Western Garbage Green

[Faethon]

This is my 2nd Western DIgital disk that goes bad. The first, was actually very little used. It was filled with data, put back in antistatic bag and air bubbles, connected back less than 10 times through USB and at some point, it just wouldn't work anymore. I lost all data.

Today, i get this, on a 2nd WD EARS (same model). And poor me, i have more of the same.... I knew it was the cheapest 2TB disk when i bought it, but i wasn't expecting such a failure rate! I guess i tried WD and got burnt. I 've only had a HD go bad once, a very old Matrox, but didn't have catastrophic failure, it just started making noises, i had the time to save all data. Here with WD, it's like anything i 've seen before. The other disk in there is a Hitachi with 2 bad sectors, but it's older too.

 

[drescherjm]

Statistically you can not say anything about quality from 2 drives (now if you had 10 thousand and 1 thousand of these died in the first 6 months that would have real meaning). For 2 how do you know what the cause of failure is. I mean are you sure the delivery driver did not kick the box off the truck.

I can tell you from my work experience that drives from all manufacturers can and will fail at any time regardless of how little you use them.

 

[Faethon]

Statistically you can not say anything about quality from 2 drives. I can tell you that drives from all manufacturers can and will fail at any time regardless of how little you use them.

You 're right, but you know how consumers act... Statistics mean very little to them. Personal experience means a lot. Also i saw on Newegg, a rather high of failures for the same drive.

One thing is for sure, tomorrow i leave on vacation. When i come back, i need to buy new hard disks. And they won't be WDs! I ll give some other company a chance. Even more, since i 've more WD EARS with bad sectors. One came with 20 out of the box, but i kept it, as storage disk that i use only through USB. Another has 2-3. Another has none. All storage disks, not running inside the case. I 've never seen such bad record. I actually never had a disk coming with bad sectors out of the box.

 

[Jorona]

Welcome to Newegg HDD shipping. Get your drives from somewhere else. I think Newegg plays hockey with them or something.

WD are all I use at my shop, and I have very little fall out, 1 out of 50 I'd say.

 

[drescherjm]

You 're right, but you know how consumers act... Statistics mean very little to them. Personal experience means a lot.

To be honest I have been guilty of this myself. I had a ban (just lifted 6 drives purchased in the last 3 weeks) on buying Seagate drives since I RMA way more of those versus any other drive manufacturer at work however I have just lifted the ban. For me my numbers are about 200 drives that spin 24/7/365 and out of that 10 to 20 get RMA'd each year. Although this is also very far from scientific.

And they won't be WDs!

So Toshiba or Seagate or WDC owned HGST.

 

[Faethon]

Welcome to Newegg HDD shipping. Get your drives from somewhere else. I think Newegg plays hockey with them or something.

WD are all I use at my shop, and I have very little fall out, 1 out of 50 I'd say.

No, i didn't buy them from NewEgg, i am not even in USA... I guess i got all the bad batches...I bought of 7 WD EARS Green from 2 different shops. 2 are now dead (i consider this dead, this morning i couldn't boot into Windows, despite this not being the boot drive), 1 with bad sectors since the start, 1 with bad sectors with minimal use, the remaing 3 are OK, but also with minimal use. I just read the reviews at Newegg and it is a common theme the drive dying at 2 years.

 

[ashman]

Many hard drive failures are due to bad power, I've had my stuff on UPS's as well as my clients for years, had had few issues.

 

[drescherjm]

Many hard drive failures are due to bad power, I've had my stuff on UPS's as well as my clients for years, had had few issues.

All of my drive failures are on systems that have UPSs.

 

[Jorona]

No, i didn't buy them from NewEgg, i am not even in USA... I guess i got all the bad batches...I bought of 7 WD EARS Green from 2 different shops. 2 are now dead (i consider this dead, this morning i couldn't boot into Windows, despite this not being the boot drive), 1 with bad sectors since the start, 1 with bad sectors with minimal use, the remaing 3 are OK, but also with minimal use. I just read the reviews at Newegg and it is a common theme the drive dying at 2 years.

You also have to expect to get what you pay for. You're buying their base line, with the worst warranty and worst performance. I don't even sell greens at my shop, Blues are the base for repairs, and all new systems get Blacks.

Regardless, don't buy the new Toshibas, they seem to be utter shit.

 

[Faethon]

To be honest I have been guilty of this myself. I had a ban (just lifted 6 drives purchased in the last 3 weeks) on buying Seagate drives since I RMA way more of those versus any other drive manufacturer at work however I have just lifted the ban. For me my numbers are about 200 drives that spin 24/7/365 and out of that 10 to 20 get RMA'd each year. Although this is also very far from scientific.

So Toshiba or Seagate or WDC owned HGST.

I ll probably go Toshiba, haven't tried them. My wrath with WD, comes from the fact, that i didn't buy ANY of these drives as "hard working" drive. I bought them as storage drives. Most of them sit in their bags, inside a nice wooden library cupboard. Here, i just took them out to take a shot.

And the 1st, simply at maybe the 10th time i connected it, wouldn't work anymore. 2 others, of those in the bags, have bad sectors, from the "extreme stress" of filling them with data once. Then this one, thing morning, which was the only one that REALLY worked, but not heavily, comes out with a rain of bad sectors. I mean, WTF! The Hitachi 1TB drive there, has been heavily abused and has only 2 bad sectors.

I don't even want to RMA this thing, provided it's still in warranty, i m tired to search. Because i just don't trust the damn thing anymore. I am currently copying the "dying drive's" content to yet another of the WD EARS i got... But in September, i need new drives. It's like russian roulette here.

 

[drescherjm]

Regardless, don't buy the new Toshibas, they seem to be utter shit.

Their enterprise seem good but I have less than 50 of those and I have only had these for less than a year. Although I have had a few bad sectors on some of these that happened after a total AC failure in the server room (nothing scientific again). I plan on starting a thread about this since the failure was last weekend.

 

[Faethon]

You also have to expect to get what you pay for. You're buying their base line, with the worst warranty and worst performance. I don't even sell greens at my shop, Blues are the base for repairs, and all new systems get Blacks.

Regardless, don't buy the new Toshibas, they seem to be utter shit.

Well, i never bought high end hard disks, but never had such bad track record, even back at the time that i was using emule 24/7. They are the least used HD i 've ever had. Most sit in their bags, the one i use inside the case, sits on its ass 95% of the time, doing nothing and bang! 247 bad sectors!

Toshibas are bad too? Damn... I had a DVD reader from them, it was top notch... I guess i 'd better go Seagate and google the model before and read newegg experiences, because i 've been using PC since Amstrad 6128 days, i don't remember another period with such crap HDs.

 

[drescherjm]

I recommend that you thoroughly test any drive you receive. I recommend a 4 pass badblocks read / write test. However if you are not familiar with linux a few full formats looking at the SMART data before during and after can drastically help prevent being bitten from infant mortality or at least it has eliminated the problem for me with my small sample of 200 or so drives.

 

[Faethon]

I recommend that you thoroughly test any drive you receive. I recommend a 4 pass badblocks read / write test. However if you are not familiar with linux a few full formats looking at the SMART data before during and after can drastically help prevent being bitten from infant mortality or at least it has eliminated the problem for me with my small sample of 200 or so drives.

I m not familiar with Linux, you got that right. When i get a new drive, i make a full format with WD LIfeguard DIagnostics software, then do a "quick test" and then look at Crystal Disk Info to see for SMART stats. This one had no problems until today.

 

[Mav451]

I recommend that you thoroughly test any drive you receive. I recommend a 4 pass badblocks read / write test. However if you are not familiar with linux a few full formats looking at the SMART data before during and after can drastically help prevent being bitten from infant mortality or at least it has eliminated the problem for me with my small sample of 200 or so drives.

Indeed. I've been 100% WD for over 10 years now, and I'm always extra careful with the young drives (especially <3 months old). And ditto on watching the SMART data and even more so - listening for clicking/strange noises. I've always had a quiet PC so any extracurricular noises are easy to notice.

I think OP just needs to be a little bit more demanding of the quality of drives he receives. I would have RMAed some of those drives instead of just accepting it, and then acting surprised when there's less than ideal results down the road hehe

 

[drescherjm]

with WD LIfeguard DIagnostics software, then do a "quick test" and then look at Crystal Disk Info to see for SMART stats. This one had no problems until today.

I would do a full test. A quick test could totally miss any problems since it only looks at a few of the sectors instead of all of the sectors.

 

[dandragonrage]

I don't mind WD (I've had a few failures from them in the past, but I've had that from every brand) EXCEPT the Greens. I will NEVER buy a Green. They are the cost-downed POS models in the line. I started to buy some Reds, but decided to kick it up yet another notch and now I buy Seagate Constellation CS (CS is above the Barracuda/NAS/SV35 lines but below Constellation ES).

 

[Faethon]

I would do a full test. A quick test could totally miss any problems since it only looks at a few of the sectors instead of all of the sectors.

You 're right, i got overconfident, since i never had such incidents before. I figured "the full format with Lifeguard, is filling the disk with zeros. If a sector is bad, it will probably show up, as it will attempt to format it. Since it takes too long, i can skip the surface test, that also takes too long". Well, apart 1, which still works but has 20 bad sectors, my strategy didn't work up well, as the rest presented the problems later.

I will NEVER buy a Green. They are the cost-downed POS models in the line.

Yeah, well, you don't have to convince me on that... I got the Greens, because i didn't want a hard disk to work hard (I wanted space, not performance), so i figured "how bad can it be? I may as well save money". It can be bad... And there are a LOT of cases of early or 2 year failures here:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136514

I wish i had read that earlier, but then again, i was an early adopter.

 

[nekrosoft13]

This is my 2nd Western DIgital disk that goes bad. The first, was actually very little used. It was filled with data, put back in antistatic bag and air bubbles, connected back less than 10 times through USB and at some point, it just wouldn't work anymore. I lost all data.

Today, i get this, on a 2nd WD EARS (same model). And poor me, i have more of the same.... I knew it was the cheapest 2TB disk when i bought it, but i wasn't expecting such a failure rate! I guess i tried WD and got burnt. I 've only had a HD go bad once, a very old Matrox, but didn't have catastrophic failure, it just started making noises, i had the time to save all data. Here with WD, it's like anything i 've seen before. The other disk in there is a Hitachi with 2 bad sectors, but it's older too.

at one point had about 6 of WD Green drives, 4 of them failed, one went into some weird 2mb/s transfer mode, after i got the RMA replacements I also all of them, no more WD Green for me EVER!

 

[Faethon]

at one point had about 6 of WD Green drives, 4 of them failed, one went into some weird 2mb/s transfer mode, after i got the RMA replacements I also all of them, no more WD Green for me EVER!

Yeah, i pretty much expect the rest to die on me, i hope i can replace them before they do. Reading Newegg, seems like many of them are like a time bomb, waiting to explode at 2 years. Mine is 19000h, which is a bit more than 2 years, so we 're about in time.

For now, i ll just change manufacturer. But i will google the model first, to read reviews. If i ever buy WD again, i won't buy Green either. That's for sure. At the end, i wanted to go cheap and will end up paying double the price, because i will have to replace them.

 

[drescherjm]

I figured "the full format with Lifeguard, is filling the disk with zeros. If a sector is bad, it will probably show up, as it will attempt to format it.

One of the major problems I see with drives that I RMA is the inability of the drive to read back 100% what it has just written in a short period of time. badblocks tests this very well. It writes a pattern to every byte of every single sector of the drive. Then reads every sector of the drive comparing the pattern and outputting any sectors that fail to have the expected pattern in every byte of the sector. Then it repeats this 3 more times with 3 more patterns. Anyways a lot of my RMAs will have random failures thought the disk on this test. Some of them may start the failures on the 2nd pass of this test but most of them you see the problem on the first pass. Also each pass the sectors that fail will be different and are usually scattered throughout the entire drive. Again this is with a small sample. I RMA 10 to 20 drives per year every year since 2007/2008 (before that the failure rate was lower but still more than 3 per year).

 

[Elpee]

When I buy a hdd, I don't care if it's WD, Seagate, SamSung, Hitachi, Toshiba, Maxtor, ....All I should care is my hdds must stay away from heat, power fluctuation, and vibration.

 

[drescherjm]

When I buy a hdd, I don't care if it's WD, Seagate, SamSung, Hitachi, Toshiba, Maxtor, ....All I should care is my hdds must stay away from heat, power fluctuation, and vibration.

You should care about backups on irreplaceable data since all drives (and all forms of storage) have a greater than 0% chance of failure.

 

[Faethon]

One of the major problems I see with drives that I RMA is the inability of the drive to read back 100% what it has just written in a short period of time. badblocks tests this very well. It writes a pattern to every byte of every single sector of the drive. Then reads every sector of the drive comparing the pattern and outputting any sectors that fail to have the expected pattern in every byte of the sector. Then it repeats this 3 more times with 3 more patterns. Anyways a lot of my RMAs will have random failures thought the disk on this test. Some of them may start the failures on the 2nd pass of this test but most of them you see the problem on the first pass. Also each pass the sectors that fail will be different and are usually scattered throughout the entire drive. Again this is with a small sample. I RMA 10 to 20 drives per year every year since 2007/2008 (before that the failure rate was lower but still more than 3 per year).

That sounds like a thorough way to check in deed... Any idea of why in the recent years HD fail easier? Usually when technology progresses, parts become more reliable. This doesn't seem to be the case with HDs...

When I buy a hdd, I don't care if it's WD, Seagate, SamSung, Hitachi, Toshiba, Maxtor, ....All I should care is my hdds must stay away from heat, power fluctuation, and vibration.

I dust off the PCs once a month with canned air and have alluminum dust filters on intakes. The ones that i don't use, are in their airbubble packages, inside cardboard, inside library cupboard. Ambient temperature is 31C, HD's drive is 39C as shown in photo. I have a 120mm fan blowing directly on the HDD cage. Vibrations are not present from what i can tell. Power fluctuations don't show up neither in monitor software nor in my Scythe PSU tester device. So, pretty much, i have eliminated these perils.

 

[dandragonrage]

When I buy a hdd, I don't care if it's WD, Seagate, SamSung, Hitachi, Toshiba, Maxtor, ....All I should care is my hdds must stay away from heat, power fluctuation, and vibration.

If you're looking for something with minimal maintenance, you should really consider a good drive like the Constellation CS (or even ES) if you can afford it. And even with those, you should still take care to backup your stuff, but it's perhaps just a little less important than with a lesser quality drive.

 

[Faethon]

You should care about backups on irreplaceable data since all drives (and all forms of storage) have a greater than 0% chance of failure.

You 're right... Already there are 2 files on my dying HDD, that can't be read. It gives me a message for i/o error if i try to copy them or hangs the program if i open them....

Fortunately nothing critical. Ironically, i had much better luck when i was using DVD-Rs for storage. Eventually i was fed up with them, being many, but only 1 was unreadable after many years. Verbatims are pretty much bulletproof.

 

[drescherjm]

Any idea of why in the recent years HD fail easier?

I have a few ideas (bits being packed closer together, price reductions ... ) but nothing scientific. I think only the drive manufacturers know for sure or the companies that repair the RMAs to be exact.

you should really consider a good drive like the Constellation CS (or even ES) if you can afford it. And even with those, you should still take care to backup your stuff, but it's perhaps just a little less important than with a lesser quality drive.

Those certainly do still fail or at least the ES.2 SAS drives we have in Dell T7500s have had more than a few service calls in the last few years (I do not manage these so they are not included in my RMAs).

 

[Faethon]

I have a few ideas (bits being packed closer together, price reductions ... ) but nothing scientific. I think only the drive manufacturers know for sure or the companies that repair the RMAs to be exact.

I see, thanks. Well, i guess i will be reading newegg reviews in September. I really don't want to pay much for hard disks that sit in a bag all the time, so i will try to find a model that is reliable, but cheap... If it exists...

 

[Mav451]

There is a pretty stark difference in MTBF ratings between the Greens and Reds (300K vs. 1M).

Looking at the Constellation CS drives, those are rated for 800K. Or consider the WD Se (or higher) enterprise drives - they end up costing as much as a WD Black or more. Thing is, WD doesn't provide MTBF's for any of their consumer drives. The WD Se is rated at 800K (instead of 1M), but is a 7200RPM part. Or consider the cheaper AV-GP, rated at 1M hours.

There really is no free lunch when it comes to storage imo, regardless of what you end up buying. If your data is that valuable to you, I think you have to understand there is some additional expense when you buy higher-rated drives.

 

[drescherjm]

There is a pretty stark difference in MTBF ratings between the Greens and Reds (300K vs. 1M).

Not to try to derail the topic.
I have very little faith in MTBF as long as the manufacturers do the testing.

Why is that? Did MTBF predict that Deskstars were going to have the problems that they did? What about some of the problems WDC and Seagate had of recent?

 

[bAMtan2]

Im pretty sure all of my 2tb wd greens have broken

 

[Mav451]

Yeah I only noticed this when the other poster brought up the Constellation CS drives (so I ended up doing some hw at the same time). And if I'm being honest, I didn't buy the WD Red b/c of the MTBF. I bought it b/c it's the cheapest SKU that has head-parking disabled by default

 

[drescherjm]

Im pretty sure all of my 2tb wd greens have broken

At home I have 3 or 4 of these 2TB greens in my linux based HTPC and all are working fine after a few years in service 24/7/365. Hmm the luck of the draw..

Edit (I was wrong):

Hmm I must have the rest of greens in the windows machine (unconnected since the windows box is has been ssd only for over a year):

Here is the 1 WDC green that is still in the linux htpc...

# smartctl --all /dev/sdd
smartctl 6.0 2012-10-10 r3643 [x86_64-linux-3.9.9-gentoo-jmd0] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-12, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

]=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Western Digital Caviar Green
Device Model:     WDC WD20EADS-00R6B0
Serial Number:    WD-WCAVY0212354
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 25816715b
Firmware Version: 01.00A01
User Capacity:    2,000,398,934,016 bytes [2.00 TB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ATA8-ACS (minor revision not indicated)
SATA Version is:  SATA 2.6, 3.0 Gb/s
Local Time is:    Wed Jul 24 15:50:32 2013 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x84) Offline data collection activity
                                        was suspended by an interrupting command from host.
                                        Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0) The previous self-test routine completed
                                        without error or no self-test has ever
                                        been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:                (41580) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:                    (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                                        Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
                                        Suspend Offline collection upon new
                                        command.
                                        Offline surface scan supported.
                                        Self-test supported.
                                        Conveyance Self-test supported.
                                        Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
                                        power-saving mode.
                                        Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01) Error logging supported.
                                        General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:        ( 473) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   5) minutes.
SCT capabilities:              (0x303f) SCT Status supported.
                                        SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
                                        SCT Feature Control supported.
                                        SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   154   143   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       9258
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       94
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   053   053   000    Old_age   Always       -       34975
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       89
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       14
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       80
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   120   103   000    Old_age   Always       -       32
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining  LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Short offline       Completed without error       00%      1486         -
# 2  Short offline       Completed without error       00%        14         -
# 3  Short offline       Aborted by host               90%        13         -
# 4  Extended offline    Aborted by host               90%        13         -
# 5  Extended offline    Aborted by host               90%        13         -

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

 

[Faethon]

At home I have 3 or 4 of these 2TB greens in my linux based HTPC and all are working fine after a few years in service 24/7/365. Hmm the luck of the draw..

Edit (I was wrong):

Hmm I must have the rest of greens in the windows machine (unconnected since the windows box is has been ssd only for over a year):

Your spinup time has dropped. Here's a comparison of my dying drive on the left and one of my "good" drives (same model), with little use.

Actually i just removed the dying drive and the entire system works faster. It's like if the other disks were lagging because of the dying one.

 

[drescherjm]

Your spinup time has dropped. Here's a comparison of my dying drive on the left and one of my "good" drives (same model), with little use.

Thanks. That is a SMART attribute that I have not paid any attention to mostly because of all the failures of drives that I have had in the last decade spinup has not caused me any problem that I can remember. Although older drives this definitely was a problem. Again small sample / luck comes in to play..

 

[spincut]

Everyone is entitled to a fully working and functionign hard drive, however, my expectations are low even when buying a BLACK level WD (which these days aren't even that expensive). So a blue/green? Again, they should at least work I agree, but perhaps the failure rate also may be lower on the better made high quality drives (which don't even really cost a whole lot more, especially with SSD's making anything with moving parts and platter just about look cheap?).

 

[FLECOM]

I have a disk array with 16 2Tb EADS greens in a RAID6, they have been there for at least 2 or 3 years now spinning 24/7... I have one reporting a couple bad blocks but the RAID controller is ok with it still

 

[Master_Pain]

I have a disk array with 16 2Tb EADS greens in a RAID6, they have been there for at least 2 or 3 years now spinning 24/7... I have one reporting a couple bad blocks but the RAID controller is ok with it still

EADS was the predecessor to EARS. EADS was the last ok bunch of Green drives.

 

[GeorgeHR]

That sounds like a thorough way to check in deed... Any idea of why in the recent years HD fail easier?

I dust off the PCs once a month with canned air and have alluminum dust filters on intakes. The ones that i don't use, are in their airbubble packages, inside cardboard, inside library cupboard. Ambient temperature is 31C, HD's drive is 39C as shown in photo. I have a 120mm fan blowing directly on the HDD cage. Vibrations are not present from what i can tell. Power fluctuations don't show up neither in monitor software nor in my Scythe PSU tester device. So, pretty much, i have eliminated these perils.

I hate to tell you this but ...

Hard drives are very reliable. I use 2TB WD green drives for all of our needs. I have never had one fail.

I am not nearly as careful as you are in taking care of our drives. I never check the temperature. (Our server sits in a room that is often above 100 degrees F.) I store hard drives in USB enclosures or desk drawers. I even buy them at Newegg.

You may simply be unlucky.

 

[/dev/null]

Does anyone else think the MTBF is complete & utter BS?

I have very, VERY few drives that out last 35k power on hours.