Nuts... another failed WD drive

[dood]

This one is a WD1600AAJS. 3.5" SATA2 drive Dated 23 OCT 2008, product of Thailand.

Still under warranty, getting shipped out tomorrow.

[ratdude747]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNQRfBAzSzo

self explanatory

[Topcat]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

Had a 73gb raptor take a dump on me last week.... :-/

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

Nuts indeed. What series was it? (Blue, Black, Green, RE, etc.) I've installed two (IDE) Blues for clients, as well as a (SATA2) Black for myself in the last two months.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

I had a mocking drive couple weeks ago. [You know, like a mocking bird.]
This one was imitating a circular saw cutting plywood.
.

[dood]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

It's a SE drive (predecessor to the "Blue" line).

I hope this isn't going to start being a trend. I mean, I've been using WD drives exclusively in PC builds and drive replacements for the last 2 years or so. It's only logical I'll get one or two back dead, right?

At least with WD drives they tend to still be recoverable. I was able to make a ghost image of all their data by just ignoring the bad sectors.

[seanc]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

I've had many drives fail this year. The thin Seagate IDE drives, I am not a fan.

Western Digital wise, there's a list:
I've just sent back a SATA 2007 WD1600AAJS as well for having 17 bad sectors - managed to remap the sectors and get a clone of that.
I installed 2 SATA 500GB Caviar Black drives into a mirrored RAID, not 4 hours later while the RAID was still attempting to build, one was grinding and scratching. It was replaced by a 500GB in the Blue Series and returned to WD.
I've had one 160GB SATA Blue drive from a Vostro 200 fail with bad sectors - being a Dell purchased drive, I can't return it and there's no way in hell I can be bothered to talk to Dell, so it's on display now with its top removed.
I had 2 SATA 1TB Green drives fail at the same time in a RAID 5, one drive having hundreds of bad sectors, the other into its thousands - that was the end of that RAID. WD should receive those shortly.

At least 4 2.5" Samsung HM160LI (or model to that effect) fail, each time I've managed to recover the data or get a clone, despite hundreds of bad sectors. 2 were in Dell Inspiron 1525, one in a HP and I can't remember the other.
1 2.5" Seagate 100GB drive from a HP laptop - again bad sectors, non-returnable due to being a HP part.
1 2.5" Seagate 250GB drive which all of two weeks to gain bad sectors - Seagate have confirmed receipt of that one.
1 137GB Seagate Cheetah 10K SCSI drive - not sure what's up, RAID controller says it's failed.
1 x 47GB Fujitsu 10K SCSI and a 320GB 10K SCSI drive - again, RAID controller says failed.
1 x 2.5" Fujitsu 250GB SATA drive - stopped spinning up.

On the other hand, my WD 500GB Green drives are performing nicely, have been for the past year.

[hardwareguy]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

The late SE and RE drives had a somewhat higher than normal failure rate. I switched to Seagate during this time after WD had pissed me off.

I had two classic Raptors die in the same week....unfortunately on the same RAID 1 array.

WD took care of me on that one....got two VelociRaptors in as replacements!

Im back with WD though.... I have nothing but praise for the new Caviar Black. The 7200.11 panic made me jump ship on Seagate as I was needing large capacity drives I could depend on.... I dont want to sell things with a connotation of being flawed. But yet I still sell MS Windows, the customers just deal with that usually...haha!

[dood]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

seanc- keep in mind that all those blue and black series drives you're using in RAID would technically have the warranty voided. They are not enterprise-class drives, and WD has stated that they do not have to honor the warranty if they're used as such.

In order to get RAID-class drives, you have to step up to the RE series drives, or the VelociRaptors.

[seanc]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

Thanks dood, I'll keep that in mind.

I can sort of understand WD's stance on the drives being used for hardcore RAID setups, turned on constantly and high usage - but the failures so far have been no worse than the the ones I have experienced in a non-raid configuration.

The Samsung Spinpoint I pulled out of my Buffalo Terastation the other day certainly was a standard drive.

[dood]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

I'm not saying they won't work, or that they'll be unreliable. Just letting you know what WD states in their warranty.

[bgavin]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

WD800AAJS, SATA-II, production date 24JUL2008, died a week back.
We suspect a power outage, as all the clocks had to be reset.
The other WD drive survived without injury.

This one is completely 100% stone dead.

[dood]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

Have another one...

WD800BEVE
2.5" laptop IDE drive
Dated 03 SEP 2009

Bad sectors, but recoverable. Returning under warranty.

[yyonline]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

In my experience WD has been no better or worse reliability wise than the other major brands.

However, their RMA process is greatly superior to that of others, IMO. They will do an advanced replacement with no extra charge (refundable deposit, but net charge is zero). Seagate I believe charges $20 for advanced replacement, others I'm not sure of. That's handy for not completely failed drives, as I can just ghost them over.

What worries me...today's hard drives feel "cheaper" than those a few years ago. Just pick up a new WD Caviar Blue and compare to one of the Caviar drives from a couple years ago. The new one is much lighter. I've noticed similar things with other manufacturers. Hopefully the light weight isn't a sign of cheaping out on parts and the new ones hold up just as well as the older ones have.

[370forlife]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

I had a mocking drive couple weeks ago. [You know, like a mocking bird.]
This one was imitating a circular saw cutting plywood.
.

You should see this drive we have at computer tech we took apart. A kid installed a fujitsu 3gb drive in his computer for a project, and he accidental left his computer on over the weekend. When we came back all we could hear was Grrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnddddddddddddddd. (is it me or does it keep removing one of those d's?)

We opened up the drive and the read/write head acted like a cutting bit and cut the disk off the motor. Quite spectacular.

[Colt45ws]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

I bought 5 Seagate 7200.11 500GB drives in 2008. I didn't know at the time the .11 series was bad. They were pretty new at the time. I had always had good luck with Seagates, so I went with them again. 4 went into a RAID 5 and another went to another machine. To date, I have RMA'd 3.

[seanc]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

Did you update the firmware to SD1A?
I had a batch of 25 500GB 7200.11 in 2008, of those approx 15 were updated to SD1A, I've only had one fail with bad sectors (in our office FreeNAS - 2 bad sectors), including the ones still on SD15.

The night before I was due to comission a server to a client with 4 of those drives in a RAID 5, I found out about the issue. Had to delay by a day and rush in 4 WD 500GB instead, I wasn't risking it.

Had two 1TB WDs go tits up at the same time in a RAID 5. Bad times.

[Colt45ws]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

On the two originals left in the array I have not, as the updater cant work through the RAID card. I would have to shut it down and transplant the drives one at a time into another machine for updating.

[dood]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

What worries me...today's hard drives feel "cheaper" than those a few years ago. Just pick up a new WD Caviar Blue and compare to one of the Caviar drives from a couple years ago. The new one is much lighter. I've noticed similar things with other manufacturers. Hopefully the light weight isn't a sign of cheaping out on parts and the new ones hold up just as well as the older ones have.

That's like saying all hard drives suck because they used to weigh tons and required reinforced floors to carry their weight

The reduction in weight is due to advances in technology allowing for fewer platters for the same capacity. I'm sure there is some reduction in weight by using thinner, less durable materials.

I was actually surprised when I picked up my 750gb hD for the first time, as it was really quite heavy. I'm just too used to single and double platter 80 and 160 gb drives.

[c_hegge]

Re: Nuts... another failed WD drive

Seagate and WD have been the most reliable brands for me. I've only ever seen 1 or 2 WDs fail. Samsung and Hitachi on the other hand have been nothing but trouble.