Is Western Digital churning out junk?

[stompah]

I have had some older WDs drives die. Ok, no big deal.

But I bought a WD external drive that died within a year and was a pain. It's replacement started having similar issues so I migrated away from it.

Bought a Black HDD for my HTPC because of the warranty length. That thing is loud. Not like dying drive loud or 80s disk search loud. Just loud.

And the same Black drive in my main PC is starting to die also. A few times on reboot Windows repairs the drive. Also when in Windows sometimes I get long access times. Recently tried to install a game to it and it was stuck on 5% overnight. Installed same game to my Seagate drive and it went smoothly.

I installed WD utilities program.... And it says install a compatible WD drive.


Anyone else notice WD has been slipping the last few years?

/Vent

 

[EarthDog]

Anyone else notice WD has been slipping the last few years?

Last few years? I couldn't tell. But I don't recall seeing anything in the news that stated as much. Backblaze data (FWIW) is always around the mean (last I checked) Some of these were tanks though. I have a 640GB Black from back in the day that's still going strong. I even have a couple of old raptors just sitting here that worked the last time they were used. The 2TB greens I bought a couple of years ago are still doing their thing too.

That thing is loud.

The Black drives are for performance...you know it when they spin up.

 

[Woomack]

It's a matter of luck. RMA rate is pretty low. My luck is always like ... not a single WD dead at work in 2 years but my SN850 SSD had to go to RMA after 4 months.

 

[Max0r]

Yep, a lot of people have been noticing. Especially HDD enthusiasts who go through hard drives like potato chips for their mass storage arrays. Also, a few years ago in 2017 when I finally did a new build after living without a red cent to my name for nearly a decade, I noticed with great dismay that WD drives were getting shockingly bad reviews across the board, even on "premium" consumer product lines.

Earthdog is talking about a WD drive that's from long before this time. And back then, I was the biggest fan of Western Digital, for good reason. Everyone was. Maybe we were just naive.

I'm sure you've noticed now that hard drive reviews across the board have been getting worse, except maybe on the most expensive enterprise drives, or at least select enterprise lines. You know, if I had the money, I'd go SAS and just harvest all the Ultrastars I could. Since it's easier to find unused old ones for a decent price if they're SAS. Yes, I'd pay more at first for controllers and such, but on the back end, for a large array, I'd be saving boku bux on mass ultrastars. Now I'm seeing that for my favorite drives as of last few years, the 3TB Seagate Skyhawks and the 3/4TB HGST ultrastars, for new the price has just about LITERALLY DOUBLED. While the price of Barracudas and Blues at those sizes is still dirt cheap.

Meanwhile, it seems everywhere you turn, including if not ESPECIALLY Newegg/Amazon, drives labelled as new are actually HEAVILY USED, EVEN IF SOURCED/SHIPPED FROM NEWEGG/AMAZON THEMSELVES. It seems everywhere you look, everything that isn't a new and very expensive drive, is almost certainly going to be used whether you like it or not, unless you're willing to pay a huge premium.

It's a dark day for budget hard drivers.

 

[freakdiablo]

I've actually found the opposite. Used to be I'd buy any drives aside from WD, as I've always had them die within a year or two. But the last few WD drives I bought have been through hell and are still running strong. Just luck of the draw.

 

[stompah]

I forgot about this thread when I posted up this thread. I had forgotten that I had a WD Black fail out of the box on me.

Earthdog, My main PC is 2 feet from my left ear, with no obstructions. My HTPC is behind my entertainment center and I sit from 6-15 feet away and hear that clunk constantly.

 

[Brando]

I had a wd red 4tb for a few years and replaced it with a wd red 8th a while back. It's not exactly being beaten up all day but so far no problems. I recently got a wd 850 nvme drive for my system/programs and so far so good but it's still pretty fresh so maybe that doesn't count. Iirc I've actually never had a bad hard drive from any brand.

 

[freeagent]

I had 4x Raptor 150s, and they are all dead before their time, long before their time.. But I have the first WD 1TB Black.. with 32mb cache.. still running.. not right now because its on a shelf.. pretty sure it has 100k hours on it.. or pretty dam close. I took it out last summer. Its actually as fast as my moms 1TB Toshiba 5200 from her 2012 Inspiron I think it is.. from Costco.. I do have a couple of SN750s that have been solid as well, but they are from the end of 2020.

Pretty glad I saw this thread actually, I have a Black HDD in my cart. Might just get another M.2 and stick it in a converter.. sigh. Or maybe another motherboard to run my 5600X

 

[notarat]

I purchased 5 of their 18TB Drives. One died within 48hrs. Small sample size, I won't deny...but it's a 20% failure rate for my experiences with them.

 

[stompah]

I had 4x Raptor 150s, and they are all dead before their time, long before their time.. But I have the first WD 1TB Black.. with 32mb cache.. still running.. not right now because its on a shelf.. pretty sure it has 100k hours on it.. or pretty dam close. I took it out last summer. Its actually as fast as my moms 1TB Toshiba 5200 from her 2012 Inspiron I think it is.. from Costco.. I do have a couple of SN750s that have been solid as well, but they are from the end of 2020.

Pretty glad I saw this thread actually, I have a Black HDD in my cart. Might just get another M.2 and stick it in a converter.. sigh. Or maybe another motherboard to run my 5600X

I have an OG 1TB Black myself (might have 2.) After sitting for a long time they don't work. I have a lot of drives that have sat for years not spin up. No big deal there.

I have a 1TB NVME sitting idle right now. I will probably throw them in an adapter.

I purchased 5 of their 18TB Drives. One died within 48hrs. Small sample size, I won't deny...but it's a 20% failure rate for my experiences with them.

Within a year, give or take I bought 3 4TB WD blacks and had one bad out of the box, one loud one and now this one disappearing from my system occasionally.

I cannot wait until multi terabyte NVMEs become as cheap as HDDs.

 

[Nebulous]

Wow, that's messed up. I have 4 WD drives (2x 300gb Raptors & 2x 3TB Reds) over a decade and a half old still running strong. I can't remember if I ever had a WD drive go bad. I think I may have an IDE Caviar that makes a a whole lotta racket when it spins up tho, but none that have died.

Now Toshiba drives I've had a whole bunch die prematurely. Instead of Toshiba replacing them, then sent gift cards as refunds. I wouldn't want them for free.

 

[Janus67]

The only drives from WD I've ever had go bad were a decade+ old 2TB/4TB drives that were in my NAS. I just shucked 8x12TB white-label drives a handful of months ago that I accrued over the last year or so for my new server build, so will see. But I at least always put them through a full stress test before shucking and then a drive clear process before it is added to an array.

 

[freeagent]

I am curious.. all of my dead drives have died while running on my old R3F. 4x Raptor 150s, an OCZ RevoDrive, and the last one was a mint Crucial M4 256 that had 98% left. I don't have the board anymore so I cant make anymore sacrifices unfortunately. And an Auzentech Prelude was lost.. almost forgot about that one

 

[wade7575]

I have had some older WDs drives die. Ok, no big deal.

But I bought a WD external drive that died within a year and was a pain. It's replacement started having similar issues so I migrated away from it.

Bought a Black HDD for my HTPC because of the warranty length. That thing is loud. Not like dying drive loud or 80s disk search loud. Just loud.

And the same Black drive in my main PC is starting to die also. A few times on reboot Windows repairs the drive. Also when in Windows sometimes I get long access times. Recently tried to install a game to it and it was stuck on 5% overnight. Installed same game to my Seagate drive and it went smoothly.

I installed WD utilities program.... And it says install a compatible WD drive.


Anyone else notice WD has been slipping the last few years?

/Vent

I know this thread is pretty old but I thought I would chime in anyway.

I have never had much luck with WD Black drives or any of their mechanical drives when I have used them as a system drive they always died within 2 to 3 years,now mind you I do a ton of downloading,with Seagate Barracuda Pro's I tend to get 4 to 5 years out of them as a system drive.

For storage drives I have been using these drives in the link by Seagate.

I also use the Seagate drives in link for playing tv shows and movies I download or purchase off of itunes threw an Android box and a friend of mine who is a retired gentleman who can't get cable because he's in the country and there are to many tree's around him to use a dish so I supply him with tv shows and movies and he has his hard drive plugged in and running for 12 hours or more each day and his drive is 5 years old.

The Ugreen hard drive case's are really good and give fast transfer speeds and are really quality and I have 6 o 7 of my own and a bunch of my friends use them as well and they are great.

I found that in Canada at least you can buy a hard drive case and the 5 year warranty drive cheaper then a prebuilt one and at least I know what I have for a hard drive,I don't trust WD not to use a Blue drive in a prebuilt unit and charge you top buck.

https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Exter...=1650343169&sprefix=Ugreen+hard,aps,74&sr=8-3


https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Barr...refix=seagate+barracuda+pro+2.5,aps,63&sr=8-3

 

[stompah]

wade, after many years of buying WD Blacks I am done. I am not using them as system drives anymore. They just aren't what they used to be.

 

[wade7575]

wade, after many years of buying WD Blacks I am done. I am not using them as system drives anymore. They just aren't what they used to be.

I can assure you the Seagate Barracuda Pro's are really good drives and the amount of data I put threw my system drives is more like abuse as far as how much data is written to them and I always get at least 4 years out of mine.

If I didn't download so much I think I would get 5 to 8 years or more out of mine,I'm planning on getting a Sabrent M.2 SSD for all of my torrents o go into as the write cycles are way higher then a mechanical drive,for storage I just use the Barracuda Pro 3.5 drives or Seagate Skyhawk AI drives.

I don't trust trust SSD's for storage of important stuff like my tv shows and movie collection because once a sector is dead it's dead and any data in that sector is gone,I always unplug my storage drives when they are not in use so they will most likely outlive me because once they are full I just use them to transfer anything I want to watch to a laptop drive to play it on my Android box.

 

[Tyerker]

The only drives I ever had fail on me in the past were Seagate. I also used the older WD Blacks, Velociraptor drives in RAID 0 back before SSDs were prevalent. It seems like at least in my wholesale position they're still pretty well regarded. But I guess the main manufacturer my buyers tend to avoid is Hitachi. WD has great warranties, but it can be a lot of hassle and lost data is lost data. I would tend to still trust WD until I got burned, but if you got burned I don't blame you for moving on.

 

[Woomack]

The new Hitachi series have a lower RMA rate than other brands and are more often used in NAS or other 24/7 running devices. Either way, if we exclude specific batch issues, most new HDDs, regardless of brand, have about a 1.5% RMA rate, and it's typical. Everything else is more like bad luck or other things. Some Seagate and WD series had like 8% RMA rate, but it was usually a specific PN/batch, so like one shipping.
If anyone uses an HDD designed for 8h/day work (Seagate used to specify home series like this), then they shouldn't expect it to run 24/7 for more than 3-4 months. This is what some of my clients (and some online users) reported while running Seagate Barracuda, WD Blue/Green, or similar series in servers or NAS. Simply a bad idea.
This is only electronics, and everything can fail, so always remember about backup if you have any important data.

 

[LegalFox]

Yes for their hard drives, I don't know about their SSDs and NVMEs but their hard drives just fail and fail again. Don't buy them.

 

[freeagent]

I have an SN850, 3x SN770s, and an SN750 in my main rig right now, so far so good with those..

See ya later spinners..