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Western Digital WD200BB 10% Failure Rate

davecason

davecason

Member
I purchased about 30 Western Digital Hard Drives about two months ago for my office and I've already had three go bad on me. Fortunately, the systems I had them in had S.M.A.R.T services on the motherboards and alerted me to the problem. After checking them out in those systems with the dlgdiag.exe application from WD, they come up with a quick error code of 0210 and an extended error code of 0207. I have had three die so far.

I called WD and they do not have a recall issued. I was hoping that anyone else who has experienced problems with this model would post a reply. I thought that I may not be the only person experiencing a problem with this model.

Here is some more detailed information about the drives:
Model Number: WD200BB-00CCB0
Manufactured: July 13-14, 2001
Serial Number: WMAAR1005xxx
Size: 20 Gigabytes
Spindle Rate: 7200RPM

All drives were set to UDMA2 or 33MBps transfer rates using Western Digital's utilities and all drives were connected to either IBM or Compaq computers which have intel LX chipsets using a standard IDE controller and the use of a 300MHz processor. System Bus speed is 66MHz. Memory is above specification at 256MB PC133 CAS2 from www.crucial.com and IDE cables were upped to 80 wire for forward compatibility.

The use of standard IDE cables or the default system RAM did not change the diagnostic code errors. I also tried each of the drives in a standard Intel motherboard just to double-check the problem.

If anyone has any suggestions or similar problems, please post a reply.
 
I can't say that I have ever had a WD fail on me.

BTW, nice poll. it only has one option: "Yes, 10% failure rate for two months of use."
 
I've seen an awful lot of WD drives fail. The only drivemaker that seems to be in worse shape from higher failure rate in their harddrives is IBM.
 
Ive got a 200BB in my PC at home, its been on almost 24/7 for the last few months, zero problems, sorry.
Also have a 30GB/5400 and 80GB/7200 WD drives running just as long with also no problems
 
I've had only one WD drive (my daughter's) fail over many years, and when I went to the WD website to get the latest diagnostic software I ran across a bad-batch recall notice with a diagnostic program that would identify the bad drives whether they had failed or not. No problem getting it replaced.
 
WD is willing to replace the drives. I was just wondering if anyone else was having the problem I was having. 10% failure in 60 days of use seems awfully high to me.
 
Damn I think it's just luck of the draw, I've been using WDs for a a while now and they only died after many many years of wear and tear, never a short time like yours. Sorry...some people just have bad luck with certain companies, mine would be Maxtor, everytime I even ATTEMPT to put a Maxtor in a computer it dies...oh well. 😀
 
I've purchased four in the last 18mos. or so, ......... no problems, but I don't use S.M.A.R.T or the included WD Utility (not sure if that makes a difference) ........!
 
I have had two WD drives and still own one of them and it still works after five years of use and I still am using it for my backup files, and the other one was sold with the computer it was in.

My take on the failure rate is this: Every manufacturer has a bad batch or even a bad model drive come out once in a while. This year it was IBM, a couple years ago, Maxtor, which is now everyones darling, including me, was everyones favorite drive to hate. It's failure rates for a particular model were very bad and it gave them a bad name, which they have since made good on. I cannot remember which drive was the one that had the high failure rates for Maxtor but i'm sure most of you guys know what i'm talking about if you have been into hardware for a while. WD was also very much hated only a few short years ago, but has also since recovered it's reputation.

My point is this, everyone seems to have to have a particular manufacturer to hate, it's inevitable and it seems to change every few years. It's whoever has the worst product at any given time it seems.
 
I've mostly had bad luck with only Maxtor. Since maxtor has acquired one of the major players, I'm sure that their drive quality is much higher than it used to be.

I'm going to change the poll to include only failures on this batch. I'm looking for anyone else who may have had a bad drive from WD made in July of 2001.

For those of you who have the S.M.A.R.T. capability on your motherboard but don't have it enabled, I'd say you are certainly doing yourself a disservice. It won't hurt you to enable it, it will only help.
 
i currently have 4 wd 30 gb, 7200 rpm hd in various systems. have had them for about 4 months, no problems or issues. i did have an older wd hd go bad on me about 2 yrs ago, but the replacement worked fine.

i'd take wd over ibm right now. 🙂
 
I just had a western digital 40 gig drive fail. I used the wd diagnotic and it gave code 211. That means it has internal errors and can not finish the test. It must be replaced. This is the first hard drive that has ever gone bad on me. I have had maxtor, western digital, and IBM. I did have a computer that I built for someone that had a bad drive too. It was a western digital also. I have built about 15 computers for people though and many of them are have western digital drives in them.
 
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