Fed up with Western Digital

Samsung Spinpoint drives are held in high regard, but then again, so are Western Digital Blue and Black lines. You will find very few people here who would suggest a drive from WD's "Green" lineup.

All of the WD drives I have had over the last 15 years are still working fine today, save for the small size and slower tech from years past. I have had only 2 drives go bad in those years and they were other brands. I have never used WD's green drives since I'm more into performance than economy so I can't vouch for there quality. I do wonder sometimes if bad drives are less an issue of manufacturing concerns and more an issue of how they were handled once they left the factory. You never know how gently the shippers handled your wares or if some clumsy store employee knocked it off the shelf.

---Max

anyone who has used a green drive should tell you that they are just for storage. If you're gonna install an OS on it go with the Black ones. Ubrales has good sugestions.

I have old 1 and 2 GB WD drives that still work. Even though they are pretty darn reliable you will get a dud every now and then. That's why you need to backup everything, always, without exception ^_^

I'm one of them, I'm afraid. They're not for the performance minded, of course, but they're quiet and run very cool compared to the 7200rpm drives, so they're ideal for use in external, unventillated enclosures. I have a total of five 1TB and 2TB WD green drives, four of which are used for onsite and offsite cycles of backups. I've had them for around 18 months so far and haven't had the slightest issue with any of them.

I have 2 WD Green 1 TB in RAID 1. One died about a year ago but the replacement and the surviving drive work well. Storage or external use is their speciality.

I've been using WD drives since 1997, never had a single one fail.

Most of the time if a drive is DOA or fails within a year, it's from being banged around in shipping.

Ever seen a UPS truck go over a speedbump, yeah I cringe every time I see it thinking about how many hard drives are on that truck.

hello i have a couple of questions and a few comments

first whats their bad return policy? i know years ago i had a wd that died well multiple ones and when they went bad it was they was good one day the next totally dead. at that time and assuming you wanted to get a replacement and try to salvage your data you have to pay the full retail price of the replacement and they'd then credit you back when they got the rma'd drive. thats probably one of the worst return policies, discounting msi, ati, and acer that i've run into, which i won't even get into other than to state acers tech department are incompetent and can't even diagnose a problem that only requires trying to turn on a monitor, which i guess holding the on button for 2 mins is acceptable for them.

wow that was longer than i planned.

ok a few comments,

much to my displeasure (i had never bought any wd since then until recently, within the last year or so), all the best valued hard drives have been the wd green ears version of the 2tb drives (i know have 3 all bought at different times). the oldest of them i think it about a year or so old and its running just fine and quite.

here's what i noticed especially when used externally in a docking station they do run much much cooler than a 1tb samsung spin point drive which gets really hot, which bothers me.

because of the past experience with wd i've set up two of the 2tb drives to back each other up that way when one goes bad, and i assume it will sooner or later, i've had very few drives thats never gone bad, but i'll say its gotten much much better in recent years, for the longest time no matter what brand i bought they all went bad in a year but maxtor always had the best returns and cross-shipping without charging full price and when they went bad it was noticeable long before they died completely. i'd say most drives are holding up for years now that i had, in fact i don't think i've done an rma for a hard drive in at least 5 or 6 years now, i have a handful of ide's sitting on a shelve that still work fine other than being ide and one only being 20gigs, yikes.

anyways i hope this helped a little and i really am curios to their current return policy.

thanks

ryan from orlando

First off Thanks for all the really quick and helpful replies. I am still relatively new to building computers though I have been dealing with and cannibalizing computers for parts for a while.

I just get jumpy for the most part because I know how my luck goes and anything that can happen will happen and at the worst possible time (I'm in medic school and don't really need to wait for an RMA). TO answer rgs80074: In order to get the drive in a reasonable amount of time I had to have my card charged the retail price of the drive and return the drive in the box they sent the replacement drive in. Just a big hassle especially when I'm an EMT-Basic and don't make that much money (which is why I went with the green to begin with). Took longer than I would have liked to get the money back in my account.

If i had known about the green series not being good for OS I would have definitely gotten the black line. I like those two drives you linked Ubrales. The funny thing is I do play lots of games and I have a really good build for the most part but I had to go cheep as possible when I could and the HDD just happened to be one major spot I wasn't seriously concerned with thinking most drives of a reputable company like WD were created more or less equal.

Every time I read on this forum or post a question I get tons of help. Thanks again for all the replies!

Best answer selected by infirmumdeum.

As long as you understand that all hard drives can crash and take precautions, you should be fine. Make sure you've got backup copies of anything that's important, and a hard drive crash will be no more than a minor inconvenience.

Best advice I heard all day.

woah, that seagate drive is $59 on the Canadian newegg. I'm definitely grabbing one of those now.

Nice! Same as the US price! I have 5 of those Seagates, and 2 of the WDs. Will get some more WDs on Black Friday!

Me, too. Also just for storage.