The hard drive failure thread

[SteveNielsen]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

The very first busted laptop I ever looked at was a T1100 in late 80s. Gave me a bad impression of laptops right off the bat. Boashit is an acronym of Toshiba.

[Compgeke]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Pulled this drive from my brother's old laptop yesterday, "I don't want to use it because it's slow".

Toshiba MK3275GSX, failed from bad sectors. Made on Feb 29th, 2012. Surprised the thing even let me load Windows, with 11,000 reallocated sectors.



Anyone ever had good luck to Toshiba? I've come around to using the name Toshita, I've never had a Toshiba drive last more than 2 years of use, even if it's a stationary laptop.

[SteveNielsen]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Good idea, thanks.

[Per Hansson]

Re: HDD Hall of Fail

This is a new thread im creating for people to post their HDD failures or drives that are starting to fail..

Il start..

I've moved your thread here hoping to breathe some live in this old thread

[SteveNielsen]

Re: HDD Hall of Fail

You could also post a report file, don't most SMART monitors have that capability? Plus we'd see all the data available, not just one window of it.

[blasterboomer]

HDD Hall of Fail

This is a new thread im creating for people to post their HDD failures or drives that are starting to fail..

Il start..

Just today my WD blue 500GB drive has started to fail , it has served me well for around 2 years of constant usage.


ps. It would be nice if you could post pictures of SMART data or tell a little description of how it died

[mockingbird]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Update:

So I have consulted this with my lead. We have gone ahead and corrected the issue. Your warranty has been updated, and, instead of having an expiration date of 19/08/2014, your new expiration date is 28/06/2015. I hope that this gesture has restored the faith you have in our product and our customer support.

So, for this "mixup" she gave me an extra year of warranty. The truth is, I don't even have this hard drive, and I will probably never even see this hdd again because the guy I sent it in for said he didn't even want to use the laptop it was going into but rather wanted to purchase a new one. So it's probably sitting in that laptop on some shelf somewhere collecting dust. The point is that this whole endeavour wasn't worth the hassle. WD ought to have a functional automated system like Seagate when it comes to RMA. I RMA'd a Samsung drive to Seagate and had absolutely no problems whatsoever and the whole process was incredibly smooth.

Duly, I responded as such:

I'll be honest with you Tiana, I don't trust or like WD, even after this gesture, and just to let you know, this isn't personal but rather geared towards your employer. But I would have continued buying WD regardless if they would have resolved the issue or not. The fact of the matter is that WD has a duopoly with Seagate, and Seagate's newer drives are garbage, which leaves me with either WD Blue or WD Black as the only drives I like to purchase.

If your company wants to know whether I now believe that their actions are out of innocence rather than malice, no, to believe that I am that stupid is insulting. Obviously WD is playing a game of warranty expiration with remanufactured drives, just as vendors sell products with mail-in-rebates with the hope that only a portion of the consumers actually take advantage of the rebate.

The difference being that rebates are legal, but warranty fraud on part of the manufacturer isn't.

Now Seagate is a lot more honest than you, but their newer generation of drives are awful. I'll take a dishonest WD with good drives over an honest Segate anyday.

The fact of the matter is that WD has grown too big, and this is what happens when government doesn't enforce antitrust laws.

-WD consumer for 20 or so years.

[mockingbird]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Ok, this clears things up. A link I found on a thread about this exact topic on their forum:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1058

So they have a "drop-shipper" for them in my Province who signals them that I have actually sent the package and that they have received it, and then they signal WD in California to send the replacement drive, and when WD actually receives the drive, they apply the actual warranty period. I'm confident that the local drop-shipper actually opens the package and verifies you have sent the proper drive and it is indeed eligible for RMA before giving the OK signal.

Now to check if I can get a replacement for that nearly brand new Caviar Blue I got out of an Acer where the customer couldn't wait for the RMA so he just paid for a new drive (Another Caviar Blue - yea yea I know... But WD is still the most consistent in my opinion).

Just a heads up --

Keep on top of Western Digital when you RMA the drive and make sure you take screenshots of the original warranty from their site (The warranty check on the original drive will eventually change to "out of warranty").

It's been almost 8 months and WD has NOT updated the warranty on the replacement drive which is now showing as "out of warranty".

I think it's been more than three months now that it's taken to receive any reply from them after I've opened two support tickets:

Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support. My name is Tiana.

I write as a follow-up in order to confirm if this particular case has been resolved, or if additional support is required. If you have any further request for assistance, please Let us know, so we may assist you adequately.

If you have any further questions, please reply to this email and we will be happy to assist you further.

My Reply:
Nice try.

The original warranty was until 19/8/2014. The replacement drive you sent me is showing that the warranty ended 23/3/2013.

This is hardly what I would call resolved.

I will be G-D willing posting a summary of this warranty transaction in a technical forum to inform others of the transpiration of deceptive practices at WD RMA, not to mention the many months now it has taken to even receive a reply from you.

[Shocker]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

https://www.badcaps.net/node/541770

[eccerr0r]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

I took the drive out and tested it, it still looks like it works. One pass of read-only badblocks = PASS. One pass of non-destructive (eh, technically, who cares if it's nondestructive or not) badblocks passed too...

I reintroduced it into the array told the machine to dump back onto that disk... it's still holding up!

Hmm... Really need to replace my cables perhaps. Usually when a disk fails I see a lot of retries but the disk disappeared hence thinking it was due to cables...

but hooray, it's still alive! What's the chances... 100K hours?

[Pentium4]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

After a power outage and a few hours of operation, my 70K-hour drive appeared to have kicked the bucket

Still not 100% convinced it's dead but it it just got kicked from the RAID array for I/O errors. Though I have had this happen before due to a bad cable...

I hope he isn't dead yet! What great service from that drive

[eccerr0r]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

After a power outage and a few hours of operation, my 70K-hour drive appeared to have kicked the bucket

Still not 100% convinced it's dead but it it just got kicked from the RAID array for I/O errors. Though I have had this happen before due to a bad cable...

[Phaihn]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

was a failed hard drive i took out of a ps3 or a hard drive from a xbox 360 that i think i killed the hard drive from.

[Shocker]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

What was the problem???

[Phaihn]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

[Shocker]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

One of the posts I was referring to got deleted.

[Agent24]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Neither of them. I'm talking about the last two posts in this thread before my response.

The last two before yours were mine and Omarion's. If it wasn't mine you were talking about, I'm confused.

[Shocker]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Are you saying my post doesn't make sense? Or the posts on Seagates forum?

Neither of them. I'm talking about the last two posts in this thread before my response.

It's not the first time a firmware-based feature has been used to extend the life of something with a design problem. Remember the IBM Deathstars?

I think letting the heads stay on one track for a long time was a defect to begin with. I don't know if any modern drive doesn't move the heads after idling for a while.

EDIT: Maybe Seagate programmed the firmware to artificially increase the reallocated sector counter if third-party modifications are made.

[Agent24]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

Are you saying my post doesn't make sense? Or the posts on Seagates forum?
I agree, mine could sound a bit far-fetched, but I am not stating it as fact. Just a guess and opinion.

If parking the heads is unnecessary and users are complaining about it, why did the firmware update not disable the entire 'feature' completely, or at least provide a utility like WD did to let the user configure it themselves? They made the head parking feature, I'm sure they could get rid of it too. Haven't seen anyone yet who said they thought it was a good feature.

Yet the feature is still there and Seagate refuse to answer whether or not disabling it via 3rd party software is "OK".

I don't think that the conclusion of perhaps it has to be there for reliability purposes is senseless. It's not the first time a firmware-based feature has been used to extend the life of something with a design problem. Remember the IBM Deathstars?

[Shocker]

Re: The hard drive failure thread

A user on the Seagate forums reported increasing numbers of reallocated sectors on two drives shortly after disabling the head park feature with 3rd party software.

I know a single unverified case is not proof of anything, but note also Seagate released a firmware update for these drives after much complaint from users - and the update only made the heads park in a quieter fashion.

My intense speculation and tentative opinion is, the drives must park heads or somehow end up with bad sectors. Otherwise why did Seagate not just disable the 'feature' completely with the firmware update instead of slightly tweaking the noise?

Makes me suspicious. In any case, time will tell.

Also, the last two posts don't make sense.