are, plus performance to some extent. I have two WD 3200 JDs and I like them a lot. But they are only 8 and 1 months old, so can't say they'll last as long as my 4 old WD800JBs, 3 to 5 years old, or my 120 or 160, two years old.

 

[apache_lives]

I use seagates personally (quiet and colder or alteast at the time of release, 2x80, RAID0 and 2x20 RAID1), i have a 40gb 7200rpm WD thats noisy, a 40gb 5400rpm maxtor (smart errors but still runs?), its true - go by your own experiences, i stick to seagate.

In my experience (which will be totally diffrent to others) - 8gb samsung - noisy and slow as hell, quantums (fireball, 3-8gb) - half of em had spin/read issues (about 3), but dam fast (and hot aswell as mildly noisy), fujitsu (2-8gb) - cold quiet and decent, and some of the older seagates (200mb-3gb) - bad sectors, and finally i havnt seen and older dead maxtors but there wernt many.

 

[7amood]

My only bad experience was Maxtor about 5 years ago, so I don't buy Maxtor, even though one bad drive back then isn't indicative of their quality today. I buy only WD since then. Sturm is right, it is my personal experience that guides me, plus the reviews I read about how cool and quiet WDs are, plus performance to some extent. I have two WD 3200 JDs and I like them a lot. But they are only 8 and 1 months old, so can't say they'll last as long as my 4 old WD800JBs, 3 to 5 years old, or my 120 or 160, two years old.

Thank you reader856
info you gave me was really helpful.
can't thank you enough since you gave me an expression that WD3200JD is strong since you have 2 of em'

my worst experience:
I hade 2 maxtors 120 GB IDE.
first one died without any warning after 6 months of mid-heavy usage.
second one is sill alive after 6 months. However, it's in a very critical condition. That's why I'm considering getting WD3200JD. (no mo maxto fo me )
it's not that I'm negatively advertising for maxtor.
infact, I hear that their new generation SATA is really fast.

I use seagates personally (quiet and colder or alteast at the time of release, 2x80, RAID0 and 2x20 RAID1), i have a 40gb 7200rpm WD thats noisy, a 40gb 5400rpm maxtor (smart errors but still runs?), its true - go by your own experiences, i stick to seagate.

Thanx for the info
Segate is actually quite and cold
my ant has a 80GB segate and he says that it was never HOT.
In addition... he says that he has a Hitachi HD (40 GB i think) and it can do a the job of a frying pan but it still lives amazingly.

 

[TunaSoda]

Western Digital has always made great HD's, but like any of the other drive companies, they have had a few bad ones, I had two 40gig WD drives die on me in seperate systems within a week of each other! (thats just weird)

Yet, I still use WD

Seagate's are nice and smooth, Maxtor's are FAR better than they used to be, and Hitachi... Hitachi??? they make drives now?

So when is Maxtor going to make a 16mb cache sata 10k?

 

[7amood]

ok... now I have the HD WD3200JD

however, it only shows 289 GB total not 3200 GB :?

I konw I saw this problem somewhere but I don't think a loss of 22 GB could occure???

I did a Return Clusters to Zero test or format but didn't help

should I return the HD?? it's not even 300 GB
could someone please help me?

 

[apache_lives]

3200 GB? thats 32 TB - where did you say you got your HDD and for how much? 8O

I think thats alright cause my 160gb raid setup shows up at ~150, its that dam marketing crap that went on a while ago - where 1mb is 1024kb not 1000kb etc.

On the other hand can anyone confirm thats normal for a 320gb?

 

[RichPLS]

My 250GB drive shows as 232MB formatted

 

[7amood]

Oh I'm sorry
my mistake

Hard Disk: Western Digital 3200JD ( 320 GB )
Capacity: 298 GB

which is 22 GB free

Apache_lives:
I would like to give you the name of the website I purchased the drive from but is it ok to post other website's names in this forum???
I bought this WD3200JD as a Bare Box, 124 USD
could you please tell me about this marketing thing
I know that 1mb = 1024 kb
so they used 1mb as 1000 kb only??


RichPLS:
I think I saw some HDs with 100% capacity as said on the HD
but loosing 22 GB is way more than I can accept
If I knew about that I would have bought a 300 GB
but I sitll think there will be some loss

my HD is missing 8.66% of it's capacity
I don't know if it's ok to let go?? :? is it ok to let go???

 

[RichPLS]

It is because 1 Megabyte (MB) = 1,048,576 Bytes, and it has always been rounded to 1-million Bytes, as it was, so it be written...
Surprized tho someone hasnt sued for false or misleading advertising...

 

[pat]

It is because 1 Megabyte (MB) = 1,048,576 Bytes, and it has always been rounded to 1-million Bytes, as it was, so it be written...
Surprized tho someone hasnt sued for false or misleading advertising...

Small print are explaining all that on most of the ads I've seen.. Yeah, I already thought about that ..

 

[RichPLS]

Did you get any $25 rebates from NEC on that lawsuit several years back. I got two, and did not cash them, I thought it was ridiculous and did not want to be a party to the class action suit...

 

[7amood]

It is because 1 Megabyte (MB) = 1,048,576 Bytes, and it has always been rounded to 1-million Bytes, as it was, so it be written...
Surprized tho someone hasnt sued for false or misleading advertising...

Thanx for the info RichPLS

but do you think a loss of 22 GB is normal considering this theory??

 

[RichPLS]

Simply go to win explorer, select the drive, and then properties it displays bytes and Megabytes...
The bytes is what you bought, you are envisioning that to be the Megabytes which are smaller and right of the bytes...
Got it...

 

[7amood]

Simply go to win explorer, select the drive, and then properties it displays bytes and Megabytes...
The bytes is what you bought, you are envisioning that to be the Megabytes which are smaller and right of the bytes...
Got it...

yes you are 100% right

but 22 GB is.............. *crying*

 

[borandi]

Simply go to win explorer, select the drive, and then properties it displays bytes and Megabytes...
The bytes is what you bought, you are envisioning that to be the Megabytes which are smaller and right of the bytes...
Got it...

yes you are 100% right

but 22 GB is.............. *crying*

This is now standard for HDDs - saying storage as a power of 10 but giving as a power of two(from binary).

This was always the case - I remember buying 40GB HDDs and it only showing 38 or so - its just that with that small amount of data no-one really considered it.

I've just bought a new custom built comp with 2x300GB HDDs and (when it arrives) I've got a feeling its only going to say 270GB = ~300,000,000,000 bytes or so on each.

Such is marketing (and binary)!

 

[dhlucke]

I own two 3200JD's. One of them failed almost immediately, but that happens. Do a full scan of all the sectors on the drive before using it. I didn't do that so I didn't catch that it was a bad drive.

I'd recommend the WD drives. I own a whole bunch of them and they've given me very little problems.

 

[7amood]

Dear TG Forums members
I'd like to thank all of you for sharing your thoughts and experience with me.

However, I noticed something weird.
the red light which is integrated in the case, (the one that turns on when the hard disk is reading/writing data) this light is always on and not blinking at all...

Is this normal for SATA hard disks?
Is it ok to ignore this?

this hard disk is great 8) I like it
WD rulez