Western Digital Sucks
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I just tried to install a brand new Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAJS 320GB. - Not recognized in BIOS - Makes head searching noises Downloaded the WD diagnostic tools. - Not recognized by WD software. Write RMA request and wait. OK any vendor can have a bad day; however while checking this out, I dug out a stack of HD's that have failed recently. We were unable to recover data from any of them because they can not be seen by any of our tools, Spinrite, etc. Four of them were WD's and one Hitachi. That makes five failed WD drives in the last 12 months. Not good. Anyone have a recommendation on good recovery software for SATA drives?
Melting Away www.deals-house.com www.innovative--concepts.com
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I just tried to install a brand new Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAJS 320GB. - Not recognized in BIOS - Makes head searching noises Downloaded the WD diagnostic tools. - Not recognized by WD software. Write RMA request and wait. OK any vendor can have a bad day; however while checking this out, I dug out a stack of HD's that have failed recently. We were unable to recover data from any of them because they can not be seen by any of our tools, Spinrite, etc. Four of them were WD's and one Hitachi. That makes five failed WD drives in the last 12 months. Not good. Anyone have a recommendation on good recovery software for SATA drives?
Melting Away www.deals-house.com www.innovative--concepts.com
I have nothing but western digital drives at home (well, and one seagate). I've never had a problem with a WD drive.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
I just tried to install a brand new Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAJS 320GB. - Not recognized in BIOS - Makes head searching noises Downloaded the WD diagnostic tools. - Not recognized by WD software. Write RMA request and wait. OK any vendor can have a bad day; however while checking this out, I dug out a stack of HD's that have failed recently. We were unable to recover data from any of them because they can not be seen by any of our tools, Spinrite, etc. Four of them were WD's and one Hitachi. That makes five failed WD drives in the last 12 months. Not good. Anyone have a recommendation on good recovery software for SATA drives?
Melting Away www.deals-house.com www.innovative--concepts.com
At work I have purchased > 200 SATA drives in the last 12 years and in this time 1 to 3% of the drives were DOA. It does not matter what manufacturer. Some of this is dependent on of how well it was shipped. If the drive fell off the UPS truck (even in its protective box) the odds are that it will not work. Although I admit the DOA rate has increased in recent years. This is partly due to shipping and part due to the reduced costs of drives compared to years back. I believe quality assurance testing has been cut by all 5 SATA manufacturers.
John
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I have nothing but western digital drives at home (well, and one seagate). I've never had a problem with a WD drive.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
At work I have purchased > 200 SATA drives in the last 12 years and in this time 1 to 3% of the drives were DOA. It does not matter what manufacturer. Some of this is dependent on of how well it was shipped. If the drive fell off the UPS truck (even in its protective box) the odds are that it will not work. Although I admit the DOA rate has increased in recent years. This is partly due to shipping and part due to the reduced costs of drives compared to years back. I believe quality assurance testing has been cut by all 5 SATA manufacturers.
John
New Egg's shipping has turned to crap. They're hardly packing the boxes with shipping material anymore.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001 -
I just tried to install a brand new Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAJS 320GB. - Not recognized in BIOS - Makes head searching noises Downloaded the WD diagnostic tools. - Not recognized by WD software. Write RMA request and wait. OK any vendor can have a bad day; however while checking this out, I dug out a stack of HD's that have failed recently. We were unable to recover data from any of them because they can not be seen by any of our tools, Spinrite, etc. Four of them were WD's and one Hitachi. That makes five failed WD drives in the last 12 months. Not good. Anyone have a recommendation on good recovery software for SATA drives?
Melting Away www.deals-house.com www.innovative--concepts.com
I've bought about 200 hard drives over the past few years (mostly for work) mostly Seagate NS but some WD Caviars as well, not one DOA. In fact just one long term in service failure. Two static deaths and on 12V across the PCB though. :doh:
Visit http://www.notreadytogiveup.com/[^] and do something special today.
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New Egg's shipping has turned to crap. They're hardly packing the boxes with shipping material anymore.
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass..." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997
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"...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
New Egg's shipping has turned to crap.
We have sent them back around 10 drives because they were DOA most likely because of bad packaging. Hmm. I guess that makes my 1 to 3% number be way too low...
John
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I just tried to install a brand new Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAJS 320GB. - Not recognized in BIOS - Makes head searching noises Downloaded the WD diagnostic tools. - Not recognized by WD software. Write RMA request and wait. OK any vendor can have a bad day; however while checking this out, I dug out a stack of HD's that have failed recently. We were unable to recover data from any of them because they can not be seen by any of our tools, Spinrite, etc. Four of them were WD's and one Hitachi. That makes five failed WD drives in the last 12 months. Not good. Anyone have a recommendation on good recovery software for SATA drives?
Melting Away www.deals-house.com www.innovative--concepts.com
I had a WD bought in 2005 crap out on me...I ran Runtime Software's 'GetDataBack for NTFS Drives' utility to get my stuff back...got most of it but lost my Outlook data file which had half my life in it (yes, I'm backing it up now). It seemed like WD were premium quality for a while but the last few years they have been slowly sneaking down the quality. We just got another one in here that made noises like a rusty ball bearing. I used to totally swear by Seagate back in the day but they let me down as well. So, what's a good drive these days?
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I just tried to install a brand new Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAJS 320GB. - Not recognized in BIOS - Makes head searching noises Downloaded the WD diagnostic tools. - Not recognized by WD software. Write RMA request and wait. OK any vendor can have a bad day; however while checking this out, I dug out a stack of HD's that have failed recently. We were unable to recover data from any of them because they can not be seen by any of our tools, Spinrite, etc. Four of them were WD's and one Hitachi. That makes five failed WD drives in the last 12 months. Not good. Anyone have a recommendation on good recovery software for SATA drives?
Melting Away www.deals-house.com www.innovative--concepts.com
Snowman58 wrote:
Anyone have a recommendation on good recovery software for SATA drives?
When you hear the repeated clicks trying to seek noise you are most likely past the point of any recovery software. Before that if the sound is intermittent then software that does a bit for bit copy to new drive is great. I use the linux utility dd for this purpose and I have recovered a few disks taht way at work. However I did loose an important one (one from a friend with no backup) once because it took too long for me to get the required software installed. Every time after that I just boot off a systemrescuecd (http://www.sysresccd.org[^]) and I am ready to start copying in less than 5 minutes after plugging the drive in.
John
modified on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 6:10 PM
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kinar wrote:
WD is my preferred brand ever since seagate went to crap
I agree on that, too. Used to have a Seagate drive, and well, after my experience with it, WD all the way.
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon "Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham
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I just tried to install a brand new Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAJS 320GB. - Not recognized in BIOS - Makes head searching noises Downloaded the WD diagnostic tools. - Not recognized by WD software. Write RMA request and wait. OK any vendor can have a bad day; however while checking this out, I dug out a stack of HD's that have failed recently. We were unable to recover data from any of them because they can not be seen by any of our tools, Spinrite, etc. Four of them were WD's and one Hitachi. That makes five failed WD drives in the last 12 months. Not good. Anyone have a recommendation on good recovery software for SATA drives?
Melting Away www.deals-house.com www.innovative--concepts.com
10% is the average fail rate of hardware. And HD's usually fail in a batch so similar serial numbers will often fail around the same time. Remember: never build a raid array with similar drives.
Todd Smith
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Snowman58 wrote:
Anyone have a recommendation on good recovery software for SATA drives?
When you hear the repeated clicks trying to seek noise you are most likely past the point of any recovery software. Before that if the sound is intermittent then software that does a bit for bit copy to new drive is great. I use the linux utility dd for this purpose and I have recovered a few disks taht way at work. However I did loose an important one (one from a friend with no backup) once because it took too long for me to get the required software installed. Every time after that I just boot off a systemrescuecd (http://www.sysresccd.org[^]) and I am ready to start copying in less than 5 minutes after plugging the drive in.
John
modified on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 6:10 PM
I use Hiren rescue cd's and have had good luck on IDE drives, but virtually no success with SADA drives. With no real insight into the problem, I speculate that the SADA on disk controller is failing which seems to render the disk unrecoverable, even though the data might be OK. Spinrite, WD recover, etc. simply throw up their hands because the drive can't be "seen". You are right about the continuous seeking sounds - I don't even bother trying recovering those. Fortunately the latest one like that was brand new and never had any data on it. I'll try out the sysresccd rescue CD. Thanks
Melting Away www.deals-house.com www.innovative--concepts.com
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I use Hiren rescue cd's and have had good luck on IDE drives, but virtually no success with SADA drives. With no real insight into the problem, I speculate that the SADA on disk controller is failing which seems to render the disk unrecoverable, even though the data might be OK. Spinrite, WD recover, etc. simply throw up their hands because the drive can't be "seen". You are right about the continuous seeking sounds - I don't even bother trying recovering those. Fortunately the latest one like that was brand new and never had any data on it. I'll try out the sysresccd rescue CD. Thanks
Melting Away www.deals-house.com www.innovative--concepts.com
sysrescuecd is only good for you if you know a little linux though. Its basically a linux livecd with a combination of console and GUI programs that aide in linux and windows system recovery.
John
