not very happy with Western Digital at the moment

[Makaveli]

Hmm didn't I already read this thread at [H]?

You did I just saw this same post there. lol so i'm just going to recycle my reponse on there aswell.

 

[soccerballtux]

It could be a crap case that doesn't provide any cooling for the harddrive. If the harddrive has no circulation and it's running at 60C, why would anyone be surprised if it broke?

 

[toyota]

It could be a crap case that doesn't provide any cooling for the harddrive. If the harddrive has no circulation and it's running at 60C, why would anyone be surprised if it broke?

it had more than enough airflow for a basic pc and I even added a fan the day I bought it just to be safe. I have had other HP and Compaq computers for years with no parts failing because of heat as temps were never a prob. in fact I had basically the same pc here and the hd temps were in the upper 30s the times that I checked.


it just happened to be on of those drives that is defective.

 

[Painman]

Wow, WTF is the point of all of this?

ONE dead WD?

I just recently had a Seagate go TU. First Dead Seagate, Ever, since 2002, and I'm sure Mob Mentality would love to come and tell me all about "Deathgate", but it's still my first and only dead Seagate since starting to use them in 2002...

Everybody loses their virginity, sooner or later... for some, it hurts more than others...

...Do I really need to tell you all about all the dead WDs that lead me to Seagate in the 1st place?

 

[Satyrist]

Wow, a lot of WD love. I wonder what this thread would look like if the OP had mentioned it was a Seagate drive.

Eh, all the manufacturers are horrible, for some people.

 

[VirtualLarry]

its funny because if I built the pc myself that same hard drive would have had a 3 year warranty.

And you would have paid more for it.

Next time, if you care about component warranty, build rather than buy, even if it costs you more.

 

[VirtualLarry]

its the same hard drive that can be purchased so again stop blaming it on the pc being pre built because that has nothing to do with it from a mechanical stand point.

Well, I think that you are just plain wrong there. OEMs can and do spec lower-quality parts, for cheaper. You want longer warranties and reliability? Buy retail drives, and test them to make sure they're not DOA.

 

[toyota]

Well, I think that you are just plain wrong there. OEMs can and do spec lower-quality parts, for cheaper. You want longer warranties and reliability? Buy retail drives, and test them to make sure they're not DOA.

that may be your theory but I have owned several Compaq/HP comps and hard drives in those have been the EXACT same models that can be purchased separately. even if they dont "test" the ones they send to builders the drive took a year before anything started going wrong.

 

[NesuD]

Well there are reasons that it is a 300 dollar PC. One of them is that warranty is limited to 1 year which helps it get to the 300 dollar pricepoint. If you wanted a 3 year warranty you should have bought a computer that had one. Lets see all things being equal that could easily have doubled the price of the computer. I'd say your further ahead just replacing the $50 dollar drive yourself. You just saved $250 dollars! That would make me a happy camper.

 

[RebateMonger]

OEM's (Compaq, etc..) do routinely buy drives from HD manufacturers that are lower spec than what the HD manufacturer sells through it's retail channels.

I can (and do) see this on power supplies, motherboards, cases, and other components.

But hard drives?

If you were Western Digital, what would you do to physically cheapen your 500 GB hard drives? You could reduce cache memory, but that'd be obvious from the drive specs. But I can't see changing motors, controller boards, platters, or heads to "lower spec" items. Don't test the product? The drives have to work out-of-the-box and continue working for a while or you are going to lose your OEM customer.

As already noted, WD sells drives to HP at a reduced price because HP guarantees large, ongoing production contracts and because HP takes care of warranty service.

 

[VirtualLarry]

So the solution is simple. Next time you purchase a prebuilt PC, when the saleperson asks you if you want to pay for an extended warranty, you say YES!

 

[toyota]

So the solution is simple. Next time you purchase a prebuilt PC, when the saleperson asks you if you want to pay for an extended warranty, you say YES!

lol. not really sense the warranty would cost more than the hard drive anyway. really a hard drive or power supply are about the only two things that are likely to fail. I guess this time it caught up with me but if I think of how much I have saved over the years then its okay.

 

[RebateMonger]

really a hard drive or power supply are about the only two things that are likely to fail.

The major failures I see are (in order):

1) Hard drives
2) Power supplies
3) Motherboards
4) Memory

In my experience, they fail at roughly the same rate regardless of whether they were part of an OEM PC (Dell or HP) or were purchased as retail components.

 

[VERTIGGO]

It's hilarious how much energy has gone into this discussion; HDD's are last place I would look for flamebaiting!

Anyway, I have personally lost 4 WD drives to I/O failure, (2 were Raptors, mind you), but I just bought 4 2TB greens. Why? Because of the 3 year warranty, which is still available when they're purchased through Newegg. None of my bricked drives lasted past 3 years, and I've learned my lessons on backups and redundancy (RAID). Hard drives are the weakest link of any pc, and still must be treated as disposable components. Of course it's annoying to pay for more storage than you are using, but drives are dirt cheap now.

I did detect some bad sectors on one of my new drives, but with advance warranty, I had a replacement in 3 days, and all I have to do is send the bad one back for 5 bucks. It's no big, really.

 

[Rifter]

Well, I think that you are just plain wrong there. OEMs can and do spec lower-quality parts, for cheaper. You want longer warranties and reliability? Buy retail drives, and test them to make sure they're not DOA.

He doesnt get it, i told him that in the first post. I used to work for a system builder and i can gurantee that they use lower quality parts with lower warranty. They may be the same model number but that just means that that particular batch hasnt passed the companies retail drive QC test. My company bought drives all the time with the same model number as retail but they were sold with a 30 day warranty for as much as 40% less.

 

[toyota]

He doesnt get it, i told him that in the first post. I used to work for a system builder and i can gurantee that they use lower quality parts with lower warranty. They may be the same model number but that just means that that particular batch hasnt passed the companies retail drive QC test. My company bought drives all the time with the same model number as retail but they were sold with a 30 day warranty for as much as 40% less.

so are you actually claiming that retail and oem drives like the ones at newegg are the only ones that are QC tested?? if true then that is pretty pathetic but I do have a hard time believing they send out drives to system builders they havent passed QC.

 

[RebateMonger]

They may be the same model number but that just means that that particular batch hasnt passed the companies retail drive QC test. My company bought drives all the time with the same model number as retail but they were sold with a 30 day warranty for as much as 40% less.

Sorry, but I'm having a hard time imagining any company that would build PCs using hard drives that had failed QC tests or hadn't been tested at all.

Intel gives reduced-length warranties on their OEM CPUs. The length depends on the OEM contract and the distributors often give only a 30-day warranty. But that doesn't mean the processors haven't been tested or that they failed the tests.

 

[Rifter]

Im not saying they didnt pass QC, im saying they didnt get as high mark/rating as the retail drives. Its like ATI/Nvidia, they hand pick GPU's for the OC edition cards, same idea with HDD's companies will sell there highest quality drives retail box with longer warranty and lower quality as OEM with shorter warranty.

 

[toyota]

Im not saying they didnt pass QC, im saying they didnt get as high mark/rating as the retail drives. Its like ATI/Nvidia, they hand pick GPU's for the OC edition cards, same idea with HDD's companies will sell there highest quality drives retail box with longer warranty and lower quality as OEM with shorter warranty.

so they have three different lines of hard drives? retail, oem and ones the get shipped to builders? heck with WD their normal oem drives have a longer warranty than their retail drives. sorry but what you are saying makes little sense for hard drives.

 

[Rifter]

We never delt with WD as back then(10 years ago) then were usualy the most expensive. We delt with seagate, Maxtor, IBM and samsung, all of which generally had a 3 or 5 year warranty on retail drives and 1 or 3 year on OEM. Sometimes we would get drives with 30 day warranty only, and that was 30 days from when our supplier bought them not us or our end users. Pretty much covered DOA and thats it. I remember one batch(300+ drives) of Maxtor drives we got in with 30 day warranty and %90 of them ended up coming back within 3 months, Im pretty sure those ones were sold to us after failing QC.

 

[RebateMonger]

Pretty much covered DOA and thats it. I remember one batch(300+ drives) of Maxtor drives we got in with 30 day warranty and %90 of them ended up coming back within 3 months, Im pretty sure those ones were sold to us after failing QC.

Hehehe...that one I can understand. Maxtor hard drives from the first half of this decade typically had an abnormally short lifespan. One of Maxtor's acqusitions, Miniscribe, was accused of reboxing returned drives and shipping them out as new drives. Any hard drive maker selling drives that'd failed QC would, uh....be out of business soon.

While Maxtor may have been willing to do that, I don't think that Seagate, WD, or any of the major disk makers are currently in the tenuous condition Maxtor was in for more than a decade.

 

[ShawnD1]

I just recently had a Seagate go TU. First Dead Seagate, Ever, since 2002, and I'm sure Mob Mentality would love to come and tell me all about "Deathgate", but it's still my first and only dead Seagate since starting to use them in 2002...

Actually yeah a lot of people will tell you to stay the hell away from Seagate. If you don't already know, Maxtor and Seagate are the same company. The two Seagate drives I bought recently make that classic Maxtor clicking noise. It's only a matter of time before they fuck up and I need to replace them with Western Digital drives.

 

[DominionSeraph]

I guess this time it caught up with me but if I think of how much I have saved over the years then its okay.

Damned straight. If you want real support, pony up the additional $3000 for 24/7 2-hour onsite.

Don't forget, for that $300, you also got a million man-hour OS that provides free generalized updates and basic support for several years. Pretty good deal.

 

[hey_now]

Wow, a lot of hate for the OP in this thread. I don't blame him one bit for being upset that his drive failed after one year. He has every right to be annoyed. Ideally that should not happen (though, yes, I realize that a mechanical part like an HD can fail).

LOL at the people suggesting he should have built a system for his parents! Maybe he can OC it and muck around with the RAM voltage so they can improve their FPS when playing World of Warcrack! LOL!!! Let's get real. When you build a system for someone, you become their IT support. If you've never had to do this before, you don't want to. Buying a prebuilt system eliminates the hassle of tweaking and worrying about component compatibility, RMA'ing DOA parts, etc, etc, etc. Most prebuilt systems come with a one year warranty which is usually just fine. If an electronic device is going to break it will happen within the year (which makes extended warranties a waste for consumers and a cash cow for companies that sell them). I'm sure his parents surf the net and do email. In what world is a custom built system required for that???

Anyway, OP, I feel your pain. My shi**y Seagate 500GB drive is making the click of death and slowly dying. Am in the process of changing it after less than a year of having it. Yeah, the Seagate RMA process is seamless, but this whole fiasco is a PITA. Backing up data, santizing the drive before sending it back, installing the new drive and my OS and software. Painful.

 

[Painman]

Actually yeah a lot of people will tell you to stay the hell away from Seagate. If you don't already know, Maxtor and Seagate are the same company. The two Seagate drives I bought recently make that classic Maxtor clicking noise. It's only a matter of time before they fuck up and I need to replace them with Western Digital drives.

There's good reason for that; Seagate *has* taken a bit of a quality nosedive, and WD has rebounded. If I needed another drive today, I'd probably get a WD.

But the pendulum swings... WDs had their shaky period, Seagate was bulletproof... now the shoes are on the other feet. Still, every so often, a drive from the "good" company is going to fail within a year or so. It happens.

As for your clicking... You sure that's not just power management shutting your drives down? They'll do that even if your power config is High Perf. You have to drill down into the settings and ensure that your drives are set to never spin down. Otherwise, clickety-click.