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Raptor Woes.

HaMMerHeD

HaMMerHeD

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Jul 13, 2004
Messages
10,397
So, about 18 months ago, I bought 2 x 74gb raptor drives. Two of them have now failed.

SMART failures, both of them. Same error. Read Error Rate exceeds threshhold.

WDC sucks balls. I'll be replacing them as soon as I can.
 
thats horrible! I had a WD fail on me a couple months ago, never really got over it...

but 2 of the failing with the same error at the same time (if thats true)? thats ridiculous, unbelievable but ridiculous!
 
There's a problem with your cooling, your power supply, or the shipper you're buying them from.

 
Every WDC drive I've had in the past has died a similar death. My brother had an 80gb caviar eide drive that lasted for a month before it died.

The power supply, cooling, and shipper are fine. I bought them from newegg, at the same time I bought some other drives. My system drive is an 80 maxtor sata drive, and it has worked flawlessly for over 2 years in the very same system.

I was hoping that WDC had addressed their QC problems, but I was wrong. No more WDC for me.
 
Buying hard drives at Newegg is problematic, because they don't ship drives right. I've heard tales of correctly shipped drives when one buys in bulk (eg packed in foam, not packing peanuts) but never seen proof.

Zipzoomfly is the only place I buy from. Nice foam cages.

When you say "fine", what does that mean? Please specify.

 
I got the drives from newegg in the oem foam block cage thingie. They were packed in with some cheetah 15k u320 sca drives (still in operation) and some 160gb desktop drives if i remember correctly. Anyways, the maxtor sata drive is still running fine, and I got it from newegg, and it is older. Slower, but older, and more reliable.

I can only assume that my power and cooling requirements are fine, because everything else in the system seems to be adequately powered and cooled. I am using an Ahanix 400w silent power supply, and have been for more than 2 years. I have a single antec 120mm fan blowing directly on the hard drives, another 120mm antec fan as exhaust. (Antec P160 case)

The system is quite modest, and I assure you the 400w power supply delivers more than sufficient power, and it seems to be reliable enough. I am not one for measuring each power line with a multimeter, because that is obsessively silly. When the system works fine for more than a year, and then 2 hard drives fail within 6 months of each other, while everything else in the system is running with no worries, I blame the hard drives. The RMA replacement of the first drive that failed seems to be working just fine. The western digital diagnostic software passes it with flying colors.

I regularly clean my computer's fans and filter, and blow the dust out. Dust and heat are problems where I am (north texas), so I am extra-vigilant about keeping it clean.

Western Digital customer service has been very good and helpful about it, but that doesnt make the drive stop being crap.
 
Something must be wrong or it just happened to be a bad batch.

None of my WD's has failed yet, knock on wood.


I stopped buying from ZipZoomFly becuase they stopped shipping free 2 day, everything is now ground and more expensive than newegg :mad:
 
I could just as easily say western digital rocks because I'm running 6 raptors and have never had a failure.

I work in an IT environment with lots and lots of spindles. So many that replacing 1-3 of them every day is a *normal* failure rate. Whenever the failure rates get out of hand, it almost always ends up being an environmental issue of some type.

The 'bad run' that gets out of manufacturing just isn't that common nowadays, at least not with drive tech.
 
Ockie said:
Something must be wrong or it just happened to be a bad batch.

None of my WD's has failed yet, knock on wood.


I stopped buying from ZipZoomFly becuase they stopped shipping free 2 day, everything is now ground and more expensive than newegg :mad:
Click to expand...

I never order my hard drives online: Either they hit you with shipping charges or they ship them poorly packed. Every single drive that I have ever ordered from Newegg arrived DOA.

Nowadays, I buy my drives only from retail stores - and in retail packaging.

By the way, Newegg does not currently offer free shipping - not even free ground shipping - on their hard drives.

Also, I prefer 6-8 week shipping than fast shipping anyway, particularly with anything mechanical.
 
Whatever the cause, I shall not be buying raptors anymore. If I could get WDC to send me a different drive as a replacement, I would. Perhaps a nice Seagate would do. I doubt, however, that WDC would be that gracious.

Incidentally, I have a windows2000 install on an ancient 13gb Seagate medalist that I use for hardware diagnostics. I plug it in when I have a boot problem, and it has never failed me.

Perhaps not all WDC drives are crap, but why risk it?
 
eastvillager said:
The 'bad run' that gets out of manufacturing just isn't that common nowadays, at least not with drive tech.
Click to expand...
Indeed. The last one I can think of was the Maxtor Diamondmax 8 slim-line drives. They were dropping like flies when I was working for a school district doing tech work a few years ago.
 
E4g1e said:
I never order my hard drives online: Either they hit you with shipping charges or they ship them poorly packed. Every single drive that I have ever ordered from Newegg arrived DOA.

Nowadays, I buy my drives only from retail stores - and in retail packaging.

By the way, Newegg does not currently offer free shipping - not even free ground shipping - on their hard drives.

Also, I prefer 6-8 week shipping than fast shipping anyway, particularly with anything mechanical.
Click to expand...

I think the statement you just made is total BS. I have ordered all my HDD's about 6 the last 4 years from Newegg and have ahd no problems with them. Oh i just had a 400 gb WDC shipped to IRAQ "im in the military " and it works great.
All my drives have been OEM

I would say that DVD/CD players are way more acceptable to get damaged then a HDD that is packed with foam
 
UnrealCpu said:
I think the statement you just made is total BS. I have ordered all my HDD's about 6 the last 4 years from Newegg and have ahd no problems with them. Oh i just had a 400 gb WDC shipped to IRAQ "im in the military " and it works great.
All my drives have been OEM

I would say that DVD/CD players are way more acceptable to get damaged then a HDD that is packed with foam
Click to expand...

Sorry, but that was just my experience. All 10 hard drives that i had ordered recently from the 'Egg - as well as all four replacements - were DOA. (That was about a year ago.) What's more, I lost 15% of what I paid, and return shipping, when I decided to decline further replacements.

The problem is that the drives were packed very loosely - in very few foam peanuts. That allowed the drives to shake violently, and freely.

I cannot speak for other people's experiences with hard drives ordered from the 'Egg. Nor can I speak for Newegg's more recent hard drive shipping experiences.
 
E4g1e said:
Sorry, but that was just my experience. All 10 hard drives that i had ordered recently from the 'Egg - as well as all four replacements - were DOA. (That was about a year ago.) What's more, I lost 15% of what I paid, and return shipping, when I decided to decline further replacements.

The problem is that the drives were packed very loosely - in very few foam peanuts. That allowed the drives to shake violently, and freely.

I cannot speak for other people's experiences with hard drives ordered from the 'Egg. Nor can I speak for Newegg's more recent hard drive shipping experiences.
Click to expand...

From my personal experience dealing with newegg the last 4 years in customer service is top notch. I too have had some DOA i.e DVD-R/+ player thats it. I called up newegg and did the RMA and they gladly paid for the shipping via 2 day fedex to return the part. All they do is email you a shipping label. However if you buy a HDD and after 7-15 days i doubt newegg would pay for it. Its best to call them the day after receiving the item. Sometime things are packed good and sometimes they are not. Ive purchased stuff from zipzoomfly also. I understand the convience to buy local as you can return the item right away. However you will never save the amount of money that you spend online then going to your local bestbuy or compusa+ paying tax. Local retail stores never sell the latest video cards i.e x1900xt pe or Raptor hard drive :) , i could not imagine the markup if it was sold locally .
 
UnrealCpu said:
Local retail stores never sell the latest video cards i.e x1900xt pe or Raptor hard drive :) , i could not imagine the markup if it was sold locally .
Click to expand...

Actually, some do, some don't. Best Buy is notorious for never stocking in their stores the very top-of-the-line cards in the latest GPU generation. (Like, for example, the 7900GTX and the x1900 series are available from them only through their Web site; the best ATi card that's actually stocked at their stores is the x1600 Pro.)

Also, although Best Buy stocks the 74GB Raptor in their stores, they do not stock the newer 150GB version (either 8MB or 16MB cache).
 
The western digital 250gb ata i got, it died the second day of operation. The next one I got worked perfectly and has been for 2 years now. I guess Western Digital is either a hit or a miss?
 
i have a total of 9 WD drives, 1 happens to be the 150gb raptor, and another drive is a seagate. i have never had a drive failure, ever. im not too particular to a single brand, but WD has been very good to me.
 
i got a WD2500KS (sp) from newegg.com and it has worked for a year.
No problems, allthough the WD CavairSE16 could be faster :p
 
Least said:
The western digital 250gb ata i got, it died the second day of operation. The next one I got worked perfectly and has been for 2 years now. I guess Western Digital is either a hit or a miss?
Click to expand...

Pretty much. Once had WD 250GB HD. Lasted two months before it died. Meanwhile my bro's WD 80GB hard drive has lasted five years and only now is it starting its death rattle.

Oh and the 250GB was bought retail. Don't know about the 80GB.
 
The sample size is too small, and unknown variables too great, to derive any meaningful information from personal experiences with particular drives.
 
I have been using Western Digital drives for over 10 years, not a single drive has failed on me. I have had Maxtor and Seagate drives fail on me.


I think the problem could be improper cooling, a bad batch, or something you are doing to them.
 
Honestly, will you people drop the newegg hard drive stereotype? You're acting like they take them and throw them up against a wall before they pack them. I have ordered all 3 of my raptors from newegg and put them in RAID0 about two years ago. I have yet to have any problem with that setup. Yes, they don't pack them in the best fashion, but they aren't all ticking time bombs because of it.

Anyway, it sounds like you got a bad batch. Either that or something is wrong with your cables or power supply?
 
just2cool said:
Yes, they don't pack them in the best fashion, but they aren't all ticking time bombs because of it.
Click to expand...
If I am going to store my important data on a drive, I want the best handling of the drive prior to it arriving in my hands. Newegg cannot provide this; you admit this yourself! They're definitly not the wrost, but definitly not the best.
 
Yes, Vertigo, I completely agree with that.

But I'm just getting sick of people asking where someone bought it and then be so sure of themselves that is the reason it does not work and by purchasing it somewhere else their problems will magically fade away.

I had IBM DeathStars shipped from newegg that failed. I've had a seagate fail from ZZF. I've had store-bought hard drives fail. Sometimes, it's the manufacturers fault...
 
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