Western Digital RE2 - failures

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bobdole369

Gawd
Joined
Jun 27, 2004
Messages
856
OK, so my company builds PC's for customers where we install our custom software on top of winxp. I have been speccing the WD RE2 series of drives:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136200

We typically install in a Shuttle, or a rackmount case - a single hard drive containing the OS and our installation.

Recently we've had about 5 failures in the last 8 builds. (over the past 8-10 weeks) I had been hoping it was a fluke - we build about a PC every week or so, and we buy each set of components separately - all from the Egg. So I don't think we are buying piece by piece out of a bin of bad ones. All of them fail the same way - on the winxp format step or installation it will freeze. Running the WD software indicates read errors. Replacing the drive fixes the problem.

Should I move brands? I've never had really any serious problems with WD drives - we have close to 200+ machines out there with WD drives and have not even had one come back after years of operation. (I only started using the RE2's starting the beginnign of the year - so theres probably 50 out there with the RE2's)

Maybe I should change capacities or even series (SE16 vs RE2)? I fell for the marketing of the RE2's as high-reliability. Guess that was a gimmick yes?

Any thoughts?
 
I had 2 RE2's fail out of 4 I have bought in the last 2 years. Both had mutliple years left on the warranty.

YMMV.
 
Newegg.....blah

Just today i had two drive fail out of nowhere they are 1.5months old and I bought them from the egg.
 
I have purchased 10 RE models over the last 4 years and 3 have died. Only one died on its own. Lockups with the OS and improper reboots caused the other 2 on a raid card to go bad (no the drives fault).
 
I've had great luck with the AAKS model line from WD. In different capacities and builds I've used about 20 of them so far with no problems.
 
No problems here I have had a 400GB RE2 WD4000YR-01PLB0 for a couple years and a 1TB Caviar Green WD10EACS about a year now I think. I have had bad luck with 2 Samsung Spinpoint SP1614C drives failing though. Before that I had a 30GB WD drive for 7 years I only stopped using because it was too small.
 
Seagate.

Thats all I have to say. Dont start a flame war, its just a personal preference and the most reliable manufacture I have worked with (over 1000 drives install, ect).
 
I had two of my WD5000YS die and I got WD to replace them all. I ended up with two WD5001ABYS and two WD5000ABYS. They've been excellent. The difference? WD5000YS is 4 platters, while the other two are 3 platters. WD5001ABYS is perpendicular recording. Both of the three platter drives run 7-10C cooler than the four platter version also.

I attribute my scenario to my own fault. I always avoid purchasing drives with more than 3 platters due to heat and reliability. I failed to listen to myself, so I ended up with a pain in the ass.

I'm waiting on 500GB/platter 1.5TB drives for my next upgrade.
 
I just specced the next 5 machines with the Seagate 160GB. We'll see. I'm sure they'll be fine, until we get another string of bad ones somehow.

Folks really have a problem with hard drives from newegg?

BTW also my bosses RAID 5 failed with 3x hitachi (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145166) - 7k1000 drives - Those were his purchase I had nothing to do with. He didn't have a replacement onhand....... I was on vacation - had to wait till the next day to get another from the egg. Whole lotta cursing that day I hear lol. Was just one drive and he said his PC popped, like one of those snap-pops you throw on the ground. Drive won't spin up. Newegg replaced it, as he had it running less than a week.

Newegg has been nothing but good - never give us trouble on all those RMA'd WD drives.
 
Looking over the marketing materials - yup. I didn't think that using it as a single drive would have caused any problems though, and they certainly don't caution against using it outside a RAID environment.

Never touched TLER - honestly don't even know what that is. Most of the failures were out of the box though on initial format.
 
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