Buyer Beware

HolyShiznit · Jan 14, 2003

My Western Digital 60GB 7200rpm HDD failed within a month. Failed this morning. Won't even detect when the system posts. Clicking noises.......ugh

I'm returning it, and plan on trying Maxtor next time. Maybe others will have a better experience. The funny thing is that my hard disk was the one thing I didn't buy online for my new system. (I got it at Office Max.)


--------------------------------------------------
Guns kill people just like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.

SRT10 · Jan 14, 2003

Just a thought. If you insist on buying low quality drives, you are probably going to get what you pay for; low quality performance. A better drive will cost you a little more but your hard drive is what helps keep things going in the computer, not to mention is the storage center for 99% of the data you put into your computer. Having it fail can cause a lot of heartache. I have owned and currently own two IBM 7200 drives. One newer and one older. Neither have ever failed on me nor have my IBM drives in the past failed. It is what I would recomend for your computer as well. It just isn't worth the hassle of having to buy another drive, reinstall everything and then risk not being able to retrieve important data off of the failed drive. Stay away from both Maxtor and Western Digital. Their past and current service history is less than stellar. Good Luck.

"You only fail if you fail to try"Edited by srt10 on 01/14/03 04:39 PM.

alltaken · Jan 14, 2003

Western digital are the expensive brand over here!!!!!

seagate are the cheap brand here!!!!

so if WD is crap then why did i buy Seagate (ah heck)

lhgpoobaa · Jan 15, 2003

What a ah heck. Then again, i would never buy stuff from a place like officemax or office works. just dunno where there stuff has come from, or what has happened to it before.

Ive had nothing but sucess from online stores.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar - George W. Bush's favorite childhood book.
Note: This book was first published a year after Mr Bush graduated from College.

SRT10 · Jan 15, 2003

Online stores aren't necessarily any better or worse than a local store. They get their products from the same manufacturer. The warm fuzzy you get from buying from a local store is that you are pretty sure that store will be there tomorrow since they have invested in that big shiny building and you will be able to take the device back if it breaks. With an online store, if it is not part of a chain, they can up and leave whenever they want and you get stuck holding the bag. They could be running their warehouse from their home and don't have to have commitment to a building for the public. In terms of the product purchased over the web or from a store, they both get their stuff from the same manufacturer and some manufacturers have better service histories than others. When I mentioned quality earlier, I didn't say that the poorer quality ones were cheaper. Many Western Digital drives are not cheap and many provide the latest in technological advances. But that doesn't mean they are stable and reliable. Seagate drives, well....? Not the best history either. That doesn't mean you won't have great success with one, it just means that they fail more often than others.

"You only fail if you fail to try"

lhgpoobaa · Jan 15, 2003

and there is still a slim chance that any drive one purchaces go bad. The manufacturers try to reduce that risk as much as possible, but the risk is still not zero.

P.S. I only purchace from established online stores in australia. that are well known and well regarded by the auzzie online community.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar - George W. Bush's favorite childhood book.
Note: This book was first published a year after Mr Bush graduated from College.

camieabz · Jan 15, 2003

The bottom line is there are no guarantees, so go with the flow and hope for the best. That's why I recommend that folk get drives with 3 year warranties. Makes for a better chance of getting your money's worth in the long run.

~ <A HREF="http://forums.btvillarin.com/viewtopic.php?t=324" target="_new">My System Specs</A> ~

Crashman · Jan 15, 2003

I've built over a thousand system and Western Digital is #2 on my list of failed drives, Fujitsu is #1 but I rarely come across them. Maxtor drives are actually the ones that have had the fewest failures for me.

You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!

HolyShiznit · Jan 15, 2003

Well I didn't know WD was particularly "low quality". The 'big three' from what I've seen in most stores are Western Digital, Maxtor, and Seagate.

I'll need to have a look at other brands, I guess.


--------------------------------------------------
Guns kill people just like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.

LancerEvolution7 · Jan 15, 2003

Its really funny because if you look recent post regarding what type of HD to buy, I'd say 9 out of 10 would recommend a western digital 8mb. Yet, not one person knows the long term reliability of these drives.

Crashman · Jan 15, 2003

I know that most of mine died around 2.5 years after they were manufactured, and that they carry a three year warranty, which is why I bought mine, the warranty.

You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!

SRT10 · Jan 15, 2003

Many people are recomending the WD 8mb because it provides new technology at a reasonable price. You see WD, Maxtor, and Seagate on the market the most because they are best prices for the storage capacity and features. However..., just because they are sold a lot doesn't say squat about their reliability. Remember that if a person is building a computer for retail sale, what are they looking to do? They are looking to maximize features and benefits, sell it for the lowest price and make the biggest profit. They do this by buying feature packed, low quality products. They know that the products have a warranty so they aren't out any money, and you have a potentially unstable system. As has been discussed, there is a warranty. But if you will go back in time a little to the well known film "Tommy Boy" and remember one of his infamous one-liners about putting a guarantee on a box. If you would like I can take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, but all you're getting is a guaranteed piece of crap (edited for content). Look at Windows, it is the best selling OS, but it isn't the best thing out there and it certainly isn't the most reliable or stable. It's called advertising and good deals to the computer makers. Unless you specify the drive you want when having a customer computer made, the manufacturer will almost always install a mediocre drive. Its how they make money. It is no fun for anybody to have to take the drive out to have it warrantied. It takes a lot of work and time to restore your system to pre crash conditions and hope that you can salvage your files off the drive. There are just certain components you shouldn't skimp on unless the computer you are building is for gaming or other unimportant stuff. If it is your primary piece of computer equipment, get a good motherboard, hard drive, cooling fans and modem (if you surf). The ram across the board is pretty stable unless the board manufacturer specifies an approved maker. The floppy drives and CD-Roms are simple to replace if they fail and don't affect the operation of the PC. The graphics card is basic, but if you do a lot of gaming, get one that is at least somewhat reputable like GeForce or ATI or something. Anyway, my custom built computer is stable and enjoys good performance for the money. It's always about the money.

"You only fail if you fail to try"

HolyShiznit · Jan 15, 2003

Yeah my warranty, as I checked at their site, is good through 10/2005. I can even procrastinate sending it in, if I were so inclined.

Now I want to clear the data off of the drive first though, I can't remember if I had any sensitive docs on it.


--------------------------------------------------
Guns kill people just like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.

Crashman · Jan 15, 2003

I wouldn't procrastinate too long. All my drives that I turned in 3 months before the warranty expired were replaced with drives that died within 3 months of the warranty's expiration. And get this, I could never find anything wrong with the replacement drives when they died. I started suspecting that these things had a BIOS program set to make the thing quite responding at 3 months after the date of the original warranty. I still think they do something there to limit the life of replacement drives, perhaps they have different "grades" of drives and can guess that a certain drive will only last 5 or 6 months, so they wait for this moment? I need an inside track, because I've had this happen too often to consider it a coincidense.

You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!

dhlucke · Jan 15, 2003

Any vendor is going to have it's problems. Recommending IBM though is just too much. There is pretty much not a person here who hasn't had either a 60gxp or a 75gxp crap out on them. Let's wait till they get their act together again.

Yes, the JB's are still new, and who knows what will happen in a year, but so far it has lasted longer than my stupid IBM drive.

Calling WD cheap or Maxtor cheap, or even IBM cheap isn't the answer. I think the answer today is just to buy a HD that still has a 3 year warranty. They're all cheap.

They don't make anything like they used to. My first HD, a 20MB SCSI (MAC) ran for over 6 years before I turned it off. My second drive, a 250MB (MAC) lasted over 6 years before I turned it off. My 3rd drive, a 14.7GB is still running about 4 years into it. My fourth drive, a 27.3GB Western Digital is still running, about 3.5 years into it. My fifth drive, an IBM, died in less than 4 months. I'm on my 6th drive, a western digital 1200JB. Reason being that I've put them in other machines and they've done pretty good. None dead yet, although I'm looking into a 2 year old WD 20GB that might be chocking up.

Lately, it seems everything wants to die within 2 years.


<A HREF="http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?dhlucke" target="_new">Forum Assassin</A>

LancerEvolution7 · Jan 15, 2003

Your right, they don't make things like they used to. My quantum(was it quantum?) bigfoot lasted me 4 years before I sold it.

My two most recent computers used IBM hard drives. One is a two year old piii933 with an IBM ??gxp and my newer 3 month old one is an athlon xp1700 with an ibm 120gxp. Neither has failed me yet.

People don't recommend ibm's newer 120gxp because of their bad history, yet they don't think about wd bad history and recommend the 8mb cache series.

tombance · Jan 15, 2003

My Quantum Fireball 20GB ATA33 5400RPM (came with an eMachine) has lasted 4 years so far, although I do plan on replacing it with a 30GB maxtor ATA133 soon. I believe that drive would have lasted for a long time if I had kept it.

<A HREF="http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=5467618 " target="_new">Almost Breaking 12k!!</A>

HolyShiznit · Jan 15, 2003

Yeah I'm on my backup Quantum Fireball 13.6GB right now. It's been going strong for over 3 years.


--------------------------------------------------
Guns kill people just like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.

Scotty35 · Jan 16, 2003

I think many drives fail from rough handling practices in general, you know the guy out the back of the store wants to get finished to have friday drinks after work and drops a box of drives etc, hard drives do not like that kind of treatment. Same goes to people who install drives roughly and infact I dropped a new drive accidently a few years ago and it made death noises immediately even though it fell only 12", lucky for me the shop didnt ask to many questions hehe.

As I had mentioned in another post I have a Western Digital 30Gb caviar drive in its third pc working happily away no problems. This drive was subjected to some very extreme overclocking some time ago and has many knocks and bumps in its 3.5 years of service, this drive replaced on of those deathstar drives from IBM which died within hours of installation! I have also had two Fujitsu drives that are still working after nearly 5 years, 1 Maxtor that is still alive after 2 years and 1 dead Maxtor that couldnt handle the overclock that day afew years ago.lol

In my system right now there are 4 x wd1200JB drives in raid 0+1 happily churning away. In another system i have a WD400JB handling the punishment from the kids fine.

I have also had a IBM 18.3Gb SCSI drive die a dramatic death under 1 year which was really annoying considering they were ment to more reliable than the IDE drives.

So in my experience it is IBM that has failed me the most and Western digital that has given me the best reliability.
Anyway I am ranting. See ya.

<A HREF="http://forums.btvillarin.com/viewtopic.php?t=326" target="_new"> Scotty's Toys</A>

Edited by scotty35 on 01/16/03 11:30 AM.

HolyShiznit · Jan 16, 2003

It was well-taken-care-of once it left the store. I can only guess the error was from a failed component rather than mistreatment, because it ran well for about a month then suddenly died. I can't remember playing football with my mini-tower during the course of that month.


--------------------------------------------------
Guns kill people just like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.

Scotty35 · Jan 16, 2003

I was not suggesting for one minute you did.LOL.
However all I was saying is that a decent bump can shorten the life of it, even when I shift house I always remove the HDD's from the case and treat them like eggs in transport (they get treated better than the Mrs. but don't tell her that).

<A HREF="http://forums.btvillarin.com/viewtopic.php?t=326" target="_new"> Scotty's Toys</A>

RobD · Jan 16, 2003

Majority of our drives at work that are over 10g are Fujitsu's (the dreaded failing batch at that) and we are replacing them with Maxtors as part of a rolling program. Noticed that quite a few Fujitsu's are in fact IBM's, made for Fujitsu. That could be why some IBM drives are shite, if they have (or did) have a link up with Fujitsu.

I'm running an IBM at home, and so far so good. Maxtor at work, and apart from a faulty batch dated 16th November, they are pretty reliable.

Scotty35 · Jan 16, 2003

I have seen IBM drives with Fujitsu manufacturing writen on them and vice-versa which kind of rings true when Fujitsu took over IBM's hard drive division and to what extent that is I am not sure of, although I do know one of the very senior managers at Fujitsu so I will find out more when we speak next.

<A HREF="http://forums.btvillarin.com/viewtopic.php?t=326" target="_new"> Scotty's Toys</A>

HolyShiznit · Jan 16, 2003

I was not suggesting for one minute you did.LOL.

Yeah I know, I just could not resist the football comment. That's interesting about treating the hard drives like eggs. I might start doing that whenever I move about in the future.


--------------------------------------------------
Guns kill people just like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.

lhgpoobaa · Jan 17, 2003

You should have seen me in the shop when i was buying my 800Jb. The dumb checkout counter girl happily turned it this way and that with little regard to the drives sensitivity, then i just knew she was going to thump it down on the desk once she had found the bar code...but by that time my tortured "arggggh's" of protest made an impression and she gently gave the drive to me!
*phew*

The Very Hungry Caterpillar - George W. Bush's favorite childhood book.
Note: This book was first published a year after Mr Bush graduated from College.

Buyer Beware

Distinguished

Distinguished

Distinguished

Illustrious

Distinguished

Illustrious

Splendid

Polypheme

Distinguished

Distinguished

Polypheme

Distinguished

Distinguished

Polypheme

Polypheme

Distinguished

Distinguished

Distinguished

Distinguished

Distinguished

Distinguished

Champion

Distinguished

Distinguished

Illustrious

Share this page