Is Western Digital having a quality control problem?

[mshan]

http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/Fee...tRatingReview.asp?Item=N82E16822144394

Is this typical of this particular model, or do you think NewEgg just got a bad lot.

More generally, any problems with recent increased failures in the 1600JB or 3200JB drives?

 

[natto fire]

I have never bought a WD since my 540MB Caviar failed on me, (was always noisy too) have never bought a Maxtor since I have had 2 of their drives fail on me. Not that this helps you much, but I am starting to run out of manufacturers. Seagate has yet to fail me, except when a crap Antec PSU took my 7200.7 out. Anyhow WD has always been synonomous with noise and unreliability in my book. (from my personal experience, and seeing/hearing their drives purchased by friends)

 

[CrackRabbit]

Western Digital has had a black mark in my book for about 5 years now due to constantly failing drives or drives that would fail right out of warranty.
I would stay away from them.

 

[Elcs]

This is an example of Hard Drive opinion.

2 examples of problems with Western Digital whereas all throughout the forums, Western Digital will be recommended by many, alongside the name of Seagate. Both companies seem to have had a high standard of QC overall over the past few years.

Personal experience: 4 Western Digital drives in the house. My 80Gb is used by my dad and still working fine after 3-4 years. He also has another WD somewhere in his collection, probably 120 or 160Gb. A 120Gb WD working perfectly fine in the machine next to me and my 200Gb WD working fine also.

My dad has only lost 2 drives in the past 2 years, 1 being Maxtor and the other being a 1997 Fujitsu 10Gb.

Any company can fail and at the moment, Maxtor seem to be the worst with Seagate and WD riding high. As it looks at the minute, Im going Samsung next.

 

[LxMxFxD3]

WD is pure crap. ALways have been.

Maxtor rules. I've NEVER had a maxtor fail (knock on wood).

 

[Tbirdkid]

WD is pure crap. ALways have been.

Another useless post. All hard drive manufacturers have problems. This doesnt mean i would run from them. I have had problems with just about every manufacturers drives. I got lucky with a maxtor that i have had for some time now. Quite happy with it too. I also have a WD800 that has run just as good just a bit slower. Sometimes you just get a bad one. Chock it up to bad luck, and move on. Good luck on your search for good drives though.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

I've got 3 80GB Caviars running 24/7 in RAID 5 right now, and they're perfectly fine.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: Tbirdkid

WD is pure crap. ALways have been.

Another useless post. All hard drive manufacturers have problems. This doesnt mean i would run from them. I have had problems with just about every manufacturers drives. I got lucky with a maxtor that i have had for some time now. Quite happy with it too. I also have a WD800 that has run just as good just a bit slower. Sometimes you just get a bad one. Chock it up to bad luck, and move on. Good luck on your search for good drives though.

:thumbsup:
From the negative view
1) IBM 2) Maxtor 3) all others

I have seen a significant to high failure rate on every Deskstar that came through our doors. In fact, a 20GB failed last week in a firewall ("Hey, what is this clicking sound?"). 4GB SCSI IBMs defined the new standard for stiction (last time I had problems with that was a 40 something MB Seagate MFM - yes, Mega...) Had spot problems with firmware in some Maxtors. All the rest were just normal issues. The Toshibas have a higher failure rate, but not for the abuse they get being mobile.

 

[xanis]

IMO, the most reliable drives out there are Seagates. I've owned a bunch of drives from a bunch of different manufacturers including Hitachi and WD and the most reliable has been my 80GB Barracuda. The WD failed on me and the Hitachi is noisy.

 

[Sunner]

All manufacturers have had their dark times.
IBM with the Deskstart 75GXP's.
Seagate with some of their Medalist series.
WD with some of the earlier Caviars(long time ago).

 

[CrashX]

Originally posted by: LxMxFxD3
Maxtor is pure crap. ALways have been.

WD rules. I've NEVER had a WD fail (knock on wood).

Fixed

 

[Bozono]

I'm running the 160JS SATA II drive for awhile now and no problems. A little noisier than my 80GB IDE WD drive though. I like WD simply because performance is alwys middle of the road and their price can't be beat. They did have noise and failure problems a couple years ago but I'm quite confident those have been addressed.

 

[ElFenix]

random things tend to happen in clusters. at least, that is the pattern that the human brain puts on it. but, there isn't really a pattern, there is just randomness.

 

[Spike]

Another opinion here but my WD drives have always served me well. My old WD 40gb seems to be dying but thats after almost 6 years of constant use, so it did mighty fine in my book. At the moment I have Seagate, Maxtor, and WD drives running in my machines. The maxtor is the loudest by far but it works as a game drive. The seagate is the quietest and is used as my windows drive as well as in a back external. The WD is for file storage (like mp3's) and is middle of the road for sound.

-spike

 

[EatSpam]

I personally have over 30 Western Digital hard drives running 24/7....no problems really.

 

[tomt4535]

I have 3 WD drives(2 raptors and an 80gb IDE), 2 Seagate drives( 200gb 7200.7, 300gb 7200.8) and a Maxtor DX9 160gb, I have no complaints about any of the drives. They all ahve their good and bad points. Now that I think about it, Ive pulled alot of dead older WD caviar drives out of peoples comps. I havent had a problem with newer ones though...yet