Western Digital sucks a$$

I got a western digital Hd in 98, I had to send it back in 99, I
sent it back again in 2000, the date on the drive is april 24 2000, it is now april
20 2002 and the warranty is expired and so is the drive. I was gonna wipe the drive. It was just working fine, but after doing fdisk and then going to format, it starts clicking and I smell it frying. Computer is fine, another drive in there works fine.

Another good story to tell on why not to buy WD.

Never argue with a fool,
a bystander can't tell you apart.
(M. Twain)

Neither did I.

AMD technology + Intel technology = Intel/AMD Pentathlon IV; the <b>ULTIMATE</b> PC processor

Never had one of those thank goodness.
I guess they fixed their problem but Crash must think they are a VIA division
because he doesn't like WD.




<b><font color=blue> I took an I.Q. test today...It came back negative.</font color=blue></b>

Western digital sucks!!

I am writing this because another one of my western digital drives died! As a mater of fact there is only one other WD drive in my possession that still works.

The one that just died was the second to last one. Every other one i have has died.

I don't do any of that bit torrent stuff, or any major video stuff. That means that i have no real reason to keep up with the hard drive race, so my hard drive fleet is getting old in the tooth. Hopefully, they usually stay in service till they are just to small to do any good. Most of them do, except for one brand.

Being the pack rat i am, nothing is thrown away, they just get stored away, working or not. Something i can point to and go, "Yes they had 40meg hard drives when i was young."

When this WD drive died, i pulled everything out of storage and did a tally of brand, drive type, working and non working. the results have basically convinced me to never buy a WD drive again.

The conners were a bit odd. Evidently they don't have the servo tracks printed that strongly. Most of them were working when pulled from service and put away. But it seems that the servo tracks have faded over the years of storage, to the point that most of them don't work, even though there is nothing phisicaly wrong with them,and i know they worked when i put them up. They spin up, try to initialize then spin down again.

I knew i had a lot of those WD caviar drives die (the ones with the tape seal around the perimeter. i stopped buying those things, All the ones i have were dead when i put them in storage, but when they come out with the more classic bolted and gasket-ted tin lid, i gave them another chance. But having two of the three I bought already die. I am not going to be getting any more.

The primary cause of death, to the exclusion of all others causes, is the servo tracks become corrupted by arrant writing. The head runs off track during a write, and takes out a servo track. When it tries to write close to that area again, the missing servo track causes the head to wonder during the next write cycle taking out even more servo tracks. Once you get a damaged servo track, it just spreads through the drive like a cancer. One of the primary things that will cause it to take out the first servo track is turning off the power during a write cycle. The supply voltage starts dropping and it can't maintain head position while it completing the sector it's writing. And you know what happens when the head drifts. It will inevitably take out a servo track. I don't even want to count how many WD drives I have seen die in other people's computers because someone turned off the computer while something was writing, or because of a power glitch.

When i was in school we installed about 34 or so WD caviar drives in some computers as upgrades. About 10 days after they was put in, we had a storm go through that caused the power to glitch about 3 times. within a day, we had six of them back in because they was doing the click of death.

Here is the tally at my home.

Working and installed.
150G samsung
40G WD 400 (The last working WD i have)
25G IBM deskstar
10G quantum
6.3G quantum fireball
4G maxtor
1.2G quntum bigfoot
630M quantum in apple computer.
200M IBM in apple computer.
200M seagate in old dedicated dos game computer.
120M seagate ST3120A in old scrap computer.

Working in storage.
2G seagate medalist. st32132
2.1G quantum bigfoot AT
1.2G quantum bigfoot AT
635M quantum 635AT
428M seagate ST3491A
212M IBM H3256-A3
240M Maxtor 7245
200M Maxtor 7131AT
120M Maxtor 7120
120M Maxtor 7120
120M conner 3104
120M conner 3111
80M Quantum prodrive 80AT
40M Miniscribe 8051A

Dead.
40G western digital 400
30G Western digital 300
15G seagate ST315323A
10G fijitsu MPG3102A
3.2G WD caviar 33100
630M quantum 630AT
540M WD caviar 2540
340M WD caviar 2340
256M WD caviar 2250
80M WD caviar 280
40M WD caviar 140
40M conner CP344
conner CP 30104
conner CP 3000
conner CFS420A
conner CP 30174E

So percentage dead of total are.
WD 88%
Conner 71%
seagate 20%
Quantom 11%
maxtor 0%
IBM 0%

I left out the brands that I only had one drive of.

The funny thing is I have 1 bad quantum and 8 working ones. But i have 1 good western digital and 8 bad ones.