PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

* Begin Rant *

I'm sorry, but I need to vent a little here...

I've just had my THIRD Western Digital 120JB drive die in less than 1 year. At this failure rate, I'm getting about 3.5 months use out of each drive. Unbelievable.

What kills me is the glowing reports and raves everyone has about these drives! I'm a very experienced DAW builder that has few problems in general because I pick quality parts (Intel, Asus, Corsair, etc). I build various machines for myself and my friends.

It's not the motherboard, it's not the cables, it's not some chipset, it's these god damn drives... the same problem everytime. They start lightly clicking and the BIOS fails to recognize them. No warning what so ever, you just go to boot up your machine and the drive is history.

Now I have to deal with Western Digital's *wonderful* (that's sarcasm) customer service. The two previous drives that failed were both "replaced" with non JB (no 8mb buffer) drvies. Each time I had to re-ship a drive back and wait until they received it before I got my correct replacement unit. I expect 3-4 weeks w/o my dedicated audio drive, at least I know what to expect based on my prior experience.

You know the drives I've had the best luck with? The older IBM 75GXP's that everyone claimed were the worst failure rate ever. I built 3 audio systems with those, all of them going strong to this day. If I had the money, which I don't, I'd gladly go back to IBM.

I have backups of the data, that's not an issue. Audio is my passion, not my profession. If it was, I'd really be screaming right now. My box never gets moved, it's well cooled amd in a A/C, non smoking, dust free environment.

- I hope you all never have this problem -

People need to be aware of problems with these drives, it CAN'T just be me.

Western Digital - I WILL NEVER BUY ONE OF YOUR PRODUCTS AGAIN!!

* End Rant *


System Specs:

Asus P4B533
Intel 2.4 ghz
1024mb Corsair XMS 333DDR
1x (normally 2) WD120JB Drives
1x Plextor 1640 CDRW
32mb Gforce 2

Creamware Pulsar II
Steinberg Midex 8

In my G4 Mac I have a build in 40 gig IBM HD, and I will order a 120 Gig one this week.
They are good!
Good luck!


_________________
Let There Be Music!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hubird on 2003-01-21 23:12 ]</font>

Not all IBM harddrives are good, though I'm using a <knock on wood> 36.7 Gb Ultrastar as my main workhorse. IBM actually sold off their harddrive division after problems with their newer high density technologies.

Generally I avoid anything over 60Gb from any maker for work use due to higher failure rates (notice that they've all reduced their warranties from 3 years to 1). For data storage the high density drives do fine, but there seems to be increasing failure rates as the densities go up. At least that's my observation....

I've got 2 IBM 7200 RPM drives a 40 and an 80 and they are great, no noise etc.

Well guys, thank you for your positive comments, but the following seals the deal.

According to website and a phone call, it appears my replacement drive is out of warranty although it was manufactured less than 1 yr ago.

This is really great example of how you should NOT treat a customer. Let's take a customer that has had a really bad experience because of something the manufacture did and make it worse by denying warranty.

I understand warranties expire. I have no problem with that. My beef is I've never had a working product for more than 4 months at a stretch. If anything, I've lost well over a month simply due to return and shipping times.

Anyway, I'm over it... Life is too short to stress myself over this.

I will have fun slamming the drive into the concrete later tonight (anyone remember the movie "Office Space"?).



** 2nd Update ** (I'm cross posting this)

It appears a WD employee who read my posts is trying to help me out. I greatly appreciate his efforts.

[This message has been edited by sinix (edited 01-22-2003).]

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: sinix on 2003-01-22 12:48 ]</font>

Interesting, but sad, story, keep us updated.

/cz, running 2 x IBM with no probs yet...

Another cross post from cubase.net where I received most of my help in resolving this:

** ATTENTION ** Anyone who has followed this thread, please read this carefully.

First off, know that some WDC staff take heart in their work and company. Venice took something that clearly had nothing to do with his position with WDC and took his time to help resolve my situation. He deserves a lot of credit for going the extra mile. Thank you.

Second, I do not want to mis-quote, but it appears there was an error with my prior warranty information that was preventing my current drive from being accepted into the warranty system. Thanks to efforts from Venice, it looks like this will get resolved.

Third, I can't fully rule out user error. I do admit it is possible that some if not all of this has been my fault. It's not like I'm inexperienced in system building and I'd be happy to have someone show me I'm wrong and admit it, but it just doesn't look that way.

I will go into using the final replacement drive with an open mind and see what the results and outcome are.

Thanks to everyone for their input on this thread.

A couple of years ago WD supplied Apple with quite an amount of (firmware) faulty drives.
Those were replaced the proper way free of charge, but the reputation of WD was just like the title of your thread.
Everyone counted on IBM those days.
Then the whole thing turned, WD was rock solid, according to my PC dealer, who suddenly had up to thirty percent IBM failures. Like posted above IBM got fed up and sold the whole product line.
I recently replaced a Quantum due to a broken powersocket (inside the controller board) and had a Maxtor loosing all it's data in second.
A WD I had on the shelf for emergency replacement obviously was squeezed a bit tough by a robot (nice sratchy motor noise).
My personal Fujitsu makes some strange clicky-dee-clicks from time to time and is certainly about to fail not too far from now.
The PC dealer told me about 15% returns of damaged units.
That's my result of the last 2 months and I'm just supporting about a dozen users, most even with 'quality' stuff from Apple.
Imho your right, all those drives are crap, possibly because they are so bloody cheap today.
I'm remembering those days of expensive but reliable SCSI drives more often since then...

cheers, Tom