Hard Drives these days

Can anyone tell my WHY so many hard drives are a POS? I mean even down to the well known name brands like Seagate, WD, etc. I am seeing that there are DOA's, they aren't up to speed, etc. and the ONLY good thing about them (as of now) is that like say a 500g or even a 1T is CHEAPER than all hell ... WTF?

I am more or less mad right now mainly due to my old WD 80g 2.5" just plain going bad on me (and this is the SECOND time it's done this, was hoping that at the least I could get a decent hdd BUT damn ... all I read reviews and it's not just 1/2 or so saying I got a lemon, it's a fair enough amount for me NOT to want that brand AT ALL).

 

We've had a few WD drives go bad lately at the workplace. Like everything, they'r just making them cheaper is all, I guess.

You do know that you can go to WD's website and return it under warrantee if it's less than 5 years old, right? I've done that 3 times lately; just follow their packing directions and no hassle.

Oh, and you say they are cheap, but did you notice that retail prices doubled after the floods in S. E. Asia? Total BS!

 

I have a WD and a Seagate in my build. No issues yet after 3 or 4 years, knock on wood.

 

Mine is VERY old, it's an IDE drive.

"Oh, and you say they are cheap, but did you notice that retail prices doubled after the floods in S. E. Asia? Total BS!"

WTF???? I was looking at some 3.5's and HELL YEAH THEY DID!!!!! I remember a terabytes was going as low as like $100 or so, and that was even a WD/Seagate/etc.

I was reading on New Egg on a review where someone sent a DOA drive back to a company and that company made them pay FULL price for a supposed new hdd/replacement (apparently they sent the customer a Referb'd one instead).

 

mainly talking about the brand new ones off of like New Egg/Tiger Direct. I see A LOT of people getting DOA drives, or just problems with them period.

 

I would BUT DAMN!!!!!!!!!!! they expensive!

 

OP, try the WD website anyway, you might get lucky. The drives I returned were all EIDE.

And yes, the SSD drives are feckin' spendy! I'm looking at a new laptop for the house, and a 250G SSD unit with an i5 is $1150! but I still might get it...

 

Gotcha. Hopefully I don't need to replace anything anytime soon. My ultrabook has an SSD. That thing is super fast.

 

We got a batch of seagates in a while back, 7200.11 series iirc, that had a bug in the firmware. They were dropping like flies and even the new firmware they put out didnt help much.

 

you know what pisses me off the MOST, I have an old, and I mean OLD Maxtor One Touch 250g IDE 3.5" and that has lasted me ... hell more than 10/12 yrs!!!!! I only had to reformat it ONCE ... ONCE. Till this day it's still running STRONG, and I have it pretty much filled to the max (only about 10g or so of space left)!

 

I REALLY wish I could get an SSD, but I don't have the cash and I doubt I will any time soon (I owe my student loan company about $600 a month, and then there's the reg. bills - cell, truck, etc.).

 

If (when) you replace the drive, get two of them, and mirror them. If one goes bad, at least you do not lose your data.

 

About the reviews, you have to think of how many thousands are sold every week. Not everyone posts good reviews, but almost all post the bad ones. I've yet to have a single HDD go out on me and ive had my fair share building computers for 10 years lol.

Also, these hard drives have a lot of small mechanical parts that constantly spin. The average life expectantly is really only 5-6 years anyway. The new SSDs solved this by having no spinning or mechanical parts. With the skyrocket in prices I would opt for one if I had to buy now. If you don't have the cash then I would buy a fairly new used one and save up.

 

About the reviews, you have to think of how many thousands are sold every week. Not everyone posts good reviews, but almost all post the bad ones. I've yet to have a single HDD go out on me and ive had my fair share building computers for 10 years lol.

Also, these hard drives have a lot of small mechanical parts that constantly spin. The average life expectantly is really only 5-6 years anyway. The new SSDs solved this by having no spinning or mechanical parts. With the skyrocket in prices I would opt for one if I had to buy now. If you don't have the cash then I would buy a fairly new used one and save up.

 

as of now I'm using a program called Disk Drill (for mac, found it while googling "data recovery program mac os x"). I am seeing some of the files that were in the drive, also the program told me that there are some problems with the drive and that it would need replacing

@TB true, some of the hdd's that I was looking at had maybe 200 or so pro's, but those cons just got me (I would see say one had about 256 pro's about it, there would be maybe around 30 or so cons saying it was DOA, or a POS). I don't know, I may just stay away from 2.5's and stick to the 3.5's from now on (for my Maxtor, I have it in a 5.25 drive case, doubles as a 3.5 and 5.25, and the 2.5 is on a Rosewill hdd adapter which is able to connect to all of the hdd's - 2.5/3.5/5.25).

 

I hope mine dont crap out soon...

I have a WD and Seagate.

One old IDE Hitachi one too, which surprisingly is still working.

 

I have pretty good luck. I've only lost a handful of drives over the last 20 years.

I've got about 8 x 1-2TB "green" drives in a server and they're a mix of WD old and new format, Seagate and Hitachi. It's been running for years now and the drives were added over time, and so far they're all been reliable except for one early WD. It failed under warranty and I got a replacement at my door for $6. I have a couple of 640 WD Blacks for boot and VM partitions, and they're good too. Try to keep them cool and vibration free, is my best advice. I have a 120mm fan blowing over each of them. Temps run in the low 30c range mostly, and that's at load too. They are not enterprise grade drives and most now come with a warranty of 1-3 yrs. But the prices have been cheap, outside of disaster caused plant shutdowns.

Regardless, you have to have backups or redundancy if you care about the data. Like any moving part, it's destined to fail someday. Some drives run way beyond their expected life spans, but you can't count on that. I lost a 2TB drive but not a byte of data. If you say you can't afford to back it up, can you afford to lose it?

 

i'd say 100 bucks every ~5 years for a new hard drive is not bad. Considering you have enough cooling, they should last longer unless there are factory defects.

 

i'd say 100 bucks every ~5 years for a new hard drive is not bad. Considering you have enough cooling, they should last longer unless there are factory defects.