Whats up w/Western Digital?

[Apostle 83]

I was just wondering if Western Digital is any good. I know they provide cheap drives, and you get what you pay for, but I have NEVER heard a good thing about this company or their products. Has anyone got anything good to say about these guys? I'm building a system, and if these guys are allright, I'll get a HD from them and save some cash.

[jbob]

Save yourself the headache, later, instead. Buy an IBM Deskstar. They NEVER break.

[Ed_S]

Personally, I've had good luck wih their products & believe in them. Still have in use two 420mb drive, an ancient 210mb, an 850mb, and a 4.2gb. Have three 8.4gb drives on the shelf waiting for me to need (was a great deal).

Yeah, they do have failures like everybody else. But they back it up with minimum hassle. Once had a drive fail with less than two weeks remaining on it's three year warranty, and I couldn't find reciept or registration. Called them, they sent out new drive based only on the date code on the old drive. 3 days downtime. That's good cust. service, in my book.

You WILL see more complaints about their stuff than others simply because there are more WD's than most any other brands.

And they do currently have a known and admitted problem with some drives, see:
http://www.westerndigital.com/fitness/drive-alert.html

If you decide against WD, I've also had good luck with Maxtor.

[NavyDood_ F/A18_Mech]

All in a matter of 2 years a friend mine went through 3 Maxtor's and is now on his second WD.

I've had trouble free performance with Quantum. I've been using computers for about 4 years. My first system which i just got rid of still has the Quantum Fireball 2.1 gig in it. And this system I just built has the Fireball KAplus 7200 RPM 6.1 gig in it. Granted Quantum is one of the more expensive brands to choose from, but hey.... I'll stick with what has worked for me.

Jim

[chuckiechan]

I don't know if this is a trend, but here in Calif, IBM is showing up cheap. (see steals & deals). They have a 18G, 7200, dma66, 2meg buff...Deskstar for <$200.00. There is nothing worse than a sudden disk failure,and this is one area where I, cheapskate, open up my wallet (well, a little anyway).

Good luck....

P.S. I have WD 6.4G seems to work fine.(I paid =/- $200.00 Dec '98. Passing it on to chuckiechan 1.1, when I finish my new build.

[MDHerman]

I've had great luck with the old WDC 2.1 GB drives and the WD Caviar (5400 rpm) 13+ GB drives, but I had 3 WD Expert 7200 rpm HDs fail within 4 months.

I've heard good things from friends about IBM and Maxtor.

In short, if you're looking for 7200 rpm drives, go elsewhere than WDC.

Good luck.

[RobRich]

I'm with HDHerman. I'm currently running a WD 13gig 5400rpm ATA-66 drive right now. I haven't had any problems with it yet, but it only been a couple of months.

My experience with WD is that if you want a good 5400rpm drive, go ahead and get the WD. If you want a 7200rpm, get an IBM.

If you want a great hdd, and you aren't overclocking the pci bus, SeaGate still makes an excellent product.

[ANTONIO E GUERRA]

There is a big recall on Western Digital Hard Drives (especially the Caviar). Some customers reported the hard drives stop working after a year without any reason. Personally, I don't have any problems with them but this is a big issue for the company in terms of reliability.

[This message has been edited by ANTONIO E GUERRA (edited 10-18-99).]

[AuraEdge]

I thought that WD and IBM used the same technology.
The first WD 2.5 GB I fried (gee.....my fault tho..i ran around on carpet and stuff and went psycho cuz i thought HDD's were indestrcutable..oh well...)
I just got a 20.4 gig WD, and its much better than my old maxtors

[LittleKing]

I have two WD drives, one is a 3.2 gig caviar, and the other is a 210 MB caviar, very old. I've had no problems with either of them. They still work great. I don't know about the other companies, but I have heard that IBM also makes a good drive.

LK

[nilknarf]

WD isn't exactly my first choice. I used to have problems with their Caviar 31000 drives. Haven't been back to them since. (although I will admit that I still use WD utilities to test and wipe out my IDE drives)

Personally, I prefer Seagate. I've installed about a 500 of their drives, from about a dozen models, over the last couple of years and can count on one hand the number that have failed. None were doa. When it comes to price, performance, quality, they are my number one choice.

I haven't had any customer service problems with any of the drive vendors that I've used. I've also had good luck with Maxtor, Fujitsu, and Micropolis. Haven't used many IBM or Quantum drives. Don't know if Micropolis is still around, but I'm still using some of their drives. I would mention Conner, but Seagate bought them a few years ago. I would trust an IBM drive just on reputation, I've never heard much bad about them. The only Quantum drive I have was already useless when I got it, still use it to put load on power supplies for testing.

All said, expirience tells me Seagate is good, and a number of people give good reviews about IBM and Quantum. Spend the money on quality and you won't regret it.

Good Luck!!!! /forum/smile.gif /forum/smile.gif /forum/smile.gif

[BillyBob]

I have a WD hardrive IT SUCKS it doesn't go well with most of my cd roms it messes up your system

[BillyBob]

I have a WD hardrive IT SUCKS it doesn't go well with most of my cd rom drives it messes up your system

[dawgtuff]

I've had a WD 3.2 Caviar for a year and a half. No problems, other than I'm running out of HD space!

[Ygor]

My original Maxtor is a 5 year old 1.6 gig that still works. The only reason it has any bad sectors now is the beating it took in shipping here. (The rtc was dead, halfway out of it's socket & I just don't trust that motherboard now.)
I have a WD 9.1 gig now because I read that Maxtors didn't overclock well. No problems yet with it or with another Maxtor that's 3 1/2 years old. The problem I thought we had was actually in the motherboard ide controller.
If IBM's are better, they must be indestructible...

[Prospero]

I'm using a WD Elite 18gig for my primary drive and it works fine. It's the one with the GMR technology they licensed from IBM, very fast. I've used the IBM's too, and they work great but you do pay a premium. Buy The best that you can afford is my recomendation, not necessarily the most expensive.

[KillerBug]

I have burned out old Maxtors and Quantums, but never a western digital, yet I would perfer an IBM any day.

[bobcat]

Drives currently in use:
Maxtor, Fuji, Nec, WD

The only one to die was WD 3 yrs ago. Called them up, they replaced it no questions asked and it has been running fine ever since.

[rmhand]

My machine is five years old and I am still using the original WD Caviar hard drive that came with it. And, I installed an older 320MB WD Caviar (1991) as a slave. Both are compressed and work just fine. Never had a problem.