Why is Western Digital So good?

H

H-street

Supreme [H]ardness
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Warranty - I have had Zero issues returning hard drives with WD under warranty.

I just had an old 500Gb WD fail on me and i was even suprised it was still under warranty. No matter where i buy it or when or why they just warranty their hard drives.


Now my 1.5Tb Seagate that died is a different story.

Supposidly its an OEM drive (I bought it from fry's in a box a year a half a go) and Seagate doesn't warranty those drives, told me to go back to frys (they said Nope!)..

Oh well - i'm just going to stick with WD..
 
I've been a seagate fan myself, but I've got some drives in RMA for several months now.
In the end mostly price wins me over.
 
I like WD, i've been using their drives for more then 10 years now.

We had a WD 2TB mybook go bad at work, and they warrantied it for us no problem at all.
 
Never had a WD fail on me in 20+ years. Yeah, crazy, I know. Maybe I just don't keep drives long enough. :p
 
The only WD drives I have had go bad were ones that I set to staggered spin up. They never spun up. (my fault. Bad idea.) They were replaced without any problem.
 
I have only used WD in all my builds, but I'm going to try Hitachi drives for my server build.
 
Given the massive amount of Western Digital drive failures I've personally experienced in recent years, WD is typically my last option for hard drives.
 
I been a WD fan since 2000. I have had a couple drives die on me and never had any issue with RMA repair. No silly questions asked and great turn around time. They even package them pretty well. I even tried their pre-ship process where you provide your CC# and they ship you your new drive that day then you ship your dead one out. Flawless, got my new drive two days later and had it up and running in my server while the old one was still enroute. They got my old drive and it was a done deal. At the current time im on the Samsung bandwagon ever since that black friday newegg special. I hope I get the same treatment from them when the time comes. WD will always be my first and most trustworthy love for drives tho.
 
I've always liked WD and they do have the best Warranty Service even though I rarely have to use it. Though..... I've switched out my 2TB WD Greens for 3TB Hitachi Coolspin's and get this, the Hitachi's have 5 platters instead of WD's 4 platter, and yet it runs 10C cooler at full load, and of course it's faster.
 
I've used WD since 1996. I have only had two out of about 40 drives go bad. I built 3 systems for friends 11 years ago using 5 drives among them. The all still work. With my luck, all the failed drives were mine. But their warranty rocks. My only gripe is that now, if I want to RAID, I have to buy REs. I will be building a new rig in 3 weeks and I'm seriously considering Hitachi or Samsung for RAID (storage) duties.
 
I've been a fan of WD fans since the 1990s. In the last twelve months, my confidence has been shaken by a run of failures in their 1.5TB and 2TB Green drives that's getting as bad as my 75GXP run from way back when. On the other hand the Scorpio and Black/RE drives still seem to be utterly bulletproof for me.
 
I've had the following drives die on me in the last 4 years or so.

Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB x1
Western Digital Raptor 74GB x5
Western Digital Raptor 150GB x4
Western Digital Velociraptor 300GB x1

Still working:

Caviar SE16 500GB
Caviar Black 1TB x2
Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6G (HardOCP test bench drives)x4
Western Digital Raptor 74GB x1 (One of the RMA'ed drives)
Western Digital Raptor 150GB x2
Western Digital Velociraptor 300GB x1

With them being so hit and miss for me, I won't likely be buying any more of them anytime soon.
 
nearly all of my disks have been WD for the last 7 years.

But recently when I bought some WD 2tb green drives- I have had one fail, and 3 more look like on their way out.

For my raid setup I am using Hitachi's and they have been nice and smooth. Since WD got rid of TLER from their budget line- i'm now slowly moving over to HITACHI disks. BUT WD have the best RMA process by far. I am yet to experience HITACHI RMA process.
 
I been running 28 2TB black Entreprice disks for 1½ years, so far 6 has been changed, so they are not fault free at all.
 
Why even discuss manfgs when it's a specific product line that should be shunned/accepted?

It makes no sense to prefer a specific Manfg. when they all have had hits and failures.

I've always purchased on specs/reviews.....not the manfg.
 
when they all have had hits and failures.
Click to expand...

In these days of an expected 2 to 8% annual failure rate (regardless of usage) you will see failures from all manufacturers.

I do agree that WDC's RMA department is better than Seagate however. WDC seems to give us less trouble with returns and you sometimes will get an upgrade. With seagate most times you will get the same size recertified drive back.
 
Old Hippie said:
Why even discuss manfgs when it's a specific product line that should be shunned/accepted?

It makes no sense to prefer a specific Manfg. when they all have had hits and failures.

I've always purchased on specs/reviews.....not the manfg.
Click to expand...

Reviews can't tackle the subject of longevity. Something that matters a lot when we are talking about one of the most failure prone system components there is. My Western Digital drives were almost always the best performers at the time of their release. Most of those drives didn't last nearly as long as they should have.
 
Last year I experienced two HD failures. The first was in early January 2010 and was a 74 GB Raptor which had been in service for 3 years. The 2nd failure happened in early December 2010 and was the 74 GB Raptor replacement drive WD sent for the first failed 74 GB Raptor. This in an Antec Solo case with dual cooling fans right in front of the drives keeping them cool

WD sent me a 150 GB Raptor this time. But I've been afraid to use it. I replaced the failed Raptors with an Intel 80 GB SSD.

In contrast, my 320 GB Samsung has run flawlessly for the last 4 years. But it's getting full and I need to replace it with a larger drive... so I'm looking for a 1 to 2 TB drive. I do have a 1.5 TB WD drive in an external enclosure... and keep my fingers crossed.
 
Dan_D said:
Given the massive amount of Western Digital drive failures I've personally experienced in recent years, WD is typically my last option for hard drives.
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WD quality went far downhill with the release of the angular PCB's that have the diode problems. They're about the last choice in drives for me as well. Samsungs hold that candle now, tho I only use platter drives for server storage now.
 
DarkStryke said:
WD quality went far downhill with the release of the angular PCB's that have the diode problems. They're about the last choice in drives for me as well. Samsungs hold that candle now, tho I only use platter drives for server storage now.
Click to expand...

Well I still have some machines that are using conventional drives for everything, but I'll phase them out eventually. I'm using an SSD as the main drive in my gaming rig with the storage being provided by those Caviar Black 1TB drives.
 
Dan_D said:
Reviews can't tackle the subject of longevity. Something that matters a lot when we are talking about one of the most failure prone system components there is. My Western Digital drives were almost always the best performers at the time of their release. Most of those drives didn't last nearly as long as they should have.
Click to expand...
Then I guess all WD drives are bad in the longevity dept?

Probably not but I don't notice any other drive manfg in your "HD obituary". :)

It's gonna take a lotta actual stats to prove one HD Manfg is "better" than another.

You would have a better chance actually proving "better" with one line/model rather than the entire HD line.

I'm sorry but generally classifying all (enter Manfgs name) drives fail before their time is ridiculous.
 
I've had nothing but goodness with respect to WD myself.

I had a pair of 80GB drives in RAID0 and when I got my RE3s I sent those 80GB drives to my friend. They still work fine and they're 6 years old.

My image drives are WD Green 2TB and Black 1TB - no issues.
My RAID1 is two 640GB WD Blacks - no issues

I absolutely thrash the RE3s in my server - seeing how running multiple VMs in hyper-v is a memory and disk thrasher I've been impressed with their longevity. Some days I will write over 100GB (i.e. copying VMs [fixed disk] from SAN to the server array for short tests etc.) on those RE3s and theyre still kicking.

Some of my clients have OLD Dell Optis with WD IDE drives in them and they're still also working.

You know what they say - it's better to be lucky than good.
 
I've had problems with both Seagate and WD. But, WD Green drives over 1TB have had a terrible record with me. I've had 4 of them fail on me within a year. On the other hand, the WD blacks and blues have been working fine. Currently, I am running a mix of 8 seagate and WD 1.5 TB drives in RAID 5 on my server and things are running great.

My Media Center PC is running a single 2TB WD with no problems and I have a couple other machines running WD 1TB drives as data drives without issue.
 
Old Hippie said:
Then I guess all WD drives are bad in the longevity dept?

Probably not but I don't notice any other drive manfg in your "HD obituary". :)

It's gonna take a lotta actual stats to prove one HD Manfg is "better" than another.

You would have a better chance actually proving "better" with one line/model rather than the entire HD line.

I'm sorry but generally classifying all (enter Manfgs name) drives fail before their time is ridiculous.
Click to expand...

I'm simply relating my experiences. Most of the drives I own are Western Digital aside from what's in my laptops or in external enclosures. I've experienced drive deaths from every brand in IT / Computer Repair in the past, but I don't really deal with such things outside of the server environment. Western Digital has no real presence there aside from a handful of select models.
 
I've had mostly WD drives since a 120GB Seagate imploded on my parents for no reason. Being younger, not privvy to things like statistics and probability, I said "F--- Seagate, I'm only buying WD drives from now on."

I was rewarded with a Raptor 150 that failed four times within three years (replaced with a 300 VelociRaptor after I explained how annoying this was), a pair of 250s that both failed 3 months after I sold them to friends (around the 2 year old mark), a 750 that failed and, oddly, a 120 PATA that is about 5 years old but still works. My WD GreenPower 2TB seems okay, and the 2x500GB GreenPowers in JBOD making up my external are functional. My second 750 is working as well.

RMA on all those drives was a breeze and I never really lost any data. I wonder if my desktop PSU hates hard drives? (PCP&C 850SSI).
 
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