Western Digital miserable quality control?

[lorlabnew]

Hi all,

just wanted to share with you my fresh experience with WesternDigital:

last week I received replacement for my 2 months old, suddenly whining 80JB. The replacement drive was not marked as refurbished, so I thought they maybe even sent a new one.... wrong.

Today I put it into the system (building rig for friend); after unpacking the sealed bag, I noticed visible scratches on the sides and chewed screw holes, so I figured it's old even when not marked as such; anyway, the drive is much worse then the one I sent them; it's very loud metallic noise (much louder then the rest of the system, which has only brand new SmarpPower350 with 2 fans and 1 HDD cage ultra-qiuet Enermax fan, plus P4 fan plus R9700Pro fan...)I'm almost about to record the sound and post it so others can hear it; for sure I'll let the WD CSR hear it tomorrow over the phone, wonder what they're going to say. My 7-8 years old 170MB-250MB clunkers aren't this loud.... how is possible this junk could leave the factory? Do they have any quality control? I guess none, since this couldn't happen otherwise!

I'm absolutely pissed and going to call WD customer service in the morning, since have about enough of their crappy drives.

Sorry but I needed to vent a bit Also, thought that others should be aware before purchasing WDC's.

dave

 

[Adul]

you prob got ones without fluid bearings?

and your opinion is onyla individual users experience.

my 80 JB is nice and quiet. no issues here

 

[lorlabnew]

Yes, without fluid bearings...

It's an individual user experience, but I'm experiencing bad WDC's way to often within the last 6 months .... (4 replacements, all WDC - either dead entirely, or loud whine).

Anyway, I'm glad to hear that your drive works fine, wish mine would

 

[RichieZ]

Originally posted by: Adul
you prob got ones without fluid bearings?

and your opinion is onyla individual users experience.

my 80 JB is nice and quiet. no issues here

WD doesn't use fluid bearings as far as i kno, I just read a review of the 1800JB and 2000JB and it says they don't use fluid bearings.

 

[AnAndAustin]

Yup. At the top end the Maxtor 7200rpm 8MB is superior to the WD 7200rpm 8MB not only because it tends to be slightly faster BUT because it does use fluid while WD still don't ... there's a big diff in noise levels. WD were the first with 8MB and I think that's why they're so popular, but Maxtor are better, esp now it seems WD have dropped the 3 year warranty from their 8MB HDs now as well ... all manus are offering a measly 1 year so we might as well get the quieter fluid version eh?

 

[Czar]

my 120gb wd only makes this whine when it starts up then it goes silent, was that how yours was?

 

[mjwhite]

My 2 month old 120 GB WD1200BB has also developed a high pitched whining noise. Extremely annoying.

Luckily I had only added this to my system as a second drive. My main drive, a Maxtor 80GB
(without fluid bearings) , is quiet as a mouse. They have a pretty good RMA process on their
web page, requires you to enter your credit card for an advance shipment. I just submitted RMA
yesterday, we'll see how it goes.

 

[lorlabnew]

Yeah, I'm heading to Fry's right now to pick Maxtor 80GB 8MB cache retail ($119 -$30MIR)....., on sale today.

----------------

my 120gb wd only makes this whine when it starts up then it goes silent, was that how yours was?

No, my original 80JB just had this high -pitch annoying sound whole the time (it started afer some 2 months of light use). Now, this replacement has not only high-pitch, but I also is super-loud (with even louder spin up at the startup, when I powered 1st time, I got scared first what's going on); as I said above, it's like my 7 years old beaten-up drives. It's louder then the entire system with 5 fans in, therefore it obviously exceeds WD specs for 30 dB; it exceeds that multiple times I estimate....

-----------------

My main reason for posting this message was a complete disappointment with how WD handles the situation with their poor bearing quality; instead of replacing the malfunctioning drives with workable (new or refurbished, I don't mind) disk, they don't mind to send a complete junk, ripe for the garbage container straight away. This happened to me already a month ago; but in that case the drive (refurbished and marked as such )was OK on arrival, but started to whine bad 2 weeks later.... I sent that one back as well, and got a good one now (at least for couple of weeks). So I have a 3rd disk (40BB) since the last summer.


Btw, this 80JB passed WD Diags I ran on it; it's just extremely loud and worn out - think it's someone's returned one, shipped without even bothering to repair it, since it didn't have the "refurb" label, but has all the wear of heavily used HDD. Crap.

dave

-forgot to add the bottom line: 4 out 5 WDC's I got within 6 months are bad, 1 died, 3 whine bad.
-absolutely no problems with other brands I purchased within the last 12 months : 2 Maxtor Series9's, Barracuda IV, IBM 60GXP and IBM 40GNX .....

 

[Mitzi]

just wanted to share with you my fresh experience with WesternDigital:
....


I'll share mine.... I've got 2 x brand new WD 80Gb 8Mb cache drives about 6 weeks ago...put them in my machine and I'm amazed firstly how fast they are and secondly how quiet they are. Both are running excellently.

I've noticed a number of Unreal 2 reviews lately stating how long it takes the load between cutscenes and levels...I've been playing the game for a few days and have to say that the load times for me a very quick, nothing like the 30-60 seconds mentioned in some reviews.

At the end of the day, everyone has differing experiences, luckily my first and only (so far) with WD is A+.

 

[Slickone]

So a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB is actually faster than a WD800JB? Hope so, I just bought the Maxtor.
Tried to find out on storagereview, but it only lists the 160GB version Maxtor DM+9. Would the 160GB w/ 80GB platters be the same speed as mine?

 

[AnAndAustin]

Yup. Do ensure you got the Maxtor 8MB fluid (ie P0) version if you want the best though, as with many companies these big diffs are carry only a slightly diff code.

 

[Slickone]

Yep, L01P080, w/ FDB. Only 1 year warranty though. I didn't notice that before I bought it.

 

[CraigRT]

That sucks, but honestly.... I have most luck with WD drives. Maxtor are the only ones I am really beginning to get fed up with. Fujitsu rocks too. (too bad i can't get those anymore)

 

[lorlabnew]

I got issued RMA on those 2 mentioned WDC's yesterday and shipped them straight away - this time I passed on the online RMA which is otherwise extremely easy, and gave them a call instead - the CSR was courteous and professional; promised to send back best drives thay can .... I'm looking forward what I'll get this time; maybe they'll get it right on the second attempt, who knows ....

Btw, I posted the recorded WDC sounds here to illustrate the problem...

 

[AnAndAustin]

I'd always heard Fujitsu were cheap but quirky drives, close to IBM for failure rates BUT again this isn't from any extensive personal experience or tests. I'd go Maxtor or WD myself with Seagate bringing up the rear as they tend to be a tad slower. At any rate it really sucks that HD manus have dropped their 3 year warranties for IDE as I'd always go for a HD with a 3 year warrnty vs 1 year ...

 

[Intelman07]

You all are going to kill me with IBM hate crap but guess what I use IBM! hehe quiet and performs well even in Unreal II not long to load at all btw I beat it alreayd too short!

 

[Slickone]

Weren't the only IBM drives that had problems the 60GXP and 75GXP? I used a 22GXP for a long time, and have been using a 120GXP for awhile w/ no problems. Remember, before the 60/75 GXP problems, everyone swore IBM HDD's were the absolute most reliable, as well as quickest IDE HDD's you could buy. They costed more than any others and sellers couldnt keep them in stock. I haven't heard about any more problems w/ 120GXPs and 180GXPs than any other brands.

 

[bmduncan]

I've noticed more WD failures recently than in the past. An RMA'd 80BB they sent me died after a month or so. The head crashed hard. I wouldn't put much faith in refurbed drives...

 

[Zurn]

In the last 5 years I have had several drives, WD, Maztor, Quantum and IBM.

A year ago I lost an IBM 45 gig. (haven't we all) and it was RMAd, The delivery service was kind enouigh to leave it outside my door.... in a snow bank... at -15 degrees...

I brought it in the house and let it warm up to room temp over a 3 day period, hooked her up and she did not even spin up. The place I got it from RMAd the DOA drive and billed the shipping company. Big sticker on the package, adult signature required. I guess the snow bank was considered an adult, eh?

All the other drives I still have up and running.

 

[prosaic]

I have mixed (very) feelings about Western Digital. I have had to return 7 of the special edition 120 gig drives in recent months. Not one of them was more than a couple of months old before they started going south. It may be a measure of the types of cases I had them in, but I didn't find them to be loud at all -- until they started going bad. Each one started emitting a very high-pitched noise which, while not really loud, was extraordinarily irritating -- to other people as well as to me. It caused us to get headaches. The first drive to go was allowed to continue to torture us until it underwent a frank failure about two months after it started whining. We didn't wait for any of the others to die on us. We have made it a policy now to replace any hard drive the very moment we notice a change in audible output from it.

That was the bad side. The good side is that WD replaced the drives we returned directly to them with absolutely no fussing. They replaced them with new drives. None of the new drives have failed. The drives which were replaced by Sony because they came as OEM equipment in Sony Digital Studio workstations were replaced with 120 gig Maxtors which, I have to admit, I prefer because they are even quieter than the WDs were.

I'd say kudos to WD for taking care of us. They knew the multiple returns were from a single site. They might have tried to give us crap about extrinsic factors being the cause of the multiple failures, but they bit the bullet and replaced the units the moment they heard about the sound issues on the subsequent drives. This makes me think that they built a bad batch or two of these drives, that they knew it, and that they were determined not to screw their customers over and implemented a liberal return policy to that effect.

I also like the fact that the Maxtor replacement units we have are running like clockwork, very quiet clockwork. But I had a nasty patch of bad luck with a bunch of their drives a few years ago (in a totally different environment), and I had horrible trouble arranging for replacements under warranty. I can't blame Maxtor directly for that, though. Those were all OEM drives which the vendor was reluctant to replace for noise issues. They wanted to wait until full failure before allowing replacement. I explained to them that this would mean unscheduled, as opposed to scheduled, downtime for us. They didn't seem to care. They never got any more business from us. And they never will.

- prosaic

 

[327]

i have one of the 80gig SE drives, and i dont hear it at all. my 4 case fans are louder than the drives most of the time